A Little Rebellion Every Now & Then

Well, here we are… the first day of Gillian’s third grade year. We decided it was important to have extra days to take ‘off’ of school in November, so we started earlier than usual - three entire weeks earlier than usual. This also gives us some flexibility for later in the school year. Chances are, I’ll have plenty of assistance during November and even December, but once we hit January and February, some of that assistance will begin to disappear… not the least because my mother will be looking to find herself a job again!

So, we started today. I did a few things new this year, in terms of organization. I set up a notebook for myself with three sections - state forms, day by day lesson plans, and other forms. The state forms section has all of the year’s attendance forms, addressed and stamped envelopes for each month’s form, and an overall calendar for the year. Other forms is pretty self-explanatory. In the final section, I have my lesson plans for the year… but not by calendar date. They’re listed as “day 1″ through “day 180,” and then I have one file that corresponds the day with an actual date. This way, whenever we inevitably get ‘off schedule,’ I have to fix one file and reprint… the rest continue on as they are. I think this will help me feel less out of control.

The other thing that is new and different is that Gillian has her own “assignment book.” At the beginning of the week, I take my notebook and lesson plans, and fill in the book for that week. That’s the plan that we both use. That way, she gains some responsibility in terms of checking things off (I did that previously), and she also gets the privilege of knowing exactly how much work is expected each day and week.

So, today, we started with language arts - grammar, then handwriting, then spelling. She whipped through her math pages, did good time on her drill page (YAY!), and has covered quite a bit of Latin (reviewing where she was up until this point, since she hasn’t done Latin in a bit). She read in Blood on the River, which is her assigned reading for the week, and she did her first lesson for Classical Studies - she’s using the Memoria Press guide for D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths. I’m reading aloud to her each day this year, so we started Hans Brinker today.

Overall, it was a good first day…  we’re doing a bit more in terms of Latin and spelling than I’ll expect of her once more activities begin. Jacob’s class at Little Gym did start today, but his tumbling class doesn’t start until next Wednesday, swimming for both doesn’t begin until next Tuesday afternoon, and Gillian’s Master’s Academy doesn’t begin until the Monday after Labor Day! So I’m again taking advantage of this extra time to pack in a bit extra Latin and spelling.

The excellent, important news is that we finished our summer history! There are several books that fall under the category of supplemental reading that we’d like to see Gillian read between now and 11 August, but I don’t think it will be a huge problem, plus they definitely fall under the category of supplemental and not essential.

Spelling is also going really well. We finished Step 18 (out of 23 steps in Level One) this morning. We’re actually doing two complete sessions per day. This is mainly because she’s been so far behind in terms of spelling level, and about two months ago, I noticed it was starting to come much easier to her. So, I’m taking advantage of both that and the lack of other subjects during the summer months. Spelling is easily the most teacher-intensive curriculum.

Other things… we’re still working on her addition (and, therefore subtraction) facts as well as her multiplication facts memorization. I saw two recommendations for helpful products over the weekend and we may purchase those as well as everything else we already have. She’s just at a point where she cannot move forward without these things memorized. We’re going to work on some science during July, as well, and we’re working on Latin once more.

Overall, summer’s going well, and most of the plans for next year are set. Hooray!

Essentially, we’re going to be concentrating on historical fiction covering early American history (Jamestown through the 49ers), but I’m also putting in children’s versions of important literature that was published during that time frame - i.e., The Three Musketeers, The Jungle Book.

We already have a number of books. I made a list of books I wanted to try to find at the used bookstore, and found several, and then I added the books we already owned. It adds up to quite a few books. On the one hand, Gillian is a good reader; on the other hand, I don’t want to overwhelm her. In general, we’ll read some books more ‘in-depth’ and perhaps do three to four book reports over the course of the year. There’s a mix of picture books, short chapter books, and long chapter books in what we have. Finally, I’ve already decided that some books will be not required but “suggested” or “available” during the relevant time period.

Here’s what I’ve decided upon at this point, for required reading by Gillian:
Don Quixote and the Windmills, Eric Kimmel, illus. Leonard Everett Fisher.
Blood on the River, Carbone.
Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery.
Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Brothers Grimm. (I want to use the Veritas Press guide with this.)
The Three Musketeers, Dumas, adapt. Vogel.
Gulliver’s Travels, Swift. (Another adaptation, with illustrations as well.)
Calico Bush, Rachel Field.
The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling.
Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling.
The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper, adapt. Martin.
The Sign of the Beaver, Speare.
The Fighting Ground, Avi.
Traitor: The Case of Benedict Arnold, Jean Fritz.
Mr. Revere & I, Robert Lawson.
Ben & Me, Robert Lawson.
Fever 1793, Anderson.
Justin Morgan Had a Horse, Henry.
The Great Little Madison, Jean Fritz.
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, Latham.
American Tall Tales, Osborne.
Paul Bunyan and Other Tall Tales, Mason.
My America, Hopkins.
A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens, adapt. Vogel.
Oliver Twist, Dickens, adapt. Vogel.
A Gathering of Days, Blos.
The Devil’s Highway, Applegate.
Seaman’s Journal, Eubank.
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, adapt. Snyder.
The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn, Twain, adapt. Vogel.
All Night, All Day, Ashley Bryan.
“The Man with the Twisted Lip,” in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Whale Rider, Witi Ihimaera.
The Birchbark House, Erdrich.

I decided on our read-aloud books, so I’ve pulled them from the list above:
Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates, Mary Mapes Dodge.
The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Speare.
My Name Is Not Angelica, Scott O’Dell.
Johnny Tremain, Esther Forbes.
Streams to the River, River to the Sea, Scott O’Dell.
Amos Fortune, Free Man, Elizabeth Yates.

I think it’ll be a good mix. The hardest and/or longest titles are now read-alouds, and as for the others, there’s a good mix of shorter vs. longer.

Later on, I’ll type out all of the supplemental/optional titles. Some weeks, Gillian will finish the required book in just one or two days, so for the remainder of that week’s reading time, she’ll be able to go down the supplemental/optional list. I don’t think the books on it are “as good” but they’re still worthwhile and still can count as part of her school reading time.

I’ve been lurking over at the WTM boards again… they suck me in more than I would like to admit, from time to time.

At any rate, there have been a spate of posts recently about planning - how people do it, what people keep in their own “teacher notebook” and so forth. I’ve never really been content with how I had things planned. I either had computer files or handwritten notes, but I never have managed to keep it all in one place, and since I made my schedules dependent on dates, it was too easy to need to scrap the whole thing before the school year was even a fourth done.

One of the posts I read gave me an idea, though. Schedule 180 days, and number the days. Then, if we’re “off schedule,” I have to redo exactly one schedule, the one that shows what date corresponds to what number day. That’s it! All the other schedules would remain exactly the same!

I’m also going to keep my state forms in the same notebook. This sounds like a really good idea, since I tend to forget them.

So far, then, I’ve planned out all of next year’s grammar in an excel spreadsheet, with a column for each particular resource, and the numbered days in the leftmost column. I’ve managed to schedule about half of the math (I don’t have the rest of the math books yet to schedule those!). I’ll probably take a stab at spelling and Latin sometime in the next few days. Then I’ll move on to some of the weekly subjects, before coming back to reading/literature. I have to put together what titles I want Gillian to read, and then figure out the scheduling, so that’s the most complex.

The main thing, though, is that I think this will really work. Beyond that, it will enable someone else to pick up my notebook and find everything they need to get Gillian going on schoolwork without my having to detail exactly what’s expected for that day in person.

We’re actually completing our history work at a faster pace than originally thought; currently, we’ll finish history as the calendar finishes June. This is excellent news, though, because starting next week, we’ll begin Latin again, as well as spelling. Both of those will continue throughout the summer. The goal for spelling is to complete Level One before we begin third grade; the goal for Latin is merely to continue progressing.

At the beginning of July, we’ll begin doing some of the much-neglected science work that desperately needs to be completed!

I’ve begun sketching out math assignments for the coming year. Of course, I live in hope that we’ll somehow manage to do more than anticipated, but I’m planning for the least amount of work I expect, and then hopefully I’ll be having to revise lesson plans while I’m nursing a new one coming mid-November. A girl can dream, can’t she?

I sketched out more details for our summer of history tonight, and it appears that we will finish SOTW2 by or on Thursday, July 10. This is a good spacing; if we have supplemental reading, it can be available for the remainder of July and all of August, and there will be almost two months without SOTW to whet her appetite for more come autumn!

I don’t have history planned out well for third grade. I know that I want to continue doing SOTW and covering world history, but I also know that she needs to have more in-depth study of her own country’s history. Not because I’m particularly USA-is-better-than-everyone-rah-rah, though I do have a healthy dose of patriotism at times, but because I know that the standards for testing and what people are ‘expected’ to know do contain a lot of American history. I also feel that being informed about your country’s history and government is an essential part of being an involved citizen - which I hope all of my children aspire to be.

With that in mind, I’ve essentially decided not to supplement world history, just covering it through SOTW3 with the accompanying map work, coloring pages, and review questions/narration assignments. The difficulty, though, is that I am sure there will be at least a few things for which I’ll want to make exceptions! I did decide to concentrate our reading comprehension and literature primarily on historical fiction focusing on early American history. That will make some decisions easier, but there are still so very many excellent children’s history books. I also have Zinn-for-kids, want to buy Hakim, and have the Children’s Encyclopedia of American History. Oh, and she got The American Story for Christmas last year!

The difficulty may be finding enough time to read all of these wonderful books.

I also am having doubts about grammar. I don’t really want her doing a fifth grade grammar book in fourth grade. While I know she could handle it, there’s no real advantage to it and I don’t want to push push push for it to happen. Ideally, we’ll add in some supplemental workbooks from both Critical Thinking and Evan-Moore (editing, punctuation), and take the remainder of GWG Grade 3 (just Chapters 4 and 5 remaining, so a total of forty lessons and two chapter reviews) a little more slowly. We’ll still begin GWG Grade 4 soon after finishing GWG Grade 3 (around January?), but take plenty of time to finish it. If she absolutely is bored silly, then we can start GWG Grade 5 in late fourth grade. I do want to add supplemental diagramming workbooks, too. So we’ll still do grammar four or five days a week, but only three days will be in GWG, and one or two days will just be supplemental workbooks. I think the Evan-Moore workbooks are designed to be done daily, so we may do those all grammar days.

The big thing is that it puts us ready for grade five, logic stage grammar on target with fifth grade. I will have to decide between continuing with Growing with Grammar in logic stage or switching after fourth or fifth grade to something like Hake (Grammar and Writing, 5-8). I can see the advantage to switching, to make sure that there are no retention-type problems. I can also see the advantage to staying with what works! Two more years before I have to make that decision… thankfully.

We are, in theory, set for a summer ‘history intensive.’ We’re reviewing Chapters One and Two in Story of the World: Volume Two, and we’re going to ‘do’ Chapter Three tonight as well. In an ideal world, we’ll do at least one chapter a day, sometimes two, depending on how important I deem the material. The goal is to finish the book with some of July remaining. We’ll take, then, the rest of July and all of August free from history, and be ready to start, on schedule, Story of the World: Volume Three when we start third grade work at the beginning of September. I’m so very excited about this coming year of history - 1600 to 1850 includes so many fabulous things, and there are so many fabulous books to which I just can’t wait to introduce her.

I feel a little bit strange about how we’re conducting this middle ages and renaissance time period, but I know we’ll read some books in that “free” July and August time, not to mention the rest of the year, and she’ll cover the same time period again at least twice before she graduates high school. How many people can honestly say that about their own educational experience? I say ‘at least’ twice because our own plans would have her covering it around sixth grade and around tenth grade, but assuming we continue with Master’s Academy, they will do medieval times during her fourth grade her as well.

The status of other subjects for the summer? We’re doing math only to bring her math facts memorization level up to the same level as her understanding. I’m fairly confident that with that done, her math level with skyrocket even more next year. We’re done with grammar until the fall, over halfway through Growing With Grammar Grade 3. We’ll do spelling at least once a week, hopefully more often, since it’s a weak area for her, and hopefully around the beginning of July, we’ll begin doing some science work. We are even further behind in science than we are with history and I’m at something of a loss as to what to do about that. I don’t want to shortchange her chemistry and physics, but until I prove to myself that we’re going to stay on target, I hate to spend even more money on science curriculum. We’ll be working on Latin more or less steadily and as normal.

I like our summer schedule, though. History, Latin, and math drill daily; some practice in spelling; science beginning later in the summer. I know that next week, when we’re all going to day camp, will prove challenging - finding the energy in myself for schoolwork after a long day will be difficult at best - but I think we can do it.

The first rule is going to have to be: do not hit snooze more than once.