A Little Rebellion Every Now & Then

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?