Our 2014-1015 curriculum choices

I’m going to be very honest. This year is rough and before it ever started I was ready to quit. I still want to quit almost everyday but I have an amazing support group.

I thought I’d go ahead and share with you what our 2013-2014 Curriculum Choices are.

Will age 9/10 (December):
Classical Conversations: foundations (early American history, US geography (practice drawing entire US freehand and filling in states/capitols and physical features), Latin, life science and chemistry)
Classical conversations: essentials – dialectic discussions
IEW: U.S. History based writing lessons
Teaching Textbooks 5 & we will start 6 in Januaryish
Lyrical Life science – slow start
Songschool Latin book 1 – also a slow start
Story of the World-as it applies to foundations history sentences
Youtube videos

Lucas age 6/7 (May):
Classical conversations: foundations-Classical Conversations: foundations (early American history, US geography(identify states/capitols/features), Latin, life science and chemistry)
MathuSee- alpha
All about Reading – level 1
Everything else – listens in on science/history with Will
youtube videos

Nathan age 3:
He just listens In and scribbles. Nothing formal.

The “meat” of our curriculum centers around Classical Conversations, which we started the middle of last year. We meet “co-op” style each week for “foundations” and the kids are loosely divided by age. The “tutor” spends 30 minutes going over the weeks new material, 30 minutes on art, 30 minutes on science, 30 minutes on presentations (each child gives a speech or talks about something they enjoy or for really young kids it becomes show & tell) and finally the tutor spends 30 minutes reviewing the previous 6 weeks worth of material. We break for lunch and the 9+ crowd then attends an intense 2 hour grammar/writing lesson. Once again it’s up to each family to decide how little or how much they would like to expand on the lesson with their child(ren).
There is ton of memory work involved in foundations and it’s up to each family to decide how much detail they want to go on a given topic. An example: the kids learn the names of 4 types of tissue. Mom or dad can then go home and have a intense science lesson and do experiments on tissue. We also learn a sentence about the Declaration if Independence. How much detail you go into later is up to you. If you’re still confused feel free to e-mail me.