Friday, January 3, 2014

7 Quick Takes Friday~Homeschool Edition~1/3/2014

Happy New Year!

Caleb
As our Christmas Break is coming to an end, I thought I would do a Quick Take Friday with changes to term 3 of our school year, which will start next week.

1) The schedule is one thing that HAD to change. We had too many brain draining subjects in the morning which really was messing up the whole day. Turns out that Caleb does better with math right after lunch. I've also decided that we need to do a better job of starting on time. I think getting myself going earlier in the morning will help with this too. Pray for me as I'm not much of a morning person!



2)I'm having Caleb go back to doing IEW Writing Intensive B that we got about six lessons through and put on hold around Thanksgiving. I like this program and Caleb likes the DVD, but we need to rework how we do it. I've got a plan now!

3) I'm going back to the original plans for Language Arts for Tyler. Dictation, copywork, freewriting (and other Brave Writer inspired writing), oral narrations, literature, and Intermediate Language Lessons. I'm stopping Winston Grammar with Tyler and will continue that next year. He got about 13 lessons into this book and hit a wall. We will work on the concepts learned so far through dictation and ILL.

Tyler


4)We got some new books for science! Originally I had Tyler doing a bird study and Caleb continuing along with Behold & See 6. Caleb will be doing Focus on Middle School Astronomy alone. Tyler will be using Sassafras Science Adventures Anatomy. Behold & See 4 was really boring for Tyler and retention was low. Both the boys did a physic unit (with books I already had and DVDs from the library) last term when the original science books weren't working for them. I still see us doing that bird unit in the fourth term. 

5) Latin . . . . well . . . . I see this being put off until term four. Honestly, Latina Christiana is just too hard much. I looked at Prima Latina and the amount of work is just more reasonable. It's completely understandable for Tyler not to be ready for LC, but I was stressing about Caleb not being able to handle it. But, I thought about it and he really isn't too interested in learning Latin and LC can be challenging. I'm sure he was just becoming overwhelmed with it. I know I was and it was something that went undone when time was short. I'm hoping a less intense introduction will be the answer to this. I'm waiting to start this new program until I have the money to purchase it. I did purchase a few new things for this term, but this was on the end of the list and money ran out before getting that far.

6) Term 3 will be all about training Caleb to work independently. He is very social so he prefers to work with someone most of the time. This will be a tough one! I've researched a great deal and got some wonderful advice from seasoned homeschool moms and I feel like we have a good plan to make this work. 

On the other hand, Tyler is all about wanting to work alone. I will be training him to do it properly. He is all about speed! This is one reason our routine must change. I needed the time to work on both of these task during the day and not feel rushed.

Hammy, the family pet and must adorable hamster ever, lol!


7) I made some small changed in history. I know I wrote about history not too long ago here. But, as in the subtitle of "what is working now" this isn't working for us anymore. I get bored with history very easily. I needed a change. Using living books is the best method for us, so that won't change. Caleb will continue along into the Renaissance era using The World's Story as recommended by Mater Amabilis. He will start in the book where we left off in history and not start from the beginning. I see us using this book next year too. I don't have this book yet, but I'm hoping it ships any day now. Caleb will read from this book twice a week. Once a week he will read about church history from The Story of the Church. I really don't know much about this book or even remember where I got the recommendation, but I hope to read a little ahead of Caleb. He is also reading from Ridge Runner Rescue which isn't that much history. It is more natural history, but we are marking it as US history. I bought two of these books in the series last summer and the boys enjoyed them. I'm having the boys now read the one they didn't last summer.

Tyler will be reading Eye of the Grizzly once a week; Don't Know Much About the 50 States twice a week; Stories of America Volume 2 once a week. No Renaissance books planned for Tyler, but I may add some to his reading basket and if I decided to read The World's Story out-loud to Caleb then Tyler will pick it up there. A state study and US history is what I originally had planned for Tyler anyway. I do have another book on hand that I may have him read instead of Stories of American and the 50 States books. I was going to let him pick and I've been putting that off because I'm afraid the reading level is just a little high for him to read alone and I really want him doing his history reading alone this term. We will see!

 
For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

2 comments:

  1. We have been using Prima Latina this year -- slowly but surely -- and really loving it. We are actually about to add Song School Latin to it and take it even slower. I think I will be OK with it taking third and much of fourth grade to finish.

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    Replies
    1. I really wish I had started Prima with my oldest a few years ago. I went back and forth on Latin for years and now that I decided this is something we need to include in our studies I feel like my oldest is behind.

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