Prayer and Planning

On this thread on planning with a large family I posted a link to my Considerations which I wrote out a couple of years ago and use for planning for each child for each year.

I also linked to the Mercy Academy quiz on what type of homeschooler you are. I THINK I linked to it before on here, but it's worth reconsidering. I wrote over there,

To measure what I as mom am prepared to do, I take this Mercy Academy New Homeschooler Test every year or so. It pinpoints your teaching style -- whether you're a "design your own" "tweak someone else's" or "stick like glue to a planned curriculum" type person. I find that sometimes I come out as someone who wants to mostly design my own and some years I come out as someone who wants to take something pre-made and tweak it just slightly. I've never come out as a "stick like glue"

If you just have a clue what kind of teacher you tend to be it's easier to search out resources and know what will work and what won't. A person like me could not easily "stick like glue" to a programmed curriculum. The only exception would be if my husband REALLY thought that was best or if I had some legal issue that required staying with the letter of the curriculum.

"Considerations" is consciously Catholic traditional language in mental prayer. I find that Catholic spirituality is often based very acutely on human psychology, though I want to make the point that in spite of what some Jesuits and others seem to imagine nowadays it has NEVER been thought to be CENTERED on human psychology. There is a difference as vast as the one Chesterton describes by picturing the ball and the cross.

But that's not the point here. The point is that I find that sometimes I can take methods from spiritual practices, like those of St Ignatius and St Francis de Sales, and employ them in my vocational life. That is because they are sound and effective and also, I find, using them in my quotidian life reinforces my habit of operating that way in my devotional life and helps me integrate the two. Homeschooling planning becomes, as it should, infused with prayer and search for God's will. I sincerely hope it is not an irreverent use of the hallowed practice of prayer; Ignatius used a mixture of practicality and spirituality in his exercises, for example. As he said -- Everything for the Greater Glory of God.

After Considerations come Affections and Resolutions. I try to do something like these in my homeschool planning. After thinking about the child I try to make my considerations accessible to my whole being, my heart as well as my mind, in light of that child's importance as a unique individual made in the image of God. Since I find that I follow through on things much better and they are more likely to truly be effective if they are lit up to me personally rather than just dry "shoulds".

The Catholic Encyclopedia article on prayer says that the considerations and affections lead naturally to resolutions.

The conviction that we need or should do something in accordance with our consideration begets in us desires or resolutions which we long to accomplish. It we are serious we shall admit of no self-deception either as to the propriety or possibility of such resolutions on our part. No matter what it may cost us to be consistent, we shalladopt them, and the more we appreciate their difficulty and our own weakness or incapacity, the more we shall try to value the motives which prompt us to adopt them, and above all the more we shall pray for grace to be able to carry them out.

So once I have considered the child and the situation and pictured how our individual family might work with his needs, I try to write down some specific things to put into place. Not necessarily books and page numbers at this point, just a few ideas of things to put into place or to watch out for.

Finally, St Francis de Sales suggests taking a "nosegay" from the meditation, sometimes also called a spiritual "bouquet".

As a means of keeping in mind during the day the uppermost thought or motive of the meditation we are advised to cull a spiritual nosegay, as it is quaintly called, with which to refresh the memory from time to time.

Leonie's idea of "mottoes" comes in handy for me in this "culling" process, both in my devotional life and in my vocational life of homeschooling. If I can distill the "Considerations-- Affections -- Resolutions" process into a few mottoes or maxims, even a mental image, then this becomes a peg that helps me retrieve the whole thing instead of tucking it into a closed drawer in my mind and completely forgetting about it. You could think about it in terms of the memory mansion idea. Charlotte Mason says that an association brings up the whole chain of ideas which was submerged in memory like a bucket and rope in a deep well.

Finally, all the spiritual authors recommend that a method be used only insofar as it is fruitful. Everyone's prayer life is unique, because it is based on a personal relationship with God. And everyone's homeschool and family dynamics are unique for the same reason.

Ignatius recommends that if you have a meditation "plan" laid out and find unexpected richness in one meditation, that you should stay there mentally and gather fruit in that rich area. If a method, however admirable, is not working for you, change it so it does.

I find something similar to be true with homeschool planning. I have the "considerations" listed in order to inspire thought and creativity. But whenever I try to follow the whole thing as a system, creativity is lost and I become bored and overwhelmed. It might be different for someone else (which is where that homeschooler-type quiz can be handy, again -- it tells me that I do best when I have a system that is organized but easily flexed). But I've learned I do better by dwelling on something that seems to me particularly significant or fruitful.

I hope some of this helps someone besides me ;-) but anyway, writing it out helped me think this through before I actually start going through the process.

a few thoughts and forms

I'm not sure what I think of my new header and format. Hmm. I know I spent way too much time on it, though. I was trying to transition out of my planning marathon -- or at least, into the next stage.

I finally finished the basics of the Year 7 planning -- you can see the details over at Schola et Studium, but here are the forms:

• Chapter by Chapter Outline of Year 7 (course breakdown with books, PDF)
• Overview for Year 7 (doc, with some goals and habits-- I want to eventually add to it)
• 2008 Calendar(doc)
• Prospective Timetable for Year 7 (doc -- hour by hour order to morning -- may change when we are actually there)

It looks a bit cluttered, and I will probably go back over it on August as I wrote on this Real Learning thread. but it's nice to have it basically there. Here's what's left to be done. I am sure there is a Multum non Multa golden thread running through it *somewhere* -- mostly, Language and Reading and Writing and Math and Habits. If I have those, the rest usually take care of themselves.

Year 1 for Aidan and Paddy will not be written up in nearly so much detail. I want to focus on habits. .... not just micro-habits like raising the toilet seat, but formative habits that I have to work on too, like a habit of reading aloud, a habit of time outdoors, a habit of observation -- and so on. Charlotte Mason describes many of them. This year I wanted to work some more on my Charlotte Mason goal, and work some more on these Monthly Themes, particularly the Character Formation one. You notice I got away from them for a while. Which is something I do, but the blog helps me remember and get back on track.....eventually.

I think I would be a better unschooler if I could just do things without planning, but in fact I have to think several thoughts for every one thing I actually put into action, so I thought I might as well try to do some of the thinking up front.

Off to make cookies, and try to focus on something else. I got Asimov's Realms of Algebra from the library, and Critique of Criminal Reason finally came. Realms of Algebra is a keeper. I would TOTALLY read this to Kieron over the course of next year -- it bridges between arithmetic and algebra so beautifully -- except that it is OOP and apparently you can't get it for less than $35 even second-hand.

Today is Liam's 22nd birthday -- I was 22 when I married (OK, almost 23). Time does fly! We will miss him today. He is up at Oregon but will probably get a Guinness with some people up there to celebrate. When he gets home we will have a combined birthday and welcome-back party.

Blessings on you this next year, oldest son!

Space, and Shelter

Today Kieron mentioned that the gas flame on the stove is blue, and so are some of the flames in our fireplace. He wondered why that was, and I couldn't tell him. I said that this was one of the things we might be studying next year, and he said, "Good!" with real satisfaction.

I'm mentioning this because I want it to stay in mind as I think about next year.

Here's one thing -- I had been dreading the necessity to begin the more abstract physical-science concepts suitable for his middle school years. The years up till now, it has been nature study and library books on science topics, and occasional lab experiments and projects. And what was I dreading, really? It was handing him something he had not asked for. With that "Good!" I realized that he is ready for that more abstract type of thinking, in fact, that he wants to know these things. I had been caught in the trap of "what he SHOULD do" and forgot to look at where he was and the reasons for focusing on certain things at certain ages.... a reason beyond the convenient packaging of information into grade-level boxes. I am feeling better about exploring a bit of the theory of matter and motion with him, now, because it's not just a "to do" but has significance and an energy of its own.

(It also reminded me of the Waldorf interest in matching topics to the developmental stage -- for example, one school's version of the seventh grade curriculum runs as follows:

End of Middle Ages, Joan of Arc; Age of Exploration, The Renaissance; European and world geography; physics (mechanics), physiology, inorganic chemistry, and nutrition; composition, grammar, spelling, literature; arithmetic and algebra..)



I think one of my mental stumbling-blocks as I do this planning detail work is that it is all so linear/sequential, so cut and dried, so collective and yet numerous. I am trying to prepare for a situation that isn't here yet, not respond to something that is already in process. That's really not how I normally prefer to approach things. I like the "big picture" but it's hard for me to make a map and plan a journey ahead of time. I'm better at packing my compass and going from there a stage at a time.

The page number and topic plans don't stick in my mind the way things like my study on Habits do. It would be great to approach the subjects for next year the way I do a book I read for my own learning and interest. Maybe that is a good approach.

However, I know I have to do some framing, at least, in order not to just drift through the year. Last year went quite smoothly because of the framing ..... however, where we did bog down it was because it became too mechanical, too un-organic, too much "let's get through this." I'd rather try to avoid doing that more than I can help, while still having the benefits of an overview. Too much to ask.... a bridge from where we are out into where we want to be?



The other thing I have been thinking recently is about space. Kevin said in the car the other day: It takes guts to leave a silence. I thought that was very true, and am slowly seeing while I reread Charlotte Mason's books the roominess and the restraint she suggests both have something to do with space and silence.

It's easy to fill space and time with noise and activity. But more difficult to discern what is needful, and what is too much, too soon, too fast. So I am reminding myself to slow down and dwell on things rather than hurry past them.

It's fine to have a collection of resources and ideas ready. This is very helpful when I run dry of ideas, which I do during the year if I haven't built up a stock. But at the very basic level, I need simplicity and lack of clutter. I don't need to feel that the plans are like dry, paper-winged bats harassing us. They should be more like eagles' wings. Again, too much to ask for all the time? But maybe sometimes, at least.

I realize this again every year -- Non Multa Sed Multum.

Flaubert said, according to this blog:

How learned one would be, if one knew well only five or six books! (Comme l'on serait savant si l'on connaissait bien seulment cinq à six livres!)

This article on St Francis de Sales said

Our task, therefore, is not so much to do many and great things, but to do things well. "Non multa sed multum." Our concern must be with quality not number. "Our advancement is not made by the quantity of our exercises of piety but by the perfection with which we perform them." This is an obvious truth of which devout souls of every age must be reminded.

I have been thinking about this and about the name of my blog. It comes from Psalm 31 where the Psalmist says:

you have set my feet in a broad place.

and later

In the shelter of your presence you hide them

It struck me that this balance of spaciousness and shelter is the same thing that CM is often trying to express -- oddly, it doesn't seem to be a balance between opposites, so much as difference aspects of the same thing.



Not easy to put into words I guess! I just read that there is a connection between two words "theory" and "contemplation" -- that the Latin word "contemplatio" relates to the Greek word "theoria" -- meaning a consideration, things looked at -- "to see" combined with "a view". That is close to what I am trying to say.

Theory 1592, "conception, mental scheme," from L.L. theoria (Jerome), from Gk. theoria "contemplation, speculation, a looking at, things looked at," from theorein "to consider, speculate, look at," from theoros "spectator," from thea "a view" + horan "to see." Sense of "principles or methods of a science or art (rather than its practice)" is first recorded 1613.

If you have space, you can take a deep breath, look around you and see the view, you can study something and really think about what it means and how it works together with everything else. So I want to think about space and silence this year -- not emptiness and idleness. The plans should be like CM's habits so we can free up that part of ourselves in order to go beyond it.

I know it won't always look that way! But it's something I wanted to write out while I'm thinking about it.

The last word of St. Thomas is not communication but silence. And it is not death which takes the pen out of his hand. His tongue is stilled by the superabundance of life in the mystery of God. He is silent, not because he has nothing further to say; he is silent because he has been allowed a glimpse into the inexpressible depths of that mystery which is not reached by any human thought or speech. The Silence of St Thomas, Josef Pieper

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.” Mother Teresa

Thinking about these things, I can see better how to plan -- how to approach the ideas in the school-books the way Charlotte Mason recommended, as relationships between things and ourselves.

I think maybe St Teresa of Avila and St Benedict can be our homeschool's patron saints this year? (Last year was St Francis de Sales and St Brendan the Navigator). I'll have to think about that!

Planning Fair

There is a Loveliness of Planning fair up at Plainsong. I am looking forward to checking it out.

(Finally I managed a post of less than a thousand words on here. That hasn't happened for a while. I hope to manage it again sometime)

Skeleton Key to the Treasure Chest

On a classical list I am on, someone asked about what your "bare bones" priorities would be if you could only homeschool, say, half time or less. Hey, that is what my homeschool has been like regularly ever since we have started. I should have some sort of graduate degree in crisis homeschooling.

Anyway, here is what I wrote --posting it here because it fits in a bit with recent posts:
------------------------------------------------

Interesting topic because we used to have to do this cutting back at least once a year (pregnancies, new babies, medical crises) and even now when things are smoother I find it helpful to regularly consider what's essential to me and what's not.

• Math -- because it's the hardest to learn naturally for my kids at least, and it's of key importance
• Latin -- same as above and also it incorporates most formal language arts --grammar, vocabulary, logic, and composition/narration/copywork. For younger ones (primary) it would be phonics rather than Latin.
• Literature -- which is a broad enough category to include history and science and religion as well as the childhood fictional classics.

You already mentioned spiritual training -- which would include religious instruction and character formation and some incidental vocational training, I suppose.

Harder to describe for me but important-- setting an example for "how and why to learn" -- (I guess this is where my unschooly side comes in) -- discussion, stories about family culture, modeling research skills, strewing resources and reading materials and reading aloud to them. This would fit in odd corners of the day.... this is not formal ... basically I would call it "discipling" or "mentoring" or "enculturation" -- simply making it a priority to share what I am and what DH is and the "keeper" parts of our family and cultural heritage. Some moms do that enculturation naturally; I have to think about it and be aware of its importance.

-----------------------------------------------

Sites I find helpful for my minimal liberal arts educational method:

• Robinson Curriculum
• Ambleside Online Emergency Lesson Plan
• Ruth Marshall's site -- particularly her review of the Robinson Method, but there are many more articles and helps on simplifying, and homeschooling a wide age range.
• Trivium Pursuit: Ten Things to Do with Your Child Before Age Ten

I usually go back to these whenever I'm feeling mentally cluttered or overloaded.

• Once I did this interview about Homeschooling Through a Crisis with some strategies for dealing with difficulties.
• Also, I just wrote out this Checklist of Priorities for my learning notes site.
  

Advent School

This post started over at Schola et Studium but I think perhaps it fits better over here.

Faith at Dumb Ox Academy wrote about her plans for Advent School. I liked that title even though I'm not really a schooly type, so I'm borrowing it! I immediately had a visual image of a purple file folder. I know, that is strange, but rather typical for my rightbrained, global thinking mind -- to think of a colored container right away. : ). Anyway, I'm going with the purple folder idea to contain all the things I want to do this Advent.

(Right now I have a file folder organization system where there is a plain manila folder for each week and each month. For each season there is a colored folder, and for the "transition week" (almost every month changes over in the middle of a week) there is an orange folder which is really helpful for me as a visual reminder to get things in order for the next month). So the purple idea works nicely for me to set apart the month as different from the rest of the year.

Some general context:

• Helen at Castle of the Immaculate has compiled a bunch of Advent Dreams and hopes.
• Here is TeachingMom's great Advent Calendar.
• And here is a compilation of Christmas units at Real Learning.
• Here are some Christmas printables and other information.

All the possibilities are overwhelming, of course. I thought:

For organization of Christmas prep

• Flylady's Holiday Control Journal. (I was looking for a different Christmas checklist that I used last year, but I can't find it right now -- anyway, what I did was to write the different tasks on green index cards, and divided them into weeks, and every day I would try to make progress on the different tasks).

For academics

• Most of the stuff will stay the same, but I thought I would have Kieron read Geraldine MacCaughrean's Jesse Tree and go over Madeleine L'Engle's Glorious Impossible.
• He can also do the Snow lapbook. ...maybe now or maybe in January, depending on how the other things go.
• The littlies -- I will try to get a list of craft-y type projects for them --which Kieron can do too.
  

For liturgical year/family life:

• I think Helen's post is a great place to start (see above) -- so organized, with all the feast days, and beautiful, too.
• I found this December calendar in pdf with various secular occasions contained.
  
• And here is the Catholic Culture December calendar, too.

The theme -- preparing for Christmas and a New Year, and giving to others.

Details remain to be worked out. But the sick children have been on my mind.

Note:

Advents in our family tend to be "lived" rather than celebrated because almost every December we have a child in the hospital. (See Christmas Vigil and A Bit More on Advent for the 2005 and 2006 ponderings on this) Plus, I'm not really a home-decorating or practical-life type person. And I come from a very devout but slightly austere Christian tradition. My mom's efforts, admirably, were bent towards simplifying rather than elaborating Christmas. I remember hymns, once-a-year fancy cookies, beautiful Christmas classical missae on the stereo, an Advent calendar and a simple creche. That sufficed.

For all those reasons we tend not to have built up very complex Advent celebrations. Which is fine, of course -- it's not an obligation of the Faith -- but I think it would be nice, if we don't have a medical issue this year, to reflect upon and contemplate the season, and some simple activities and traditions can be conducive to that.

More resources and thoughts:

• Last year I started a simple Liturgical Year cyber-notebook. It didn't go much further than starting it and adding some links, but I am hoping to go back through it and pull out some of the things that we didn't get around to last year. (Here is a link to the paper Lit Year notebooks I made last year -- I still have to get them out this year) .
• Here's a bunch of Christmas booklists I collected... including a list of our Christmas bookshelf. (We have a few more books than that, and I collected a couple more last year, but that's a partial list).
• And Cay's idea for an Advent Grab Bag. This is one possible way to work through all the immensity of resources out there without getting too overwhelmed.
• Two more from Virginia Knowles: Advent Family Nights, and Christmas Treasury.
  

This post is getting away from me so I had better close now. Today is the day Liam, my oldest, comes home for Thanksgiving break. Off to prepare, and rejoice!

Dragons and Trails

Kieron (age 11) is quite interested in dragons right now, so I was ransacking our library system for books about dragons that I thought he would enjoy (Amazon is a great partner for this kind of search because the reviews and booklists usually give me an idea of what kind of book it is and who would want to read it).

Anyway, while searching online, I found Chicken Spaghetti's list of dragon books and resource ideas (including Theresa and Superboy's Dragon Notebook)

I am in planning mode, you see; it won't last forever, but it's fun while it lasts. But I like to have more ideas than I can actually use.

I've (finally)found a way to deal with unit studies that works for me and my family. My husband, kids and I all tend to have a few interests going on at the same time -- moving from one to another. We don't usually focus on just ONE. What is more, we usually tend to be focusing on a couple of skills or methods at the same time. For example, I just read three modern fiction books in three days. But before that, the last fiction book I read was two or three months ago. Also -- we like to follow a "golden thread" through an interest, rather than plan it out all ahead of time.

But while I feel a bit claustrophobic if I follow a unit exactly or just follow one unit at a time, the rich treasurehouse of unit study plans that are out there CAN provide a sourcebook of possible ideas and activities and booklists, and so that is what I've been getting out of unit studies recently. Lightbulb moment! (As my 11 year old said dryly about his 4 year sibling, "He should dress up as Captain Obvious for Halloween." Well, me too. Sometimes it takes me a long time to get to an idea that everyone else has figured out immediately)

So with units---- I find that if I have a few thought out a bit, and we move from one to another during a given time frame, it works better than just focusing on one at a time. This is how we worked with Giotto/Shakespeare last term. We never did get to the architecture (but there's still 2/3 of a year left..).

For me, it also works well if I have a theme. Not just a topic but something to think about with regard to the topic. This is difficult to explain, though I tried a bit in my post about Literature Themes. It seems to help me keep on track -- this year, the theme is about exploration and discovery -- there is a wide field, indeed! but when I am planning and sorting, I am looking for ideas to do with exploration and broadening horizons. And so that is somewhat the method I am using too -- trying to explore, and keep lots of options so there is an abundant choice.

One more thing that works for me -- tacking unit studies onto Everything Else, not vice versa. I know that I read a lot of unit study books and articles that say that units should incorporate Everything Else. But for me, units become painful if they are academic vehicles. For me, they work better as occasions of delight, that we can feel good about doing for variety or enrichment or family closeness, but drop without hesitation if they are not going anywhere. In this regard, I like the way Andrew Campbell explains Non Multa sed Multum :

Does this mean that students will go through thirteen years of schooling never cracking an English novel? Are we denying our children the pleasure of floating down the river with Rat and Mole, bursting with excitement when Almanzo wins first prize for his milk fed pumpkin, or pushing past a row of old coats to step into the Narnian winter? Of course not. What it does mean is that we apply the principle of multum non multa in selecting schoolbooks. The streamlined classical curriculum leaves plenty of time for other pursuits, including reading for pleasure and discovery. It is in these hours that students can sail the seas to Treasure Island, sit in the drawing rooms of Austen and Trollope, thrill to the daring escapades of the Scarlet Pimpernel, march with the Roman legions in Eagle of the Ninth, circle the globe with Phileas Fogg, or experience the angst of modern dystopias in 1984 and Brave New World.

To say it briefly, my family and I have decided that if we are going to float down the river with Rat and Mole, we want to ...float. Not necessarily study vocabulary words, or estimate how many miles they floated, or research the water habits of rats and moles (though I could see how any of these COULD become a delight-directed project; I'm talking here about artificially dragging in all the cross-curricular connections just so the unit can be a comprehensive academic experience).

With the dragons, I have in mind to strew the books and see which ones he would like to do, and I bought a Sculpey model kit with a dragon and knights that I expect this particular 11 year old will delight in. But there is a point, difficult to define precisely (since some kids might hate sculpey kits while others might enjoy writing a dragon story using their vocabulary words or something that my kids would hate) where it would not be just "floating" but be a confusion between utilitarian and liberal.

In that way, I feel very much as Charlotte Mason did (summarized by the DHM at the Common Room in a Charlotte Mason Tutorial; the words are the DHM's)

And if I might insert a suggestion- excepting the historical connections, do not try too hard to otherwise correlate the books one with another in a unit study approach. Charlotte Mason really isn't a unit study. In fact, she didn't care for them much. She thought that children should have a _wide_ variety of material to stir their interest and keep it sharp. She felt that too much of a muchness would sort of dull their interest. If everything they study for weeks at a time is all about apples or Robinson Crusoe (two hilarious examples CM used), they rather quickly tire of it.

The idea with a CM education is that the parent/teacher spreads the banquet, and then does less so that the student can do more- the student discovers and builds her own connections with the material. This is lovely to see.

Planning the Progym

I have gotten out all my progym and writer's books. This is Aphthonius's Progymnasmata, which is actually a nice summary -- it's the one I used for my older set since none of the progym books were out yet at that time. More about that later.

Also, here is Melissa Wiley about Bravewriter
and Mother Crone: Praise for Bravewriter

I don't have Julie's Bravewriter program, but I do like her Lifestyle principles.

I stumbled upon similar ones by trial and error with my older set. When they were younger, the only writing programs out there for homeschoolers were ones that I did not like. They all seemed artificial to me. Bravewriter was obviously not out back then. I tried a couple of highly recommended composition programs with my oldest, Liam, who is now 21. He was not very impressed, and since he was usually quite fair-minded about his academics, that was a signal to me to drop them quickly. I'm very glad in retrospect I trusted my instincts on this.

I didn't even try any of these standard curricula with Brendan or Clare, who are now 19 and 17. By that time I'd heard of Charlotte Mason and her methods seemed much more compatible with how I wanted to do things.

I had learned to write by copywork and storywriting and little nature writings I did in the summers when I was very young. I liked to make little books which I sewed or stapled together and decorated. When I was very little, my mom read to me a lot and traced out letters for me to copy until I could write on my own. So that's basically how I did it with my kids. They narrated -- not much, but a bit. They did copywork; again, not much, but a bit. They made maps and scrawled little stories on index cards, or sometimes rolled papers and drawings up into scrolls. They played pretend games by the hour and sometimes audiotaped or videotaped their plays.

I wrote down their stories or journals, sometimes, or labeled their pictures, and collected their work into binders. Brendan and Clare gained fluency in reading by telling me stories that I would type, then have them read back to me. As they got older, they kept their own notebooks and labeled their own pictures. All this never seemed like "enough", but somehow, all my older kids became effective writers.

At some point Brendan seemed "stuck" in his writing. He was at a perfectionist age and had just transitioned from all-caps to a legible italics, but he wasn't yet fluent. Liam had become more interested in serious academics, and was writing a few papers for his "studies", but was no longer doing much creative writing. So I started a daily "free writing" -- we'd all gather for 20 minutes before lunch, and the pre-readers could draw. Even I had to write during this time. It was time that was difficult for me to spare, since Aidan was a medically high needs toddler and I was pregnant with Paddy, but I thought it was important to be there too, participating, not skipping down the hall to fold the laundry.

I also had several "writer" type books around the house from my college days. I strewed these and the kids picked them up and read them, at least some of them. The feedback I got back later was that they often disagreed with the writer's advice, but still, these books gave the kids a chance to "converse" mentally with a writing teacher, and pick and choose what they wanted to try out. The authors who write these "writer's manuals" do have their peculiarities and flaws like everyone else of course, but they don't patronize the young writer quite as much as the standard children's textbook on how to write. I don't think it's necessary to read any of these types of books, and authors like Flannery O'Connor will tell you it could be dangerous, but at least the kids have the freedom to pick and choose their "teachers" here.

Eventually, the free writing period was dropped because it was no longer necessary. From there, all the kids embarked on abundant writing -- opinion pieces, journalling, stories, and creative "newspapers". They haven't looked back. All have their own "style" and their own particular strengths.

It was right after this "free writing" interim in our lives that I started experimenting with the progym. I am sketching out all the things that came before, because I do think the progym ought to rest upon a base similar to the Bravewriter one -- upon experience in creative playing, lots of reading and sharing stories, and some fluency and joy in expression (both written and oral). So I am writing this out partly in order to remind myself -- because whenever I start poring through curricula, I get a queasy, discouraged feeling -- probably another reason I'm interested in classical/CM/unschooling, because teacher's manuals are less necessary when you are learning from real books, real pen and paper, and real life.

So my goal is to use the curricula as a resource, not let it take over my life. When I get that queasy feeling, it's time to do something different for a while!

(Paddy's next to me, poring over the "Tour of the Summa", asking me to read chapter titles like "The Equality of the Three Divine Persons", then making up elaborate stories within the book -- I heard mention of alligators being found -- ST Thomas would probably be surprised to know what could be read from the pages of his work!)

Scattering Planning Thoughts

This is the time of year when my homeschool planning should be coming together.

I think that when you spend the first month of the summer in Ireland, however, and the second and third month dealing with medical issues, and now your oldest son is getting ready to go back to college and you feel he just arrived home in the past few days...

....then the homeschooling will seem to be coming last place, well after everything else. I'd much rather finish reading that pile of Harry Potters so I can get up to #7 and my kids can stop whispering when they discuss plot points. And that IS actually on my list of things to do.

But since we're starting back in two weeks, and the kids have already read HP, I guess that is not quite enough, SO ...

I think I will do my customary fall-back and start with very basic 3Rs, and reading aloud, and keeping an observation log. ....keeping track of my priorities.

As we get more into the autumn rhythm, I will start thinking about Giotto and Architecture, then the Pre-Raphaelites and romantic poetry. (though that will probably not be until after Christmas).

I have thought a bit about Logic, but not really about science yet, so that is probably next. Nature Study can take the elementary grade ages a long way, and it shouldn't go away even with the older set, but with the highschool group, a bit of additional formal study is a good thing.

The other thing I probably ought to do is brainstorm a few "focus" areas. In order to do this I am going to start taking a small notebook around with me. Like this:

• Cooking with Aidan
• Working on fine motor control with littlies
• Woodworking for teens?
• College prep
• unit on health for littlies and 11 year old.
• more random notes here.
  

As for books:

Kieron, my 11 year old, can use books from Level 3 Mater Amabilis, and these Real Learning books; and Sean, who is 14, can use a combo of Mother of Divine Grace, and Kolbe Academy. This has worked for us in the past....we'll see....

Clare has laid out her plans and is planning to start working this Monday ... the rest of us will start on Tuesday. (Sunday we bring the oldest, Liam, back to college.....sigh).

You probably wonder how these seemingly scattered components fit together -- well, they do or will, but I'll have to go into more detail with that in a different post.

Meanwhile, back to HP#5.

Routines and Priorities

At the Real Learning message board, I was catching up on some threads I had missed while I was gone with Aidan, and found this one called Routines. I read along for several pages before I realized that the thread was two years old and had been bumped up by Cay because she rightly thought it was timeless. What made me check the date was that I found myself reading an entry that I had written, and I didn't think I had been THAT scattered during this illness, scattered enough to write something I had no memory of.

There are lots of good nuts and bolts ideas on that thread, anyway -- check them out.

Our household routine -- chronological "spine" for the day -- has been pretty much the same for several years. It goes like this:

• I wake up approximately when the sun rises ( 6 am in the summer, 8 am in the winter). Everyone else rises in the next hour or two after that. I go for a walk, check email, start laundry, and converse with the kids as they appear.
• A good cooked breakfast (we have a rotating schedule for breakfasts -- Aidan likes to help me cook them and I count it as part of his occupational "curriculum").
• Start studies -- usually about 9 am.
• End studies about noon or1 pm, usually. High schoolers may go a bit longer. Sometimes we have afternoon "homework" if things have been off for some reason in the morning.
  
• Lunch. Since we've had a cooked breakfast, I usually let the older kids get their own lunch -- sandwiches or leftovers or whatever they want to put together.
• Afternoon down time. I try to have some things strewn to keep little ones occupied since they no longer nap. But I do nap. I usually take a bath and then read stories to the little ones before I close my eyes.
• Up again to run errands, afternoon activities, catch up on phone calls, do household stuff, or spend some time doing projects with the kids. .... depending on what day of the week it is. Informal learning.
  
• Dinner Hour: Dinner prep, tidy up, dinner, kids clean up.
• Family time -- daughter usually plays music, others read or play. Baths and bedtime routine for little ones -- including more stories.
• Bedtime Routine Rosary, read, 15 minute examen, talk to husband, go to sleep.

This basic spine is fairly consistent but can be flexed during life events or enriched by adding things onto the basic "pegs". I have these Priorities for "setting their feet in a spacious place". These are the foundation stones that I keep coming back to. Elizabeth has some categories at her Faithful blog.

Giotto and Architecture

This picture is of some of the library books I requested recently. I wanted a visual record of them for next year.

Martha recommended Giotto and Medieval Art: The Lives and Works of the Medieval Artists. As she said, it really is a unit study/history exploration in itself. I am thinking it might work well to start off our year next year since we are going to begin with the age of exploration and discovery.

I also looked at Mario's Angels: A Story about the Artist Giotto. This is a cute book suitable for a younger child -- I thought I might read it to Paddy so he could follow along with the older kids a bit.

A Boy Named Giotto -- for a slightly older child, but still a picture book format. Beautiful illustrations.

The Art of Construction was recommended by Love2Learn Mom. It has information and ideas for construction-oriented projects.

Shakespeare: His Work and His World -- I didn't really read all through it, but the illustrations were really nice, and I wanted to use it as a visual reminder for a few other Shakespeare books on my list... which I will add later on.

The older-looking one in the middle was a library hardcover version of Ruskin's Poetry of Architecture and Giotto and His Works in Padua. This one is for older readers, obviously -- I was interested in reading it for context myself. Gutenberg has the works online here and here.

My very vague at this time thought is to springboard from Giotto and architecture to the Renaissance and exploration, and from there into US history. But this is just a seedling of a plan right now.

Two Giotto Galleries:

The Art of Giotto
Olga's Gallery

Also, there is a section about Giotto's significance in How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization.

And a section about him in Knights of Art.

Spring Schedule

As winter turns to spring, we traditionally seem to rely on workbooks and simple texts more than we do the rest of the year. There are a few reasons for this.

• One is that we used to prep for standardized tests during the spring season, and some of the habits still remain even though there has been no need to do the testing in recent years.
• Another is that this is a distractible time of year both for me and for the kids. I want to spring clean and prepare for next year and they want to be outside. Simple workbooks and texts can be done in Charlotte Mason style "short lessons", often orally with a chance for discussion and thinking.
• Another reason is that spring tends to be the time when I am looking over the past year and seeing what we didn't do that I meant to get to. There are usually a few basic subjects that need to be wrapped up or sometimes reviewed and consolidated, and several discovery-oriented areas -- art and nature come to mind -- that got pushed into last place. So telescoping the formal curricula into a few quick n easy lessons and then leaving big blocks of time that can be used for nature rambles or messy crafts or digging through supplementary books and resources seems to work well for that reason too.

So here is what we have been using for my 11 year old and 14 year old to finish off the last month of the spring term:- this is all very nuts and bolts but I think I have been too theoretical recently on here so maybe this is an antidote!

Kieron's Year 5 Checklist (pdf)
Sean's Year 8 Checklist (pdf)
--I print these out for them and they check things off as they do them.

Kieron Year 5


Kieron is using Latina Christiana. We are reviewing now. On alternate days we go through Simply Grammar together. The grammar concepts can be reinforced and consolidated from one language to the other.


For Greek, he is using Hey Andrew -- level one. It is a very slow-paced introduction to koine Greek..... at this level mostly writing practice. One of the reasons I've started him off in this book is because he still needs some work on fine motor control. This gives him some intellectual challenge while he is doing it. He can work on this one on his own.

For Religion he is reading the last few chapters of Credo I Believe. It is a simple but solid catechism book with nice art masterpieces. He reads and we discuss the text and the artwork.

On alternate days he reads chapters from the Old Testament section of Schuster's Bible History. This is written in old-fashioned language and at the end of each chapter there are questions which he uses as narration starters.

For math right now he is using various computer drills.

For science, he has started getting kits from the Young Scientist's Club. This is fun for him and provides a sort of base for various extra readings and activities. I forget who recommended it on the Real Learning board but I am grateful. It is just the thing for him!


Sean, Year 8

Sean has finished his Key to Algebra and so for the rest of the year he is doing computer drill and reviews for math. Around August he will move into Jacob's Algebra.

For Latin he has just started Henle Latin 1. He already knows most of the vocabulary in the book so this will give him a chance to focus on grammar.

He is doing a book called Thirty Lessons in Outlining. Unfortunately it seems to be out of print since the only place I can find it is at Amazon for 70$$! It is not worth that, but it is a useful resource.

He is using Hey Andrew book 3 for Greek. It's possible to start the course from this point and move a bit quicker. He used Basic Greek in 30 Minutes a Day in the past and we may go back to that when he is in 9th grade next year.

For religion and a bit of history, he is reading The Story of the Church. He will probably only get up to early modern times before the start of summer, and then for fall we plan to do a US History course.

For religion, he is finishing up the 8th grade Faith and Life: Our Life in the Church. This ties in with his history of Christendom course this year.


The boys continue to read for a large part of the day and spend time outdoors and doing various projects. I use my other blog to write out the details.

Sean is reading his way through history. And Kieron is reading from the Mater Amabilis booklist.

As we phase into summer we will be doing lots more nature study in our National Forest, travelling, and hopefully gardening! We haven't gotten rid of our snow yet here in the Sierras, though, so gardening won't happen for a little while. In the past, summer has always been a time to pursue a few interests and hobbies and also get a bit of advance work done for next year. I will be trying to work a bit more seriously with the little ones on reading and literature themes, this summer, too. But more on all that some other time.

Planning and Purpose

This is really cute -- sums up some of my days too! HT Cindy at It's About the Journey.

Also, a great post by Cindy: Trusting Myself (and God and the DC)

I like this piece of advice from the post:

"Plan on messing up 5 times a week. Then when you mess up 4 times, you will have had a great week!" :-)

Plans for Aidan

The bottom line is that disabled children too are "born persons", and have the right to move at a pace of their own (excellent blog post at the Common Room, and here is the follow-up about Head Start -- the book she mentions, When Slow is Fast Enough, is definitely a keeper -- it reminded me a bit of John Holt's How Children Fail).

I wrote a bit about When Slow is Fast Enough on my other blog: here and here.

This post is the first in the series-- the next posts are:

• Plans for Aidan Year 0
• "Child-Garden" and Special Needs

Anyway, to start with the context for my plans for Aidan, I am putting down two former posts, one to the Catholic Charlotte Mason list from 3 years ago when Aidan was just getting healthy enough so I could actually think about education past basic survival and nurturing; and another I wrote more recently on the Real Learning message board (that will be in the next post). It is incidentally rather affirming to look at these old plans and see how much they did influence how we worked with Aidan and how much he has progressed. Though we never did get very elaborate with the arts&crafts -- we still seem to rely on therapist visits for most of that kind of thing!

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from 3 years ago:
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My 4yo Aidan is developmentally delayed and has sensory integration disorder after a liver transplant and stroke in infancy. The fact that he is also curious, responsive and full of joy and humor I credit mostly to his warrior spirit and to the grace of God.

At the same time, though, I think the fact that he has parents and siblings living a homeschooling life around him and with him, that there are books and pencils and papers everywhere, plus conversation and activity and lots of affection, has been a help.

Recently Aidan's vocabulary has blossomed tremendously. Ever since he was an infant we have sung to him, recited nursery rhymes to him, and showed him pictures in books. He loved all this, but was not able to give any verbal feedback. A year before last March, when he was just turning 3, he literally had 25 words, and that was counting both vocal AND signs -- I made a list. Now he is saying sentences as long as 4 or 5 words. This kind of progress, of course, I took for granted with my other children, but for him it has had such a liberating effect as he is able to express his feelings and opinions and make "jokes" -- even though in primitive toddler talk.

I was thinking about how CM can be worthwhile to special needs kids and came up with this list-- right now targeted towards preschoolers:

Nature/Outside time: vocabulary, sensory integration, gross and fine motor development, thinking skills such as observation and classification, physical health.

Literature: language rhythms, vocabulary, development of attention span and relationships, social comprehension.

Art/Handicrafts: fine motor, sensory integration, organization

Music -- rhythms, intellectual enhancement, relaxation of stress/anxiety

All of the above -- "connections" or relationships with the world and with other people

Habits eg order, attentiveness etc -- well, he does not pick up good behavior intuitively -- he needs to be taught specifically and reinforced often and often.

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A follow-up post also from 3 years ago
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Though children with disabilities probably do need more intervention than typically developing kids who just seem to learn by osmosis, they share the same need to be respected as small persons. Aidan has a stuffed Pikachu pillow. It came with him to the hospital -- he sleeps with it - he talks to it and it talks back -- you get the picture. My daughter mentioned today that she was bugged by one of Aidan's therapists making Pikachu part of one of Aidan's lessons -- "...making Pika talk like a Sesame Street character" in her words -- saying something about how well Pika knew his ABCs or something. It bugged me a little too -- and I realized it was because to Aidan, his toy is an imaginary friend and companion and protector -- not an object to be manipulated for the sake of a teaching moment. OK -- Pikachus are NOT very CM but this is just an illustration of something that sometimes bothers me -- and why I'm glad we homeschool!


I have for Aidan this year: Story Stretchers for Infants and Toddlers, the Gryphon "Comprehensive Toddler Curriculum" and a manual on Apraxia for preschoolers. I like the literature lists in the first two and some of the ideas for extensions will be useful. HOWEVER, I am going to resist the temptation to push the "curriculum" at the expense of the kid. Aidan is very inconsistent -- quick to learn when motivated, then distant and unfocused when something is going on to distract him. He does something like the poem counterpoint, and I'll think he's made a breakthrough, then he won't do an equivalent thing for weeks or months. I have to seize the good moments and build on them, and not be disappointed by the steps backwards. Easier said than done.

SO rather than have a lesson plan and a set structure, I have to have a short list of priorities in my head that I can build on in the course of the day during his regular activities. Right now my priorities are -- encouraging imitative speaking and turn-taking, developing the ability to speak longer strings of words, extending vocabulary and improving eating skills. Toilet-training and self-dressing are somewhat further down on the list.

So whether outside or inside, doing art projects or looking at books, I am trying to do things in two layers. One layer is the receptive comprehension ability. I try to build new language by elaborating on things he already knows. We do this by talking about pictures in books, or by making up story lines about things he is doing. If I "lose" him, I go back to what I know he
will respond to. This is a little like Greenspan's Floor Time concept, but not so forceful because Aidan is not autistic.

The other layer is the expressive communication. When I do or say something that he wants me to repeat -- like a new nursery rhyme -- I have him say or do something to elicit the repetition. The kids do this too, by habit. It's become second nature. Once he's repeated something many times in imitation of us, he finally incorporates it into his "spontaneous" repetoire.

CM recommends a broad exposure to different forms of knowledge or ideas -- and I find again and again that Aidan will seem to tune out something or even seem afraid of it, and then over time, if one is patient and careful, he will accept whatever it is and build a relationship with it. An example -- he had a Dorling Kindersley First Word book that he had looked at so much that he had worn it to pieces. I bought him a DK board book set in the same format with an Alphabet and Number book. At first he wouldn't even look at them or touch them. Over time, by leaving them around and occasionally picking one up and saying, Aidan, look at the grapes (or whatever) he got attached to them. This is how it works with almost everything.

Because of Aidan's "issues" he needs lots of repetition and reinforcement in order to really acquire a new idea or word. But it can't be just rote repetition, it has to be something that he accepts and enjoys, and it has to be introduced in different contexts. So I have to keep my agenda in the background, and be observant of him -- a sort of CM "masterly inactivity". Usually the best way to introduce something is to appeal to his imagination, his affectionate personality, or his sense of humor. And then....wait and give him time. If he isn't responding, I drop it and go to something else.

For Nature Study, what we do now is pretty informal. When he is feeling good and wants to walk, I let him explore and just talk about what he seems interested in. But when he prefers to stay in his stroller, I do bring him things and if possible relate it to something that he's seen in a
book -- OR often I do it the other way around and show him the book after he's seen whatever out of doors. One of his books had pictures of leaves, but he ignored them until I showed him leaves outside and he had a chance to handle them.

Eventually I'll become more structured about this -- collect rocks after showing him a book about rocks, that sort of thing. Let him bring his own collections home and store them to look at later. He is a little hesitant about handling natural things, probably because of the sensory integration issues. So I don't push things much right now.

About Arts and Crafts: I'm still getting arts and crafts off the ground for this school year -- I plan to have the siblings oversee a daily activity with him. We have a Headstart teacher come into the house weekly and she brings fun arts and crafts. He learned to use scissors (with help) last week. He also had a lot of fun with tempera paint. So I think mostly I will follow up on what she introduces. As time goes by I can tie his arts and crafts into what he is listening to in books. He is not really at that stage of development yet. He does like me to draw pictures for him, especially on his arms!! I draw happy faces or circles or whatever vocabulary I am emphasizing and hopefully, that teaches him a little about symbolic representation as well, especially since my drawings aren't very good!

How about "food art??" That is what we have been focusing on since Aidan came home from the hospital. He got extremely orally aversive while he was sick, to the point where he would gag if he saw anyone in the room eating. Today he helped me make coffee cake, pouring the liquids in and stirring. The other day he helped his brother make French toast. We occasionally make edible play dough -- basically cookie dough without the eggs -- for him to roll out and cut
with cookie cutters. All the kids like this.

He does a lot of water and sand play for sensory integration. I plan to adapt some of the Montessori activities for him this year A lot of pouring, arranging and sorting -- hopefully will help him slow down and do things more carefully -- he is sort of destructive right now, today he deliberately scattered cereal all over the floor not from malice but because he just couldn't resist.

Music:
I just sang the Muffin Man about 30 times for Aidan today : ) He laughed every time! I like the idea of music during therapy -- well, usually we do this too, but again it's me singing and I don't know if that counts as music. It sure works to help him through the more challenging stretches and bends though. I make up songs for him -- this is a family habit -- putting our own words to familiar tunes -- he really loves this and I think it helps him "pace" his own words. Up till recently he had a very difficult time saying more than 3 syllables at a time -- now his record is 12. Either singing or chanting gives him a rhythm to follow and helps him extend his length of utterance.

We have a keyboard, a guitar, and various kinds of whistles/recorders. We listen to a wide variety of music -- Corelli and Saint-Saens to Celtic and folk rock. Again, it's more CM "atmosphere" than a specific goal-oriented program.

The Trees -- Step by Step Planning Process

This part is about the nitty-gritty of weekly planning.

First of all, I should mention that we have a longstanding tradition about Mondays and Thursdays. They are Housecleaning Days. There are eight of us who live and work at home and we live in a dusty mountain region with a longhaired dog so we really need 2 cleanings a week plus maintenance.

On these days we have a lighter and more "mechanical" academic routine. We also save our screen time -- video games and videos -- for these two days. These things break up the rhythm of a day but we don't want to eliminate them from our lives (my husband is a computer game designer) so the best solution for us is to reserve Monday and Thursday afternoons for these things. This gives me a bit of extra time to plan while the boys are entranced with the game consoles.

I have been doing the bulk of my planning on Fridays and Mondays but after reading Dawn's Lesson Planning I think I will move the beginning to Thursdays. I do not know why I didn't think of it before but chronology is always a bit of a vexed question for me.

Anyway, this is what I do (in theory, that is -- in practice, it varies a bit from week to week):

• I look at my month-at-a-glance planner which has entries for appointments and other fixed-time events.
• With the information from the monthly planner, I fill out a week at a glance form and put it in a public place so everyone can see what's on the agenda for the next week (there are some forms here, but I use my own version with regular appointments like therapy and choir already shaded in)
• I print out and refer to my Motivated Mom checklist and consult my Declutter Calendar 2007.
• I look at the Liturgical Calendar, and also Saint of the Day (Magnificat) and Mass Readings if I have time.
  
• I look at the Year 5 Booklist, and the Year 8 Booklist, and the Ireland Booklist. If there are books I need to request from the library I request them (our local library is tiny so everything I want to get from the library has to be ordered a week or two ahead of the time I need them).
• I am just starting a habit of looking at Cay's Catholic Mosaic booklist to see which books to request from the library or dig out of my shelves. Right now I don't have a child quite at the developmental age to get the most out of Catholic Mosaic, but I'm trying to get familiar with the books and strew them for my older kids so I can use them when the younger two are at the right age.
  
• Then I organize one of my closets: the curriculum closet, the game closet, the arts and crafts closet. I keep some paper with me so I can list discoveries I make and keep them in mind for the future. Organizing things seems to help me think somehow.
  

Then I brainstorm. Recently I've been trying a sort of mindmapping and it seems to help me think. I list related resources, connections, ideas for introducing things, whatever comes to mind. Even if I don't get to do everything I have written down -- and generally, I don't -- it keeps me motivated and the plan works better than having no plan at all.

• The sequential subjects like Math and Latin are easy to plan. You just list what's next.
• Then I look at the Tanglewood Core Book pages to give myself a visual reference for all the subjects I want to cover; including Geography and Habits and memory work.
• I have just started getting a handle on Charlotte Mason's "broad and generous curriculum". My challenge is plugging all the ideas and options into a sequential day. I've found that if I take CHC's Lesson Planner 2-page spread (if you go here you can see samples and here under Weekly Lesson Plans there is a somewhat similar spread I have used in the past) and use it as a sort of chart for writing down the flow of the day for the two middle boys, it helps me visualize better what we will and won't be able to get to.

I like Dawn's file box method. I don't think I collect enough things ahead of time to need a file box, but visions of accordion folders were running through my head last night -- I have some around the house that I used to use for the older childrens' schoolwork.

HOW I plan -- overview

Here is the basic template I use when I'm planning a literature-based unit. (I do units, I guess, but they're not activity-driven and they're usually either a divergence from or a more indepth exploration of whatever track we're on that year). Here is a post I wrote 3 years ago about planning literature themes.

Here's where I wrote a bit about a very general Scope and Sequence and some of the Logistics. Though this was written for 2006 it still applies. More on the fundamental curriculum here... starting with preschool and building on it.

As far as practical details go, I like Dawn's idea of starting planning for the next week on the Wednesday before. I may try something like that.

I realize that I plan a bit differently every year. Last year a lot of my planning was oriented around resource-finding for the childrens' interests and for finding spaces in my day for the leisurely conversations that reveal so much about their hearts and minds. The rest of my planning energy went towards looking for things to strew. I also used a lot of planning energy to develop some(better, not great) household routines and prayer habits. These things are still helping me a lot and I don't want to let go of them.

When we were more actively doing our Story Meeting (oh yeah, I forgot that took some planning energy too) I realized that my stories work best if I have a general vision and a few specifics of the way in, but too many details written out ahead of time kill the interest and creativity for me. That wouldn't be so bad except that when the creativity isn't there, I can't "see" and if I can't see I feel like I am putting on a puppet show rather than writing a real story. It occured to me then that this might explain why I seem to have to reinvent the homeschool wheel to some extent every year -- new process of lesson planning, new morning schedule. There is a fair amount of consistency in the big picture as I've already mentioned but the details get a lot of shaking around.

Now how does this impact my kids? If I felt one of them really was asking for more consistency and structure in the daily things, that would be incorporated into my plans. When my oldest reached his high school years he definitely did communicate that he wanted more structure and consistency, so I rearranged things to provide that for him. Then I over-generalized the lesson and started requiring more structure and consistency of my second son and that was not successful. He didn't really benefit from what had worked for his brother though it wasn't a complete disaster.

This year for planning I've been using the Tanglewood Corebook along with the CHC Lesson Planner.Together they cover most of the areas I want to be reminded of and they are both pretty. I use my spiral artist's sketchbook to brainstorm and mind-map ideas.

The general process goes like this:

• Look at overview, booklist, etc.
• Brainstorm ideas and write out.
• Collect resources.
  
• Put into daily form.
• Write into plan book.
• Expect that it won't go exactly as planned.

I think one mistake I made in the past was trying to make my lesson plans too laid out and structured. Then they would just bore me dreadfully to look at them. I'm trying to figure out a way to put more creativity into the planning and writing. Look at Alice's!

My biggest challenge is probably making TIME work for me. Being visual-spatial, I don't move very consistently through time. I can get a lot done in a short time but the corollary is that often the day goes by and I haven't gotten to most of the things I wanted to. This lack of sequence is difficult for my kids so I've had to work hard to make myself stay on some sort of track. Once I have a general routine in place, I can usually get a lot more done.

A Spacious Plan

I really like these Albert Bierstadt paintings. Yes, they are a bit romanticized. But we live in terrain that looks like this and sometimes the light is a bit like it too, only not quite so much so, perhaps. Bierstadt painted around the Sierra Nevadas and that is where we live. We are only a few miles from Yosemite.

Several years ago Elizabeth introduced me to Sonlight. I loved the Sonlight idea that the literature/history reading is the Core of the curriculum and THEN you add the basic 3Rs; not that these latter aren't important, but the 3Rs are more like tools or instruments and the literary books are closer to the heart and soul of an education. It was something I'd felt, partly because of reading Charlotte Mason and more because of what I most valued of my own education, but the way Sonlight expressed it helped clarify it in my mind.

Even before that, I went through many, many spiral notebooks trying to figure out the big picture for what I wanted to "cover" (for lack of a better word) in my homeschool. A lot of homeschoolers use unit studies and I like the idea of them in theory, but I can't really go from unit to unit in actual practice. I am not that kind of thinker. It feels to me like riding on a road with lots of blind curves.

A lot of unschoolers make their lives and the childrens' interests into their unit study. This doesn't work for me either, I find. Once again I think it's neat in theory, but I can't live that way without frustration.

So very early, when my oldest was in fourth grade, I devised a sort of big picture plan for religion/literature/history. It is basically similar to Kolbe Academy's. We have followed some version of it ever since. It is surprising looking back how consistent we have been through some very chaotic times.

Yes, this means that we don't all study the same history at the same time. However, you'd be surprised.

• Our children are mostly three years apart so we can rarely combine literature resources very much anyway.
• And usually the themes have some points in common so that we can overlap more than you would think at first glance.
• Finally, I really go for the "one room schoolroom" effect where the older kids get to hear again the stories they heard when they were babies and the younger kids get to hear bits and pieces of the Iliad or whatever more advanced readaloud is going on at that time.

So here is the general overview
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K-2 No formal history curriculum. We go slowly through a book of Bible History. We read lots of stories like Children's Book of Virtues and Aesop's Fables. They are getting a context and delight in stories of times past. Stories about parents and family history fits in here too.
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3rd grade -- Kolbe has Egypt this year. It does not work for us spending a whole year on Egypt -- just too abstract and weird and not enough books for this age group -- so here's where we do an Egyptian unit -- I have enough materials to pull one together easily and Egyptian units are fun -- and then we either have a Sonlight-type world history survey or US History Survey
4th-5th grade, roughly -- we start with Ancient Greek and Rome, very similar to Mater Amabilis. It works for us better if we do US History/world history as a separate study rather than concurrently, as MA does. I used to try to do them both because Core Knowledge had it set up that way and because there are so many resources for American history for that age level. But generally we end up saving US History for spring and summer and doing it in a more freewheeling way.
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6th grade is a sort of multicultural exploration based on Sonlight Year 5 and the Real Learning booklist (you have to look on the sidebar of the main site). We actually do monthly units here and try to consolidate general geographical knowledge.
7th grade is ancient history. Egypt can be covered more easily at this age level in my opinion.... more books and more understanding of the scope of history.
8th grade is a survey of post-Pentecost history up to early modern times.
There is a different focus in this middle year survey -- more consciously targeted towards knowing one's faith and how it relates to time and location and other faiths, etc. It is a good time to start some type of "giving reason for the hope that you have".

But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect 1 Peter 3:15

Mother of Divine Grace covers this same time period -- here is the scope and sequence and here is the booklists.

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In 9th grade we have done different things for different kids. A child who hasn't done as much US History during the earlier years can do a year of that -- there are resources for that at Mother of Divine Grace, at Sonlight, some at Mater Amabilis, and some at Ambleside. One of the children ended up spending 2 years on ancient history as Kolbe recommends.

Anyway, 10th through 12th is another chronological cycle. 10th is the ancient world, 11 is the middle ages and 12th is modern times. Here is the high school core curriculum.
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• Sonlight Arranged by Well Trained Mind Cycles is a great online free resource. Her whole site is wonderful.
• Another one I have not mentioned yet is Baldwin Project. I go there often. We have a doublesided laserjet printer and a comb binder thanks to dear husband.
  

You must not imagine this layout is lockstep or the same for every child. It is not that way at all. My swings from unschooly commentary to layouts like this might seem odd, but it fits with the way I operate. I like to know where I'm going but I like to take the scenic route. Neil Young says: "It's a bumpier ride but you meet more interesting people there."

We use different books as new ones come to our attention, different focuses depending on interest. I find it helpful to remember what Charlotte Mason said: "One child finds his meat in Plato, another in Peter Pan." If you set a generous outlay of provisions in front of a child, he or she will show decided preferences and needs. So we adjust accordingly.