High School History and Literature

For high school, we combine history and literature WTM style into a great books course which covers the full 4 year cycle.  I start with the basic reading list given in the WTM for each year.  I then modify this list somewhat to include more world books instead of solely western literature, as well as adding in a few books that I think are valuable.  I think anyone could stick strictly to her list and do very well.  My son is also a very quick and strong reader, and typically reads a work each week.  If your student is a slower reader, you might want to drop some books to allow more time with each piece.

Our typical week looks something like this:  Monday-he reads the background reading relating to the time period and culture we are studying.  We use a variety of college textbooks for this purpose and chose from them if the subject is US, World, or European focused.  My son will write an outline about the chapter he is reading, read further regarding the rest of the world during that period in the Timetables of History, and enter any important dates on his timeline book.  He will also read some biographical reading about the author we are reading for the week.  He then uses this background reading, as well as the biographical reading, to write a 1-2 page summary about the full background to the piece we are studying.  Then he will jump into reading the text.

Tuesday:  He will read some relevant primary source material from the time period we are studying.  There are great sourcebooks out there and available, as well as easily accessible sourcebooks online, such as this one.  He also continues reading the text for the week.

Wednesday:  Mostly just reading the text, taking notes.

Thursday:  We have a set discussion time on Thursday.  We have been blessed to have a close friend follow our reading list along with us and come and discuss the text together with us.  We discuss the context, as well as literary aspects of the text including theme, tone, characterization, style, etc.  If you want to follow a similar approach, but need help preparing this discussion, I personally love the Stobaugh books which will provide you with discussion questions, etc, for a range of books.  You can also find Great Books summaries and commentaries in print and online to do your research and make sure all important aspects are covered in the discussion.  Ideally you will have read the text as well, but even if you haven't been able to, it is very possible to lead a solid discussion with some preparation.  It is important to let the discussion be Socratic and organic, rather than lecture based.  I really enjoy hearing the thoughts these two teenagers have about what they are reading, and our discussion of the literature naturally leads into good historical discussion, as well as interesting comparison and contrasts.  At this time, I will typically assign him some kind of relevant essay.  Often I draw from AP World History or AP English Literature essay questions to give him good solid practice in those types of essays.  I try to sprinkle in AP multiple choice throughout the year as well.

Friday:  Friday is spent finishing and polishing his writing and giving feedback on his weekly essay, as well as getting a jump start on the next week's text if it is longer.

That's our basic process.  If you would like copies of my plans for high school history and literature years 1, 2, or 3, contact me.  I am available to share my plans or to write personalized plans for you for any grade with reading and writing assignments for a donation to my son's exchange student fund.  ;)

11th grade

Our plans for 11th grade are somewhat modified because my oldest will be in France for part of the year as an exchange student.  I'm thrilled he will have the opportunity to really establish his language skills while attending a high school in France and living with a French family for 3 months.  If you are interested in a similar experience for your high schooler, or if you are willing to host a student from another country, read more here and contact me!

History and Lit:  continuing our great books approach.  We will be in year 3 and using a modified version of the well-trained mind reading list for year 3.  He will also study for and take the AP US History exam.  

Thesis:  He will complete an extended junior thesis this year.  In 9th and 10th, he completed a standard research paper.  His project this year will be longer and more involved.  Details of how to do a junior and senior thesis can be found in the WTM.

Math:  Math U See

Science:  dual enrollment Biology
                He will also work through Astronomy a Self-teaching guide so as to not skip the astronomy year altogether, but I won't include this work on his transcript

Language:  Stewart English books 1 and 2
                    IEW's Succeed on the AP Lit Exam (testing at the end of the year)

Electives:  French 3 (credit from 3 months in France)
                  Latin 4-online with Henle
                  Russian--with Pimsleur and Russian in 10 minutes a day
                  Apologetics through NCFCA Speech and Debate
                  Art-continue with the Annotated Mona Lisa and the Story of Painting for art from year 3, as well as studying sculpting
                  Music-Classical Music 101 (1st half)
                  American Government-dual enrollment
                 

First Start Reading

With my 1st grader, I needed a new phonics curriculum this year.  For personal reasons, but also because her language skills are still a bit delayed, we just needed a fresh start, and we decided to try First Start Reading by Memoria Press.  I have 4ish phonics programs on my shelf right now, so we thought we would start with this and then go on to something else if it wasn't working. 

I have always appreciated how straight forward and easy to follow Memoria Press curriculum tend to be, and First Start Reading has been no exception.  She is doing great with this curriculum.  I am starting her in book B.  We went back to the end of book A, and she could pretty easily read the material there, and could honestly start further in to book B, but I wanted to start her off easy, build confidence, and then move into new material. 

This curriculum gives a short lesson each day.  I appreciate the limited time involvement, and that I need to do no prep work beforehand.  I also love that the stories you read each week are 7-8 lines of text on a page, instead of little readers like you typically see.  I have always had issues with my beginning readers being more interested in the pictures on the page and being too distracted to read the words or guessing at the words based on the pictures.  I usually fold the page back and cover the picture anyway.  With this curriculum, there are no distractions.  There is one picture to go with each story, but it is on the opposite page.  What you read is actually all on one page, one sentence per line.  The teacher's book gives you comprehension questions and discussion starters for each line to make sure the student stays on task and is comprehending what she is reading.  There is also lots of opportunity for the student to draw the scene they just read about, which this child loves.  Some of mine hate coloring, but this particular child loves it. 

All in all, I have found the program to be simple and straightforward.  It doesn't have a lot of the bells and whistles of some other programs we have used, but that is honestly what I was looking for with her.  She wants to read and doesn't need the distraction that other programs provide.  The super short lessons work well with my time.  If she was a very beginning reader, this program might not provide enough reinforcement early on, but for where we are, it has been a great fit.  When she gets through book C and has the basic phonics rules down, we will move onto something to build more fluency. 

Teaching reading has always been my most dreaded task of homeschooling, but so far this year, my kids and this curriculum are making it easy on me. 

Our year so far

We have made it through the first 2 weeks of school!  Usually, the first few weeks of school involves a bit of tweaking and changing until we find the right flow, but I think we have found our groove again finally.  The biggest exception to that is my 3 year old, who generally is not the most cooperative child and is proving exactly the same for school.  We did expand our classroom, however, over the summer, and my most easily distracted children are around the corner now and his antics are not causing major problems.  I know he will settle down into our rhythm with time.  He also potty trained himself on his own the past two weeks, so I can't be that frustrated with him-ha!

We started out our year this year studying what is history and we read the Magic School Bus Shows and Tells about archeology and Archeologists Dig for Clues to go along with our story of the world reading.  We also read You Wouldn't Want to be a Mammoth Hunter.  If you don't know this series of books, they are awesome.  Funny and entertaining, but good solid history under the humor.  For our history projects, we drew a cave painting which we created on crumpled grocery bags and they taped them underneath tables and drew from laying down.  Lots of fun.  We also started one of my favorite books of art history for kids called Learning About Ancient Civilizations Through Art.  It discusses specific art--in this case, the Lascaux Caves in France--and then gives additional activities to do related to that discussion.  My new logic stage student also worked on learning to outline her Kingfisher text and began her new drawing curriculum.  We start more technical art studies in 5th grade.

This week, we dove into the 1st of a 4 week study of Ancient Egypt.  We made pharaoh crowns, felt papyrus, burned incense, and read about the great Spinx to go along with our Story of the World reading.  We also created cuneiform clay tablets when we discussed the beginnings of writing and compared Sumerian writing to Egyptian hieroglyphics.  And, we also watched a documentary on Netflix about Ancient Egypt.  My logic stage student began a Greenleaf Guide to Ancient Egypt to go along with her Kingfisher outlining.  Much more Egypt to come! 

My high schooler is actually on the Middle Ages this year, and approaching history as a great books study.  I will write more about that soon. 

For science, we dove into Elemental Science and are loving learning about habitats for the little ones, and cells and classification for my logic stage student.  So far, we have found the curriculum to be well laid out and explained.  I love that it isn't a textbook, but sends us to a variety of resources each week, with a variety of activities to go along with it.  My grammar stage students began a diorama project that they will be continuing for their animal studies. 

So far, our studies are going well.  All kids began a new year of Math-U-See and are continuing with their language studies and additional work on their own in the mornings.  My 1st grader is progressing quickly with reading and my kindergartener is finally blending sounds!  Phonics has been more of a struggle with both of those 2 since they spoke Russian for the first years of their life, but we are finally making quick progress.  We are also working on their language processing issues with lots of listening activities including Listen and Learn Phonemic Awareness from Lakeshore Learning, as well as their regular speech therapy. 

Getting ready for back to school

Wow, what on earth happened to July?!  I don’t know about you, but our summer flew by too quickly.  We did some light schooling over the summer like we usually do, as well as our share of camps, swim lessons, vacation, and as much fun as we can squeeze in to those few weeks.  Now, I am in full scale back to school mode.

For me, back to school involves cleaning my house top to bottom, cleaning out, organizing, catching up on all the tasks that I put off when we are busy with school.  For my family, school is our priority when we are on a school week, and it is easy to let those things back up.  I make sure I am well caught up before the beginning of a new school year.  The classroom will be scrubbed top to bottom.  Books will be moved to the appropriate shelves, and school supplies will be set out in each child’s space.

In our classroom, each child has their own shelf with the books they will need for the year.  I also have a shelf of the history books we will need for the year, and a shelf for science books.  We are heading into year 1 again, so I have books about the Ancient world and biology out and available. 

Each child also has a clipboard that opens and holds their school supplies.  In their clipboard, we put a pair of scissors, glue, crayons, colored pencils, pencils, and a small pencil sharpener.  Paper goes on top.  The clipboard gives us the flexibility of being able to grab 1 thing and have everything we need if we need to car-school or we want to head outside for school.  All the supplies they might need are kept there and no one has any excuse to go searching for anything.  And yes, we color code—binders, folders, scissors, etc match the color clipboard that child has. 

I am also writing out work plans for our 1^st 4 weeks of school and making all copies we will need for those weeks to put in each child’s binder.  This year I will have 10^th, 5^th, 3^rd, 1^st, K5, 3K, and a baby toddling around.  My 10^th grader will plan out his own weeks, but the 1^st, 3^rd, and 5^th graders will get work plans.  My kindergartener will be working with me some on phonics and math, and spending much of his time with Montessori materials.  And my preschooler will be learning how to operate in our classroom with the early Montessori lessons. 

The weekend before the first day of school, I will sit down with each of my older kids and go over their workplans, explaining anything new and making sure they understand what is expected of them this year.  I know that first day can be so hectic, and I need them as independent as possible while I get my preschooler working and get my 1^st grader doing more big kid work (and entertaining my 1 year old in the meantime-ha!). 

My biggest concerns for this year include my extraordinarily stubborn 3 year old and my 1^st grader.  She has a processing disorder and I have to be creative about how I introduce information to her.  All in all though, we are super excited and can’t wait to get started.  My 3^rd grader in particular is begging to start.  I love his enthusiasm!

We are filling next week with as much summer fun as we can, but we will still plan to swim and play after school each day through August. 

I hope your back to school plans are going well!  I have lots of posts in the works to answer questions you guys have had.  Be patient and I hope to get to all of those very soon!

"Transcripts, credits, and grades, oh my!"

"Transcripts, Credits, and Grades, oh my!"  This was the intro to a talk at my local homeschool convention recently.  The speaker's point was a very valid one.  Many homeschoolers I speak to are very concerned with how to record-keep and track their student in the high school years to be able to get that student into college.  There are so many good planning tools available out there.  I am going to offer some suggestions here, but please let me know if you have questions beyond what I cover here.

My first recommendation, is plan high school in 8th grade.  This plan might change as you go through the high school years, but take an evening during your student's 8th grade year and discuss with him his goals for the future.  What subjects draw his attention the most?  What fields is he interested in pursuing?  What are your goals for him as parents?  Use that information and a list of your state's requirements to put together a plan for high school credits.  If he knows what schools he might be interested in, go to those websites and look at the requirements they set for incoming students.  Here is a chart of the requirements for my state.

As you are planning out your plan of study, think of ways you can incorporate your students activities and interests as credits.  I have heard of families using eagle scout projects for a project management course, flying lessons paired with book work for an aeronautical engineering course, speech or debate club as a variety of credits, ballet as a fine arts credit, and so on.  Your goal is to both educate your child to be well-rounded and with depth in his fields of interest, but also to present that information in a simplified form that college admission officers need.  Near the end of the Well-Trained Mind is a section that converts WTM types of courses like the chronological study of the Great Books into a more typical list of courses for your transcript.  It's a great resource.

As you go through the high school years, write for yourself course descriptions for each course your student will take.  This will save time and scrambling when your student applies for college and the college asks to see that information.  A course description basically gives the details of the course--what is taught, what resources are used, and how it is evaluated.

The transcript itself can be set up either by year (ex. all work in 9th grade grouped together), or by subject (all history grouped together).  The way you compile it is your preference.  The basic information you need is the title of the course, how much credit it is worth, and the credit earned.  There are so many templates and help available for writing course descriptions and transcripts.  I personally love the planning materials available for free at Donna Young Printables.

And finally, my most favorite record keeping tool for high school is found here.  This free download allows you to keep up with your grades and will calculate final grades and gpa for you.  It also has places for booklists, activities, and any thing else you might want to keep up with during those high school years.  When you get to college applications, you will need to know volunteer hours, leadership and club experiences, and awards, as well as traditional schoolwork.  Those areas allow homeschoolers to shine, so keep track of them well.  

What does Montessori at home look like?

For my youngest learners, we try to follow a Montessori approach.  There are so many reasons why Montessori is so good for little ones.  First, in Montessori, you follow a concrete to abstract process of learning.  The kids learn skills through hands-on exploration of their world--the way they natural approach new things.  They touch, feel, manipulate objects to learn concepts such as big and little, place value, and even grammar.  The concrete, multi-sensory learning helps  to cement  concepts into their brain.  Montessori is also individualized.  Each child will move through the materials at their own pace and as they are ready for them.  They can move as fast or as slow as they like, and they can go back to a lesson as much as they need to get the concepts.  And because they move at their own pace with self-correcting materials, they build a sense of pride and a love of learning.

For a homeschool mom, Montessori has so many benefits.  It keeps little ones busy and independently learning, allowing me to work with older kids.  They are both entertained and doing school, and I don’t have to be directly involved.  Montessori lessons are designed to be appealing and enticing to kids, and they love having their own schoolwork.   Also, Montessori lessons are introduced start to finish, which encourages your student to not only get out the materials and work on their own, but to also clean up their work as they complete the task.  All materials needed for the lesson are included on the tray or bowl holding the materials—they won’t need you to get anything out, help them through it, and they won’t make a mess.  You will interact with them when you can, and they are happily learning when you can’t.

Montessori at home for us involves low shelves with a variety of materials displayed.  Each lesson is self-contained.  Everything the child needs to complete the lesson is included on the tray.  For example, if the lesson is pouring, not only will the measuring cups and spoons be included, but a piece of sponge so that the child can clean up her own drips when the lesson is complete.  I have a limited space so I cycle which lessons I have out and available at any given time.  I also have a basket of small mats that my students can place on the ground before they select a tray with a lesson.

As I was getting started with my Montessori homeschooling, I found the books Teaching Montessori in the Home:  The preschool years and Teaching Montessori in the Home:  the school years, to both be extremely helpful.  These books describe how to introduce each lesson, their function, and the order they should be used.  Many of the materials needed for lessons can be made with instructions in these books, or printed from sites such as montessorimaterials.org.   I also put together many practical life lessons using normal household materials, or even Melissa and Doug toys we already had.  For the lessons that I couldn't make, I found most of those lessons readily available on ebay.

I created an excel spreadsheet with each of my lessons laid out by appropriate year.  I can then track each student—whether I've introduced a lesson, whether they are working on it, or whether they have mastered that lesson. 

Each morning, my students will select a mat and then move through lessons at their own pace.  When I am able, I might join them for a lesson, or I might take a few minutes and introduce a new lesson as they are ready.  Oftentimes, I do a group lesson relating to some science materials I have recently put out, or a geography lesson.  We get out the Montessori globe and world map and look at pictures from representative countries on the particular continent we are studying at the time. 

There are so many free Montessori materials available.  They make a nice addition to any homeschool, even if you don’t chose to set up an entire classroom.  We are currently adding to our own classroom, so I will take pictures and add them when we complete that work.