If you hate to hear about homeschool planning - move on, sister. This one is full of it. I promise I'll post a cute pic of my boys soon. And come back later this week for a contest! I won't talk about planning for a year. Or a month. Or at least until next week.
It's been awhile since I've talked about homeschool plans. Before I could keep going with all that planning, I really needed to sit down and get my goals on paper for the end, and work backwards. I mean, you can't choose a program or curriculum without knowing why or what for, right?
So, I've been think about "language arts". I'd like to go on record as really not liking the term language arts. So, we'll break it down: grammar, writing (composition), spelling, reading and I'll add foreign language here too. Although foreign language is another subject in & of itself, it exercises those same cerebellum muscles.
What are my goals?
Most recently, it's been my goal that my boys know how to address Christmas cards. More specifically, to know the difference between a possessive and and a plural. I want them to know that subject and verb must agree in a sentence. How often do we see in an email with something like, "There's books everywhere!". Okay, basic grammar. I know some homeschoolers subscribe to doing grammar every year and basically beating it to death, and thinking, "...if you do it for 12 years, certainly it'll sink in!"
I have a very certain goal of no busy work for my boys. This abhorrence to busy work is a gift from my 7th grade science teacher who used to make us copy the entire book day after day onto loose-leaf paper. No teaching, no experiments. Literally, we spent the year writing chapter after chapter. I got to writing the first page and writing "blah blah blah blah. This is very boring..." in the middle of my pages, and wrap up the end. I would get a big A+ with a smiley on my neatly-written pages. Ask my mother. This is a true story. I learned nothing, except that my science teacher was incapable, and perhaps a little senile. Kids can see right through busy work. (ps - I invented many fonts that year. Perhaps my love of graphic design grew in that year in all that mindless writing!)
So, I found Analytical Grammar and Junior Analytical Grammar. This seems like a great solution to the busy work of pages and pages for years and years of grammar. I will be teaching mechanics, incidentally, alongside dictation (as I have been) until the formal grammar program starts. They will learn the definitions of the parts of speech in 2nd and 3rd, and be ready for JAG in 4th. Grammar, check!
So writing. This was hard for me. I once heard that, "He teaches best at what he struggles." If this is true, it would explain why I can impart math but not writing even though my math skills stack poorly against my language skills. I got Susan Wise Bauer's Writing Without Fear CD. It was fantastic for me. I finally found direction. I learned about progymnasmata through some research, and discovered a host of writing programs that would fit the bill. Classical Writing Aesop and Homer, IEW and Writing Tales. After comparing as much as I could online - samples, TOCs, scopes and sequences, I decided to give Writing Tales a whirl. All things the equal, this author is more approachable, and quick to respond to parent emails. It's nice to know that back-ups are still great programs. Writing, check!
Spelling. Ugh. I am not a natural speller. I inherited my Grandma Marcy's spelling skills. (Yes, before I get emails asking - Marcy, her. Darcy, me. Yes. There is a correlation.) Thank you for those genes, Grandma. I couldn't have gotten your cooking skills, or perhaps your dancing skills? I had to get the spelling genes??? Anyway, despite my love of languages, it wasn't until I became fluent in another language that I got fairly good at spelling my own. That is, learning Italian forced me to pay attention to nuances in English. I didn't want my own boys to have to wait until their teen years to spell well. I've chosen dictation to force them to picture, hear and hopefully not rely completely on spell check. I have almost no confidence in this category, but I've chosen Spelling Wisdom from Simply Charlotte Mason, anyway. The jury is still out and I still wonder if spelling is nature or nurture. Spelling, check, I guess.
Reading. Anyone who's learned a foreign language can tell you that reading is easier than writing. The skill to de-code is infinitely easier than the one to en-code. Same is true for little people learning their own language. My kids are decent readers. They know how, they're still building confidence; so while they are absorbing all this language what matters to me is the quality of literature they're absorbing. To me this is fairly simple. It means choosing Collodi's Pinocchio instead of Disney's, choosing Narnia over SpongeBob. We like the lists over at Ambleside Online. We'll get through as many as we can of Years 0-3. Other lists I like include Five in a Row, the Sonlight Catalog, and the Veritas Press Catalog. (I don't subscribe, necessarily, to the theology at those catalogs, though, that is my word of caution for Catholic homeschoolers, particularly in medieval historical lit.) Reading, check!
This leaves foreign language. Many assume I will teach Italian, since my experience is greatest there. And I might someday; I hope my boys will choose Italian as one of their languages as it would be infinitely easier on me. But until they decide, we'll do Latin. As the madre lingua to so many other languages, a natural loaded grammar course, a huge vocab boost - it was an easy choice. After looking at several, I chose Lively Latin. Several other programs felt solid to me, but as a parent with some questions, I went with this because the purchase of the curriculum comes with online support with the Magistra. Which means if I get all worked up about Latin, the author can talk me down. I love curricula with supportive authors! And so, like the writing course I chose, Lively Latin gets my vote for the seemingly fun content for the boys, and help for mom. Foreign Language, check!
So what does that leave? Copywork, narration and dictation across curriculum. For more about this, give SWB's Writing Without Fear CD a listen and read a little about dictation from Charlotte Mason. Unlike my 7th grade science teacher's copy-the-whole-darn-book-theory, we will be copying short, meaningful sentences that contain well-done examples of the grammar and mechanics we're learning. Dictation is a way to practice those skills without having to compose something original - it forces you to use those pesky punctuations, phonics, and mechanics skills. Narration forces you to learn to find the important points, summarize and negotiate a composition - in my boys' early stage - orally. You can think about the content without worrying about the written mechanics quite yet. Hopefully when they are ready to put it all together, the individual skills gained from copywork, narration and dictation will make a child who can compartmentalize the makings of a good paper. Time will tell on that one, huh?
ps - There were exactly 6 spelling errors in this blog alone. For shame! I guess my long term goal = helping them to be smarter than their momma. ;)
