Summer Reading

Currently I am reading The Great Books by Anthony O'Hear.

The History of the Renaissance World

I was so fortunate to be one of the lucky winners of an ARC of Susan Wise Bauer's next book in her world history series - The History of the Renaissance World. I am so excited to have the opportunity to read it before it is released. We use this series for our high school students and I have been waiting not-so-patiently to add this book to our curriculum. By the time our upcoming freshman needs it, it will be published. I am currently reading the book and will post a review once I'm finished.

Trying something new. . .

Now that the oldest has been accepted to his preferred college and is finishing up the remainders of his senior year of high school at home, I have been looking back and pondering what I want to do differently with the younger two students. Each student is different and I must work with each one to fit their curriculum to their needs and interests. But generally, I like to be somewhat consistent in how we school.

I use The Well Trained Mind as my template for our homeschool. I find it to be the best in explaining the method and in giving examples of curriculum to fulfill the needed coursework. I also believe that it is the most complete and ambitious vision of what homeschooling can be.

My kids don't seem to enjoy math very much and we tried various math curriculum with the oldest and Saxon Math seemed to work as well as any other. With my upcoming freshman, I am considering switching to Jacob's Elementary Algebra. If this doesn't seem to work, we will probably fall back on Saxon Algebra 1.

This summer we are trying something we haven't done in quite awhile. My kids are all good readers and prefer to read books on their own.  However, I will be reading Sophie's World out loud and then we will discuss together. That is the plan, anyway.

We will continue to school year-round and take short breaks throughout the year.
Their music study will continue with private lessons.
I think the biggest change will be that I am going to try to add much more literature that we all read and discuss together, not just one student and parent.

I am still trying to figure out the best way to tackle Latin study. Nothing we have tried has really clicked with all of us. I am considering Wheelock's Latin this year - but we will see how that goes.

Something Old is New - SchoolHouseTeachers.com

When I started homeschooling way back when, there was The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. It was a staple for many homeschooling families. I thought we were past the need for this particular resource. Well, I think I may have been wrong. The Old Schoolhouse Magazine now has a wonderful membership required website called SchoolHouseTeachers.com. I just recently joined and have been really pleasantly surprised by just how many resources there are available.

The Schoolhouse Planners are pretty amazing and if you like a paper planner, they include pretty much everything you could hope for - including high school planning, many reference sheets and several different versions of calendar pages that should suit pretty much everyone.

I am excited to start using the French and Spanish lessons and worksheets as supplements to our current book-based curriculum.

I think the resource I am most excited about is the Classics-Based Writing Course for Middle and High School Students by Janice Campbell. I have used some of her curriculum from Excellence in Literature and have been quite impressed.

I have barely scratched the surface of what is available at SchoolHouseTeachers.com, but I am looking forward to exploring and implementing some of what I find in our homeschool. Stay tuned for more updates soon.

~AGeeky Mom
http://schoolhouseteachers.com/dap/a/?a=20601

Where have I been, you ask?

If anyone is out there who cares or is curious, yes, we are still here and we are still homeschooling. This school year has been crazy busy. My son is a senior and we have been focused on all the many things needed to get ready for college admissions.

Over the summer he finished up his testing and did very well. His SAT scores were pretty impressive - I was even a bit surprised at how well he did. I have been working on compiling course descriptions, reading lists, and transcripts.

Now that he has been accepted to the college he wanted, he is finishing up applications to a couple of other colleges - just in case and just because. Now the focus is on maintaining his grades and finishing up all his coursework.

Oh, the things I have learned in the last several months! I will begin working on suggestions and maybe even a couple of templates that may be useful in college preparation.

~AGeekyMom

Summer

I don't know where I got the idea that life would slow down once summer got here. I must be crazy or something. I have been crazy busy with driving the kids to swimming lessons, tennis lessons, music lessons, etc.  We just got home from our week long vacation in Door County. We had tons of fun, but I'm still catching up on laundry. Considering that I did laundry - twice! - while we  were there, I can't figure out how we never seem to have enough clothes and yet there is always laundry to be done. There is some kind of paradox here, I think.

Anyway, summer is almost half over (how can that be??) and I'm going to post some summery photos now.

Cave Point County Park

Whitefish Dunes.

We have more swimming and tennis lessons and college visits coming up later this summer. And then I have to prepare for next school year.

One more beach photo to hold on to:

Can you say "fish boil"???

Is all that Latin study worth it? (Yes!)

As a homeschooling mom, I have always had a slight worry that I'm not "doing it right". At certain times of the year I'd get these "What if" thoughts. What if we didn't  do enough science this year, or math or the kids didn't learn enough - you know, the usual kind of things moms worry about. But because we homeschool, who could I blame but myself? And the kids - eventually they get old enough that you really can't blame yourself anymore because you can't do the work for them. You can't make them learn - you can give them every opportunity and resource available, but you can't make them learn. I've had faith in my choice of classical homeschooling for several reasons: 1) this is the kind of education I would have chosen for myself if I had been able to; 2) this type of education stands the test of time; 3) the resources I consult are quite thorough and provide a similar education as some pretty impressive prep schools. These are only some of the reasons, but they are as good as any.

Now, to test the theory! My oldest is in eleventh grade this year and we are right in the middle of all the college testing. What fun that is! I haven't done a lot of testing for him and I was a little worried. We gave him test prep practice, strategies, etc., but basically put faith in the overall education we have tried to provide for him. After seeing his first attempt at the ACT, I have to say I am quite pleased. He easily exceeded the benchmark scores for all subjects. His English and Reading scores were 99%. I feel that this is due to his Latin studies and all of the Great Books reading he has done over the years. He stopped studying Latin after 9th grade, but he had worked through Latina Christiana I and II and about half of Henle I  before we switched to Latin for the New Millennium  from Bolchazy for high school. I feel strongly that any Latin is better than no Latin.

My daughters are currently working through Latina Christiana I and First Form Latin from Memoria Press. I plan to continue their Latin studies through at least 9th grade using Latin for the New Millennium. I hope they will continue on to Latin for the New Millennium Level Two. The description of Latin for the New Millennium from the website:

This new complete introductory course to the Latin language, suitable for both high school and college students, consists of two volumes, each accompanied by a teacher's manual and students' workbooks. The strategy employed for teaching and learning incorporates the best of both the reading approach and the more abstract grammatical method. The choice of vocabulary in each chapter reflects ancient authors commonly studied for the AP* Latin examinations. There are exercises designed for oral use, as well as a substantial core of more conventional exercises in each chapter. The readings, pictures, and supplementary inserts on cultural information illuminate Roman life, civilization, Roman history, and mythology, as well as the continuing use of Latin after antiquity and its vigorous literary tradition in such periods as the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Each chapter also includes derivatives, the influence of Latin vocabulary on English, and selected proverbs or common Latin sayings.

This will be my high school choice for the girls because it so much more interesting and we found it to be quite fun to read some of the readings for translation and recognize the story -- from Shakespeare! (He borrowed heavily from the classics, you know.) But again, any Latin is a good thing, in my opinion. My kids have learned more grammar through their Latin study than through their English grammar curriculum. The enrichment materials are great too!

 I loved From Romulus to Romulus Augustus

and The Original Dysfunctional Family.

Other favorites were/are:

Once Upon the Tiber

To Be a Roman

The enrichment books helped to make life in ancient Rome interesting and accessible while studying the hard stuff - Latin grammar.