The road to hell and all...

Remember several weeks ago when I wrote that I would be buying a packaged curriculum for the kids this school year?

Yeah.  That didn't work out.

Almost a month off of school for me and a complete lifestyle change for all of us (from a home on 17 acres in the country with dairy cows to a townhouse in the city) has renewed my sense of purpose and I've been busy making plans for homeschooling.  I reread (and reread again) The Latin-Centered Curriculum and it really spoke deeply to me.  Using only my iPhone, as we hadn't yet gotten Internet set up at our new place (this happened today, which is why I'm able to blog), I tried to glean as much information online as I could about LCC.  I've done this before but it seems, to me, that you really absorb something when it's truly time for you to do so.  I can read and intellectually understand something all day long but it isn't until it fits right in with where I am in life that I have that 'aha' moment.  Such is the case with the multum non multa philosophy.

I have decided to use Oak Meadow first grade with H (6)--with his issues it is a better fit than the more rigorous classically inspired curricula at this point.

For A (age 9) I will use:

• Hawthorne's A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales, Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare; progymnasmata (Classical Writing Aesop); Narrative; Copywork; Recitation for English Studies
• Lively Latin for Latin
• Famous Men of Rome for Classical Studies
• Story of the World 3 for History
• The Young People's History of the United States and select reading material for Modern Studies
• MEP for arithmetic
• REAL Science Earth and Space for Science
• tutors for Russian and Violin

For L (age 11) I will use:

• Progymnasmata (Classical Writing Homer); Harvey grammar for English Studies
• Lively Latin for Latin
• The Children's Homer for Classical Studies
• Story of the World 4 for History
• The Young People's History of the United States and select reading material for Modern Studies
• MEP for arithmetic
• REAL Science Earth and Space for Science
• tutors for Russian and Violin

There are still some things I want to fit in, such as Religion (you may have noticed, if you are familiar with The Latin-Centered Curriculum, that I've modified Christian Studies).  I have some very good books about various world religions and I would like to study this.  I've read the claim that one needs to be familiar with Bible stories in the interest of cultural literacy and, while this argument has its merits, I believe that we need to have a familiarity with the stories of all major world religions.  Also, I need to weave in Artist and Composer study, which should be somewhat easier after the class I took in Music Appreciation over the summer.

So the task I have will be to schedule everything so that we can schoolwork done when we have errands (for example, H has therapy and sees the chiropractor on Monday mornings, the older kids have violin Monday afternoons) and how my husband can manage on days that I am at class (I literally pull all-day classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester).  This is certainly possible--the older kids especially are at an age where a lot of their work can be done independently.  Other work they do is rolled together (for example, Science, Russian, and Modern Studies).  It will just take some planning.

When I'm done writing the years-worth of lesson plans (something I've never tried to do all at once before) I'm going to print it and the various other pages I've made (scope and sequence, book lists, et cetera) out, take them to Office Depot, and have them spiral bound.  I've always been a 3-ring binder type who ends up with the seams all busted and stuff falling out all over the place--I'm going to simplify and beautify this year.