Below is the plan as submitted to the state authorities in our homeschool renewal application. I neglected to add the following coda to the end of the report: Or not.
Educational Program for [Elle]
Application for Registration for Home Education
Item 6
SUMMARY:
We have chosen to home educate [Elle] using classical materials organized along a chronological study of history, guided by the principle of multum non multa: not many things, but much, and incorporating ideas of self-led learning as espoused by Benjamin Franklin and John Holt.
Timeless imaginative literature, fairy tales, legends, plays, and poetry will be utilized as a foundation for language lessons. Along with the reading of classics, [Elle] will be engaged in a formal study of grammar using selections from these same books. Narration, penmanship, vocabulary, spelling, and punctuation skills will be incorporated according to her ability. [Elle] will also keep a Commonplace Book, a daily journal of lessons or ideas particularly interesting or important to her, not limited to language arts. Language skills will be further enhanced with a continuing study of Latin.
Mathematics will be taught using a manipulatives-based program and exposure to real life math in everyday situations.
History will continue to be studied chronologically focusing on the Middle Ages using readings from our spine texts and appropriate supplementary literary selections. Exposure to the arts and culture of the historical period will be accomplished through corresponding themed craft projects selected to capture her interest, and her chess skills will be honed as another thematic tie to the era under study.
Participation in extracurricular activities including membership in local junior tennis club lessons and aikido lessons will round out her need for social development and provide physical fitness opportunities.
Lessons will be short with an emphasis on excellent execution for focused attention and variation, and to enable [Elle] to enjoy creative free time. Character development will be a priority.
CORE RESOURCES
Commonplace Book
Harvey’s Elementary Grammar – Mott Publishing
The Red, Blue, Green, Yellow Fairy Books – Andrew Lang
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table – Roger Lancelyn Green
The Adventures of Robin Hood – Roger Lancelyn Green
Tales From Shakespeare – Charles and Mary Lamb
Latina Christiana I – Memoria Press
Math-U-See Alpha – Ethan Demme
Math-U-See Beta – Ethan Demme
Story of the World Volume 2: Middle Ages – Susan Wise Bauer
Story of the World Volume 2: Middle Ages Activity Guide – Susan Wise Bauer
Kingfisher History Encyclopedia – Kingfisher
Tennis Lessons
Aikido Lessons
Chess
Friday, November 16, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Too Easy
So, after Elle slapped her gambling profits down on The Wonders of Egypt, A Course in Egyptology, a beautifully illustrated, intriguing, and factual book, by the way, and after I completed my annual homeschooling report and detailed our plans for next year, but before I could implement any of my new ideas (because I have admittedly fallen into the trap of believing there is an actual time frame our education must follow as dictated by the authorities at Education Queensland) most notably the use of the Commonplace Book, Elle asked me if we could go buy her a "special notebook" so she could write down some of the important things she found in her Egypt book.
And we're off...!
Check out other offerings from the publishers at Ologyworld.
And we're off...!
Check out other offerings from the publishers at Ologyworld.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Quick!
It's still not too late to give it a try...
From the Stacks Reading Challenge
Here's my list from the stacks:
Middlemarch (Eliot)
The Subtle Knife (Pullman)
I'm counting these first two as one book since I've already begun them and adding the following four:
The Amber Spyglass (Pullman)
A Child's History of the World (Hillyer)
Utopia (More)
God's War: A New History of the Crusades (Tyerman)
From the Stacks Reading Challenge
Here's my list from the stacks:
Middlemarch (Eliot)
The Subtle Knife (Pullman)
I'm counting these first two as one book since I've already begun them and adding the following four:
The Amber Spyglass (Pullman)
A Child's History of the World (Hillyer)
Utopia (More)
God's War: A New History of the Crusades (Tyerman)
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
A Day In The Life
After Dad has had his shower and headed out for the day, the fight for the bathroom ensues. Sarabelle gets the most mirror time, Grice has to be forced in there at some point in between her grumbling and stumbling up and down the hall, and Elle must have her shower. She developed this habit when, after too many days with a horribly cranky baby, Jorge magically discovered sitting her under the water for a few minutes seemed to wash all the cranky right off. Her day always starts with a shower and one of these days she will probably ask for a cup of coffee too, just like her father, who as a toddler was famous for beginning his day with a request for "a fresh shirt and a cup of coffee, please." The soundtrack to all this is Sarabelle's morning radio with its annoying pop songs and inane DJ chatter, adding elevated noise levels to our general chaos.
Loose ends are rounded up, books, bookbags, instruments, hair brushes, and lunch, and then the fight for the front seat begins. The rule is that whoever gets the front seat, on a first-come, first-served basis must also be the one to do the gate. Then off we go.
In the car at the elementary school during the twenty minutes between Sarabelle catching her bus and Grice being allowed into the schoolyard, we usually read, either aloud from Elle's current book or independently from whatever books hold our interests at the moment. Sometimes it’s just an old issue of National Geographic rediscovered under a seat.
We arrive back home, and after a little hemming and hawing and washing breakfast dishes and repeated requests to please, please, PLEASE watch her kids’ shows, and my flat refusal, Elle is instructed to pull out her books. She usually chooses Latin first.
Morning tea time, and Elle needs to burn off some energy, so she either takes off outside on her bike at full speed trying to outrun the dog or stays indoors and practices her aikido rolls down the hallway looking and sounding like a square bowling ball. I try to check email and blogs at this time or make my international calls to family and when she is finally done with her physical outburst she'll sit down and begin an art project of some kind. This is my cue to get going and pull out the next subject or find a few household tasks for her to help me with.
Back to the books. Her math program is a disaster, so if we cannot find a page that looks reasonable in either of the two remaining workbooks, we printout a drill sheet and she gets busy trying to shave some time off her last effort. Then she usually begs me to print off a couple more worksheets, ones she considers fun. I never argue. Sometimes she sorts and counts coins from her dad’s change jar hoping to find enough for an ice cream if we are headed into town.
Lunch is a non-event. She makes herself something when she feels like it. It’s not neglect, it’s character building. Sometimes we’ll actually have a cup of tea, and while that’s going on I work in our grammar lessons, have her recite poems she has memorized, and do some more reading.
(If this had been one of those days where a steady stream of requests from my husband or prior commitments demanded more time be spent in the car, we would have orally reviewed whatever Latin vocabulary we could recall trying to stump each other and yelling out miscellaneous phrases like Quo vadis? or Veni, vidi, vici! whenever possible, or gone over past grammar lessons and poems. Identifying road kills is another option. Elle is a motor-mouth, the radio in the car does not work, and a trip anywhere is long, so there is plenty of time for good conversation and the answering of many, many questions. This is a trait, incidentally, she inherited from both her mother, called "Chatty Cathy" as a child and her father, who on long family drives was often swapped between cars to save the drivers' sanity.)
After lunch she’s off again tearing around on her bike chasing kangaroos or trying to catch geckos or befriending magpies or digging into a termite mound or building a fort or making and playing a didgeridoo. Before we go to pick up her sisters she sometimes gets to take the car out for a spin on the runway. She’s very good about using her turn signals.
Depending on the day, there are either tennis or aikido lessons, or tennis practice after school hours and by the time we finally make it back to the house, Dad is usually home and dinner started. In the meantime, squabbling over computer time occurrs until 6:00 PM when the girls get to watch their one and only TV show, The Simpsons, and the remainder of the activities center on getting everybody ready to do it all over again the next morning. Sarabelle puts herself to bed and is sound asleep by 8:00 PM, Grice pushes the boundaries of good parenting by being allowed to stay up and read way later than she should (probably the cause of much morning grumbling and stumbling) then loudly requests I drag my poor tired self out of bed to turn off her light, and Elle snuggles in with me. There is always time for one more read-aloud before bedtime.
Loose ends are rounded up, books, bookbags, instruments, hair brushes, and lunch, and then the fight for the front seat begins. The rule is that whoever gets the front seat, on a first-come, first-served basis must also be the one to do the gate. Then off we go.
In the car at the elementary school during the twenty minutes between Sarabelle catching her bus and Grice being allowed into the schoolyard, we usually read, either aloud from Elle's current book or independently from whatever books hold our interests at the moment. Sometimes it’s just an old issue of National Geographic rediscovered under a seat.
We arrive back home, and after a little hemming and hawing and washing breakfast dishes and repeated requests to please, please, PLEASE watch her kids’ shows, and my flat refusal, Elle is instructed to pull out her books. She usually chooses Latin first.
Morning tea time, and Elle needs to burn off some energy, so she either takes off outside on her bike at full speed trying to outrun the dog or stays indoors and practices her aikido rolls down the hallway looking and sounding like a square bowling ball. I try to check email and blogs at this time or make my international calls to family and when she is finally done with her physical outburst she'll sit down and begin an art project of some kind. This is my cue to get going and pull out the next subject or find a few household tasks for her to help me with.
Back to the books. Her math program is a disaster, so if we cannot find a page that looks reasonable in either of the two remaining workbooks, we printout a drill sheet and she gets busy trying to shave some time off her last effort. Then she usually begs me to print off a couple more worksheets, ones she considers fun. I never argue. Sometimes she sorts and counts coins from her dad’s change jar hoping to find enough for an ice cream if we are headed into town.
Lunch is a non-event. She makes herself something when she feels like it. It’s not neglect, it’s character building. Sometimes we’ll actually have a cup of tea, and while that’s going on I work in our grammar lessons, have her recite poems she has memorized, and do some more reading.
(If this had been one of those days where a steady stream of requests from my husband or prior commitments demanded more time be spent in the car, we would have orally reviewed whatever Latin vocabulary we could recall trying to stump each other and yelling out miscellaneous phrases like Quo vadis? or Veni, vidi, vici! whenever possible, or gone over past grammar lessons and poems. Identifying road kills is another option. Elle is a motor-mouth, the radio in the car does not work, and a trip anywhere is long, so there is plenty of time for good conversation and the answering of many, many questions. This is a trait, incidentally, she inherited from both her mother, called "Chatty Cathy" as a child and her father, who on long family drives was often swapped between cars to save the drivers' sanity.)
After lunch she’s off again tearing around on her bike chasing kangaroos or trying to catch geckos or befriending magpies or digging into a termite mound or building a fort or making and playing a didgeridoo. Before we go to pick up her sisters she sometimes gets to take the car out for a spin on the runway. She’s very good about using her turn signals.
Depending on the day, there are either tennis or aikido lessons, or tennis practice after school hours and by the time we finally make it back to the house, Dad is usually home and dinner started. In the meantime, squabbling over computer time occurrs until 6:00 PM when the girls get to watch their one and only TV show, The Simpsons, and the remainder of the activities center on getting everybody ready to do it all over again the next morning. Sarabelle puts herself to bed and is sound asleep by 8:00 PM, Grice pushes the boundaries of good parenting by being allowed to stay up and read way later than she should (probably the cause of much morning grumbling and stumbling) then loudly requests I drag my poor tired self out of bed to turn off her light, and Elle snuggles in with me. There is always time for one more read-aloud before bedtime.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Interference
It's no secret we've been in a tough position for the past year and a half with a depressed real estate market there and a booming market here along with the ever-strengthening Australian dollar. My love/hate relationship with the place -- love the country, hate the government -- is also no secret. Jorge has never been able to get his skills properly recognized, though they were enough to allow us entry initially, and has had to make do with a number of blue collar jobs which barely pay the rent here plus two mortgages, taxes, and insurance back in Florida. It's been incredibly frustrating, but when you can't control your destiny, you make the best of it and go on.
The kids, even though they are back in school, and loving it, much to my chagrin, are doing well, excelling at their studies and participating in all kinds of enriching projects. Unlike in the States, extracurricular activities here are really meant to benefit the child, not just pad a college application, and I am confident that at this rate, my girls could easily attain whatever goals they set for themselves without fierce competition for limited spots in the best colleges. See, the thing is, here the graduating classes are substantially smaller than the incoming grade, and not because they are dropping out, but because vocational options are introduced early on and many students choose that path, becoming skilled workers able to earn relatively high wages. The students who make it all the way through Grade 12 are committed to academics, given a broad range of subjects to pursue, and have some fantastic opportunities available to them. The student leaders, a good proportion of the class, really are an impressive lot. We saw this last year and again this year at the high school's annual presentation night (where Sarabelle performed with the orchestra, and received a merit award for the second year in a row.) Being in a small school, we also saw a real bond between the entire student body, for the most part, a truly good group of kids. The advantage is with fewer classmates there is far less competition, and for those that are interested the sky's the limit. Considering my girls' present careers interests (which change wildly from week to week), if we were back in Florida they would have a long, hard road ahead of them, and then may never even come close to realizing their plans with huge number of challengers. Here they have real opportunity.
And that's primarily why we made this move. For the kids' future. We haven't achieved our goal of living on a farm and learning to feed ourselves yet, but we have at least been able to control our destiny to the point that we achieved our goal of providing a safer, cleaner, simpler lifestyle and environment for them.
Jorge is going to have to go back to Florida again. For how long we don't know exactly, but long enough at least to make some good money and try to force some activity on our properties, long enough to get us into a position where we can control our destiny again. He leaves in a week. We have tentatively agreed on a return date for me and the girls around the middle of the next school year because to get everything wrapped up here by Christmas holiday is too much; that seemed like the most logical and realistic break. I'm not happy with that. I'm hoping something will change within that time allowing him to come back and resume life here.
I remember being pulled out of my huge South Florida high school a third of the way through Junior year (for my own good) and then being pulled away from my very small Massachusetts girls' school immediately after graduation without being able to say goodbye or even exchange addresses with my close-knit classmates. I haven't forgiven my parents for that after all these years. My number one goal as a mother was not to suffer the relationship I had with my mother. Sarabelle, though she agrees in her head that we need to due what's necessary, will resent it deeply in her heart. Jorge doesn't seem to think it will be much of a problem but then he does not have my experience. And when I saw the Grade 12 kids up there the other night, I was really sad, because Sarabelle will miss out not only on that bond and experience with her classmates, but on a bright, easily attainable future.
It does not help then to hear that family members are implying that Jorge should "be a man" and bring his family home, or suggest it was a foolish decision to drag our family to the other side of the planet without any money or security. Going back to Florida may be a necessity but how insulting, infuriating, and mean-spirited that their desires should come before my children's best interests. Poor Jorge is caught in the middle and just wants us to agree to support him no matter what decision he makes. He knows this will be a tough one.
I am able but not willing.
The kids, even though they are back in school, and loving it, much to my chagrin, are doing well, excelling at their studies and participating in all kinds of enriching projects. Unlike in the States, extracurricular activities here are really meant to benefit the child, not just pad a college application, and I am confident that at this rate, my girls could easily attain whatever goals they set for themselves without fierce competition for limited spots in the best colleges. See, the thing is, here the graduating classes are substantially smaller than the incoming grade, and not because they are dropping out, but because vocational options are introduced early on and many students choose that path, becoming skilled workers able to earn relatively high wages. The students who make it all the way through Grade 12 are committed to academics, given a broad range of subjects to pursue, and have some fantastic opportunities available to them. The student leaders, a good proportion of the class, really are an impressive lot. We saw this last year and again this year at the high school's annual presentation night (where Sarabelle performed with the orchestra, and received a merit award for the second year in a row.) Being in a small school, we also saw a real bond between the entire student body, for the most part, a truly good group of kids. The advantage is with fewer classmates there is far less competition, and for those that are interested the sky's the limit. Considering my girls' present careers interests (which change wildly from week to week), if we were back in Florida they would have a long, hard road ahead of them, and then may never even come close to realizing their plans with huge number of challengers. Here they have real opportunity.
And that's primarily why we made this move. For the kids' future. We haven't achieved our goal of living on a farm and learning to feed ourselves yet, but we have at least been able to control our destiny to the point that we achieved our goal of providing a safer, cleaner, simpler lifestyle and environment for them.
Jorge is going to have to go back to Florida again. For how long we don't know exactly, but long enough at least to make some good money and try to force some activity on our properties, long enough to get us into a position where we can control our destiny again. He leaves in a week. We have tentatively agreed on a return date for me and the girls around the middle of the next school year because to get everything wrapped up here by Christmas holiday is too much; that seemed like the most logical and realistic break. I'm not happy with that. I'm hoping something will change within that time allowing him to come back and resume life here.
I remember being pulled out of my huge South Florida high school a third of the way through Junior year (for my own good) and then being pulled away from my very small Massachusetts girls' school immediately after graduation without being able to say goodbye or even exchange addresses with my close-knit classmates. I haven't forgiven my parents for that after all these years. My number one goal as a mother was not to suffer the relationship I had with my mother. Sarabelle, though she agrees in her head that we need to due what's necessary, will resent it deeply in her heart. Jorge doesn't seem to think it will be much of a problem but then he does not have my experience. And when I saw the Grade 12 kids up there the other night, I was really sad, because Sarabelle will miss out not only on that bond and experience with her classmates, but on a bright, easily attainable future.
It does not help then to hear that family members are implying that Jorge should "be a man" and bring his family home, or suggest it was a foolish decision to drag our family to the other side of the planet without any money or security. Going back to Florida may be a necessity but how insulting, infuriating, and mean-spirited that their desires should come before my children's best interests. Poor Jorge is caught in the middle and just wants us to agree to support him no matter what decision he makes. He knows this will be a tough one.
I am able but not willing.
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