One of my favorite life comforts, that I have found in my married life with children, is to plan out school. While I will not say I have enjoyed every moment of home schooling…..I can honestly say I have thoroughly enjoyed sitting and pouring over what the next grade of courses will be for each individual child as they move up the ranks. Being able to tailor it to their needs and have control over the content and focus, while meeting state requirements and in our case, the Christian value system heavily integrated within the sciences and history and literature choices,….has given me a lot of mom satisfaction. Probably just as much if not more so, than bearing them physically and nursing them.
I have heavily relied on Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum and Mother of Divine Grace syllabi (lesson plans), for the most part, whether being enrolled or not, these resources have been my guiding light for the last 15 years.
Usually by the second semester of a grade level, I can tell pretty much where the child is going with their studies, successfully or not so successfully and I begin to project what we need to cover for this child into the next year. I’m pretty excited for my seventh grader as he began algebra recently (Abeka 7th grade Mathematics), and will cover plane and solid geometry to end his math year. He will pick up in 8th grade doing Pre-Algebra, and I’ll see if he needs the whole book or not. I could bump him by his second semester into the Algebra I if he’s progressing nicely and too much of it is review.
But, again, the flexibility of home schooling is the ability to be able to meet their abilities and grow them from there…all tailored for that child. Kind of like breast milk…it is made just for that particular baby and their needs…..what an analogy, right?! Smile with me..please….! Again, a lot of mom satisfaction!
So, as February approaches, and thoughts of Spring are ever in the back of my mind, which bring forth thoughts of summer around the corner…and a break…I am already content in my world of mothering, teaching and planning for the future of my children’s education. I do hope Obama doesn’t mess up our educational freedoms and choices too much……I do pray that our leaders will always recognize and support a freedom of choice in education and religious liberty.
2 comments:
I always love the planning, too. It's the implementing I really don't like at all! I am running on less than zero patience for some reason, even with the baby. So, I am grateful to leave all that, for the moment, anyway, with the nice folks at k12. I skip what I don't like, and as for literature, we get to pick all that, for the most part anyway. They have to read a certain number of novels every year, but give you a list to choose from, which looks like they may have pulled it from a MODG syllabi.
I'm so glad to read of contentment in your post. I hope things are calming down in your world a bit!
Things are much calmer Megan, yes. He is sleeping better and doing better overall daily with school work and activity. Still have our few problem phobia areas we continue to work on, but some of the more acute problems that hit this fall in winter have since subsided with the medicine finally taking hold. Usually it's more and more improvement from there once it's adjusted properly. I pushed for liquid again because I felt he fell back with the tablets -- just my opinion they don't absorb as well in him. The liquid really makes a difference. So I could almost say at some point he probably wasn't even getting the dose out of the tablet he needed and then with the grow spurt/weight gain, he was probably getting near nothing! I think he will do fine with Modg throughout high school, but I just take one year at a time with this one...and definitely with the other little boy, because WHO KNOWS what I'll be needing to do with him by the higher age and grade level...might be doing K12 for help and to get better therapy services paid for. We'll see! Thanks for asking about us!!
Post a Comment