Friday, September 04, 2015

In Only Two Steps

1. Always be willing to admit you do not know the answer.
2. Always be willing to learn.

That's it. Two steps to being an educated adult. Whether you homeschool your children or not, whether you work outside the home or not, follow those two steps and you'll see your knowledge ever growing.

Go ahead, try it. It is only two simple steps.

Thursday, September 03, 2015

It is Never to Late

A dedicated Memory Work Time. This is the new-to-us item for this year's schoolwork. I have thought about it over the summer and discussed it with my good friend Amy, looked at blog posts on the Charlotte Mason Memory Work system and Classical Conversations memory work as well as read and watched a video on a "loop" system. Two difficulties I've encountered is that I haven't done this from the beginning and my kids are older plus I don't do Classical Conversations, which many, many, many of the posts I read do follow.

Regardless of those difficulties I have determined that it necessary for us to actively be working and reviewing memory work daily. Following is how I am going to arrange our "Memory Work" time together.

I will have a binder with 8 tabs labeled Daily, Odd, Even, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Behind each tab will be what we are to say aloud and review that day. Each day I will use three tabs, the Daily, either Odd or Even depending on the number of the day, and the day of the week.

Daily:
This will be what we are currently working on learning to memorize. The new things in History, Latin, Geography, and Science we are working on for the year.

Odd Days:
We will review our Latin prayers and the verb conjugations and noun declensions we already know.
Invocation
Lord's Prayer
Gloria Patri
Sanctus
Table Prayer
Conjugations 1, 2, 3
Declensions 1, 2, 3
Sum
Possum

Even Days:
We will review our Latin sayings and vocabulary, currently the first 8 chapters of Wheelock

Tuesdays: History Review
Old timeline songs from years 1, 2, and 3
Kings and Queens of England poem (to where we are currently learning)
Timeline Tips and Tricks
Presidents (to where we are currently learning)

Wednesdays: Grammar Review
Sentence Jingle
Types of Sentences
Noun Jingle
Verb Jingle
Helping Verb List
Linking Verb List
Adjective Jingle
Adverb Jingle
Article Adjective Jingle
Pronoun Chant (Subject, Object, Possessive)
Parts of Speech Chant
Preposition Poem
Sentence Patterns

Thursdays: Geography Review (Geography Songs Around the World)
States and Capitals
Continents
Asia
Southeast Asia
South Asia
Western Europe

Fridays: Science Review* and Music Review
Note names
Scales
*This is still a work in progress as I think about what I would like them to learn by heart. We will be studying Astronomy and Chemistry this year, so in our daily work things like the order of the planets and the periodic table will be memorized and then moved to this slot for review.

Saturdays: Spelling Review (Writing Road to Reading)*
Phonograms
Page 1
Page 3
Page 5
Page 6
Rule 4
Rule 12
Rule 20
Rule 24
*I chose certain pages and rules that I know my kids need help remembering. If I discover that they have forgotten the ones I thought they knew, I will add those to this list.

I think I will schedule 30 minutes to do this each day. We will begin with the Daily work, move to either the Odd or Even tab and then the Day of the Week tab. Only in the daily work will I strive to do everything every day. With all the others I will utilize the "loop." That is, we will get as far down my list as we can that day and then when it is time to do it the next week, we'll start where we left off.

I did not add any Bible memory work nor catechism or hymn review. That is done with Dad at the table after meals, following the Congregation at Prayer he puts together for his flock based on what he learned from Pastor Bender at Peace (click on the Congregation at Prayer tab under Weekly Downloads) The only new thing to this time will be taking one day each week and reviewing one of the chief parts of the catechism, six chief parts, six days review. Susan had recommended this a long time ago and I'm finally getting around to putting it into practice.

Since this is new to me, I'm sure this will change and grow as we figure out how best to do this in our daily life. I'm okay with that. One of the big things I tell all sorts of homeschool moms is that it is never to late to learn. Just start where the kids are and go from there. I really believe that and therefore I'm now applying it to myself and my own kids. We are starting where we are and we'll go from there. Here's to a good year, really learning and growing in our knowledge!