Homeschool

This week we started homeschool for Wendy. I spent a lot of last week planning and preparing and after four days I think we are in a good routine!

Here are a few photos of our first day.

I am still working on the classroom set up. We are converting our little office room that is off of our living room into a classroom. It's coming, but still needs a lot of work. For now we have this great little chalkboard and a kids table and two chairs. Plus a big bookshelf and our adult desk (for workspace that Geneva can't reach!).

Here's Wendy in her Caldwell Academy uniform (we brought back two uniforms with us...she won't wear them everyday, but it does seem to help her get in the school mindset!).

Vera is doing a little bit of 'school' too! I have a pre-school book for her to practice tracing, plus number and and letters, etc. She mostly just like the cutting and gluing pages!

A few of my friends have asked how I am approaching homeschool, so here's a general overview for anyone interested!

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I am teaching with the classical method, mainly based on The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise-Bauer. She lays out a plan for grades 1-12 and I am using it as a guidebook for teaching.

If you want to know what the basis of Classical Education is, see this link for a brief explanation: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/classical-education/.

It is a totally different approach to learning than I was taught at UNC's school of education. I am enjoying it immensely but am having to re-learn how to teach! I'll write more about my curriculum in later posts, but here is a brief list of what I am using for her classes (which, by the way, take up about 1 1/2 hours per day for math and language arts classes and one hour four days a week for science and history):

1- Language Arts -

a. Phonics - Explode the Code series

b. Spelling - Spelling Workout A and B

c. Grammar - First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind

d. Structured Reading - Lots of books! We read Gilgamesh the King by Zeman this week. I'm trying to collect books that relate to History Class, which for Grade 1 is Ancient History.

e. Independent Reading - She is reading short chapter books to herself or to her sisters for half an hour each day.

d. Handwriting

Kind of doing my own thing here. Just having her do copywork related to what we are doing in Language Arts on wide ruled paper.

2- Math

Singapore Math Level 1

3- History

History of the World curriculum

I'm so lucky...Alex is teaching this twice a week to Wendy and some other kids in the neighborhood! He loves history and is excited to be doing this with her after work twice a week. The classical approach teaches history chronologically so Grade One is Ancient History (hence the reading of Gilgamesh the King in Language Arts). I'm learning a lot from this class!

4- Science

In classical education the study of science focuses on the scientific method and follows the general pattern of the history class. So during ancient times, ancient people were learning about biology...animals, plants, and the human body. We will start with a very long animals unit and study animals and learn the classification structure for them. I have a big animals book put out by Kingfisher and then am planning on printing materials offline and doing some fieldtrips out. Wendy will have a science notebook for taking notes and will organize the animals by classification after she studies each animal.

I'm actually not doing this yet. I'll probably start science twice a week on alternating days with history in a month or so.

5- Music and Art

We are hoping to add these into her schedule soon. She will begin piano lessons (Mommy teaching!) as soon as we buy a piano (been on my list for awhile!) and art lessons with Daddy...he took art lessons for a long time as a boy and is looking forward to drawing with Wendy. We also want to start doing music and art appreciation with her. Not totally sure how we are going to do it, so if anyone has suggestions we'd be glad to hear :)!

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It kind of sounds like a lot when I write it out but really the books we are using are great and the planning hasn't taken nearly as long as I thought! More on homeschooling in posts to come!