Buying Books

At this time of year, we often want to avoid any extra expenses. Well, books should not be your extra expenses to avoid.

If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.
John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Don't pinch on your book budget for the upcoming year. I just ordered hundreds of dollars worth of books for my kids, my husband and myself. I want to be sure everyone has their own copy of the classics we will read this year, so they can write notes in it.

Kerry


Homeschool Curriculum

Feminine Modesty again

Continuing through the Feminine Modesty sermons, I am quickly reminded that my daughters should listen to this series. I plan to have them listen to one sermon a week. Each Thursday we will discuss the message after our weekly humanities discussion.

More points from Feminine Modesty . . .

A girl dressed immodestly

• is saying her dad is a coward or a fool (for letting her out of the house like that)
• is a fool herself
• attracts fools
• will reproduce fools

In addition to foolishly dressed girls, the second message also discussed the idea of maidens. We do not use the term maiden in our culture. Instead, we call them singles. However, maiden is the term used in the Bible and is a term we should esteem. Being a maiden is a virtue to a young lady. If Augustine addressed our church by saying he wanted a few minutes to speak to the maidens, we would probably be clueless.

More about Feminine Modesty series HERE

Kerry

How Much Seatwork???

Is this what it looks like for young children? We seem to have a fair share
of seatwork....math, grammar, writing, history, science, reading blah, blah,
blah. It is difficult to break free from the regular school mode when there
is simply so much to learn!

I try to limit the amount of seatwork. At their ages, you might try 1-2 hours and the rest of your day should be love of learning type activities (another 1-2 hours). Our history and literature at that age was read alouds and the kids were busy with quiet projects. Science IMHO should be completely hands-on at this age, too. All we do for seatwork at younger ages is spelling, and writing. We even wait to do math and grammar until after they are 10.

Kerry Beck

More info about relaxed learning at an early age is found in Teaching the Trivium and A Thomas Jefferson Education.

Reading Journals & IEW

I am not psychiatrist, but I’d suggest doing a reading journal with these younger kids once or twice a week. Then do verbal narrations to see what they have learned. After you read aloud to them, have each one tell you something about what was read. If time for discussion is there, great! If not, don’t worry about it. Then, you can have them work on a simple IEW assignment once a week or every other week. When my youngest was 7 all we did the entire year was unit 1 with ly words and who/which clauses. That is all. The next year he learned some more dress-ups. I would think the older kids could do similar assignments and move through IEW at the same pace, possibly covering dress-ups, story outlines, essay from one resource, and possibly learning a sentence opener or two.

Don’t worry about getting through it all in a year.


Kerry

Prioritizing-Time vs. Content

I tend to have all sorts of things lined up for my kids at the beginning of the year and then “wham”, the end of September comes and my expectations have changed. One thing I am REALLY going to shoot for this year is “structure the time, not the content”. Okay, I am still the mom and God put me in authority over my kids so I get to choose some of the content. But, I plan to give my kids some freedom about what they will study. If I tell my 12year old that we will study until 3pm (starting around 9am with an hour lunch break), he should have lots of time to study and read. If he is not finished with something by 3pm, but has really studied the entire time, then it is time to stop and work on it tomorrow. There is no rush to get through everything. I have to keep reminding myself of this concept, especially with my 17 year old who is taking a college course this year. I still have so much I want to teach her.

Kerry

Structure Time vs. Content