Narrowing it down: What we’re actually doing

Someone recently asked, “So out of all this great stuff you’ve posted over the last few weeks, what do you actually plan on using this year?”  I thought others may be thinking the same thing.  And my concern is that some may be so overwhelmed with everything I’ve posted that they have no idea how to use anything.  So I thought I’d post this before leaving you to wade through the extensive and overwhelming info I’ve previously provided.

First of all, for newcomers to classical education, I would recommend not planning on doing anything extra the first year (aside from your core math and language arts).  Really!!!!!  Why?  Because it will give you the freedom to say,

“Well, this is going well.  I’m starting to understand the Classical Model.  I need a little bit more for us to do.  What can I add now that I’m getting the hang of this?”

rather than,

“NOTHING IS GOING RIGHT!  I CAN’T DO THIS!!  I’M SUCH A FAILURE!! I’M GOING TO THROW IN THE TOWEL AND NEVER HOMESCHOOL AGAIN FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!!!”

Okay, so here’s what we’re ACTUALLY doing (right now during our summer break, with photos to prove it – the kids ask to do this stuff – honestly):

Boys with paper toys.

The Chrysler Building, The Empire State Building (which still needs some work), and Mt. Rushmore.

• Stephen completed Mission 1 of Mission US early this summer.  David, Levi and I enjoyed watching him play are looking forward to the release of Mission 2.
• Building a paper city called “America City” (inspired by the Paper City in the Ultimate I Spy Wii Game) using paper toys from papertoys.com.  These are pretty tough to do, so unless you have upper elementary students or adults helping, I wouldn’t suggest these.  There are times when I’m not even old enough to figure these out, but at least Mt. Rushmore is pretty simple…
• Get started on a couple of lapbooks:  Human Body and 17th Century Lapbook.  We may also complete a Life-sized paper skeleton or save this for when we’re studying the skeletal system.
• Listening to some stories from American History Stories Volume 1.
• Finishing up our Native American Study
• Drawings from Draw Write Now books 2, 3, and 5 and What to Draw and How to Draw It .
• I’m learning how to shine my sink the Flylady way.  I don’t think I’ll ever make it through babystep one of her program, to be quite honest.  But my husband called from S. Korea today to give me moral support as I shined our sink for the very first time.

After the school year starts, we PLAN to do these things: (PLEASE NOTE: This is not a list of what we do EVERY DAY. We have certain things we focus on each day of the week.  The only things we do every day are Bible and our core Math and Language Arts programs. AND, before you start thinking I’m Wonder Woman, we have 180 school days to do this!)

• Memory Work (OF COURSE!) using songs and games like Jeopardy & Sequence.
• Complete our IEW and phonics/reading assignments.
• Complete our Saxon Math assignments. Play games to review and practice math facts. We have a game kit with things like Addition/Subtraction Bingo, but we will also make the homemade Multiple Blessings file folder game using the blank templates for 4s to 15s.
• “My USA Notebook” using the state coloring and fact pages from crayola.com and/or 50 state notebooking pages
• “Book of Decades” timeline notebook using cut-and-paste clipart for history sentences and U.S. States.
• Read our literature selections for each week. (e.g., Pedro’s Journal during Week 1, Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims during Week 2 – along with Children’s Treasury of Virtues, our more challenging read-aloud Johnny Tremain, and corresponding picture books.)
• Listen to one “chapter” of Short History of the United States per week.  Listen to other audios as time permits (e.g., The Founding Documents of the United States of America)  This can be dropped from our schedule if needed.
• Experiments and activities from Classic Science Elementary Life Science Curriculum.
• Watch our Schoolhouse Rock DVD (and Drive-Thru History and other videos we have relating to history).  They do this on their free time, anyway.  It’s not actually part of our “school day.”
• On-line games, such as Sheppard Software, and Your Child Learns. This also is done on their free time.  The boys love playing computer games…
• Complete 1-2 crafts per week and/or lapbooking components.  By the way, lapbooking is VERY easy to do and does not take much time if you just do one to two components per day.  It is a very simple way to graphically organize work, AND it’s a wonderful keepsake.  AND when it’s over, it’s NOT over because they will look back through their work over and over again.  Of course, your children have to like cutting and pasting, so it’s not for everyone.
• Draw Write Now books 2, 3, and 5
• Readings, copywork pages, discussion pages, and crossword puzzles from The Book of Virtue Project.  One Bible Story Printable mini-book, craft, or copywork page that corresponds to the character we’re studying.  Also some of the activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler.
• File Folder Fun games: Passport to America, Oregon Trail, The Fruits of the Spirit, Monster Manners, and Ten Commandments.
• Just a little bit of Latin with Ellen J McHenry’s homemade Latin board games
• Ellen J McHenry‘s Body Bingo, Ectomy (a game about the brain), and Circulation Game. The boys already want to make a brain hat using her downloadable template.
• Even though we have suggested several on-line videos and games in our previous posts, we won’t be able to watch/play many of them on our satellite Internet connection due to this thing called “download usage allowance.” It’s one of the quirks perks of living “in the home of our dreams.” But I highly suggest checking them out – we hope to watch and play what we can!
• And copywork, dictation, and narration exercises that just kind of fit in wherever.

It looks like a lot, but when you split it up the way we do, and you account for the extra weeks that school is in session for us (but our classical homeschool community is not), it is not as overloaded as it looks when you read it off this page. (For example, it takes about two minutes per week to cut and paste a timeline figure into the Timeline notebook. Likewise, it takes about 5 minutes to color a state coloring page.  It took me way longer to set up the notebook than it will for them to fill it all in.  AND we don’t play a file folder game every day.  We just use what’s good at the time.)

I like to be prepared for a utopian school day because I think it just might happen one day.  But, as we all know, life can really throw a curve ball every now and then (in addition to the fact that kids are a tad unpredictable on a day-to-day basis – and so are some of these utopian “activities” we’ve planned)!  And… it is SO COMFORTING that we will have opportunities to do the things we don’t accomplish this year as we return to these studies again… and again… and again…

• Overall history resources, click here and here.
• Timeline resources, click here.
• Math resources, click here.
• American History Literature resources, click here.
• Geography resources, click here.
• Science resources, click here.
• Fine Arts resources, click here.
• Bible resources, click here.