The Best Laid Plans...

This week I have opened up my calendar and have begun the process of seeking a vision for our school year. I have already chosen my core curriculum so now it is time to sit down and think about how I will implement my year. Ironically, Pinterest has been a real help for me as I try and figure it all out.

Homeschool Board

One of the first things I wanted to do was envision the "end product." What do I hope to accomplish with my children? Our family is entering a new phase. I am 50% done educating my children! Can I get a Woo Hoo? I know that I will never achieve perfection but I do find myself pondering what I could have done better with the older two. This is also my second and even third go-around teaching some of these subjects. That is a strange feeling. When I first started out, I quickly realized how little I knew and invested a tremendous amount of time myself reading, researching, and just enjoying the journey. So here I sit ready to enter this new phase.

As I go through this week, I will be preparing lesson plans, but more importantly I will praying for vision, revisiting my goals for my children, and yes getting organized!

So what's on my board? Well...

• Teaching Natures through the Sciences - This one came to me through A Holy Experience. What appealed to me was the idea of my 3rd grader making his own nature calendar. A thought I have is to find some kind of collection-shelf-thingy (and yes that is the technical term for it) hung on his wall and post the original next to it. Then he can display his treasures for the month.
• Sketchbooks - Each year I end up using these more and more. I love the idea of each child creating their own "textbook" for different subjects. I have done this in the past and have loved the outcome. This year my high schooler will be making a Book of Centuries, but we will be using the Century chart as our timeline.
• I would also like to use a sketchbook to make a biology notebook for my 9th grader. A few years back I dabbled with this idea with my 2nd child. There is definitely a learning curve. Things I liked about it was the ownership of carefully recreating drawings and labeling items. We chose a couple of different spines to help us stay on course and never really loved any of our choices.
• Biology 101 DVD by Wes Olsen  - We are going to try a different approach for our spine and will be adding this to my ever growing arsenal of biology curriculum. I will have to get back to you on my opinions. ;-)
• A Commonplace book - This idea has intrigued me for a very long time. As I look over my own bookshelf I realize that I have several of these and honestly, isn't blogging a virtual form of a Commonplace book? With that said, I would like to introduce the idea to my two remaining students. For now, it will be simple. Mostly just about creating a habit and hopefully this will evolve as our school year progresses. On a side note, child #2 started a Commonplace book without any nudging or introduction from me. She didn't have a name for it but when sharing with me one day I realized that yes indeed that is what she had started.
• The Well-Planned Day and The Well-Guided High Schooler - What can I say about my favorite planners that I already haven't said before? They truly are a blessing at helping me keep our home and school organized. I love the articles. I love the perforated shopping list, I love the meal planner, and I love the scriptures & catechism questions but mostly I love that it is all neatly bound up and looks so pretty I just can't wait to open it and work in it. (yes I am an organizing nerd)
• School pictures - This is an area that I am neglectful. At the end of each year, I do collect the best photos of the year and digitally scrapbook our family. I even take the time to journal our year in review. In previous years, I scrapbooked yearbooks for my older children so that they would have tangible memories. This was a compromise since we would not have yearbooks. I like the idea of taking the photo and adding fun facts about the child on the photo itself. This will be a fun challenge but I do plan to start.

Century Chart...

At the beginning of the school year, I wrote about a new way we were going to do our timelines this school year. We were going to try our hand at Miss Beale's Century Chart. You can read more about that HERE. We spent the year working through Tapestry of Grace Year 4 and put it all down in our Century Chart.

So I thought I would share my thoughts. My first attempts were quite challenging because art and I have never truly gotten along but I persevered and began my  first few entries. LOL We also decided to keep a key of our pictures on the page across from the chart. This helped us as we reviewed. I am not sure if there were any true "rules" to this so we may have taken some liberties. For example to illustrate the Red Scare I colored the block with a red colored pencil and wrote the word scare over top. Yes I know very imaginative but I warned you that art and I did not mesh. :-) I also chose NOT to tell the kids what to put in their charts. This is their own personal view history and my job is to be nothing more than a guide. I did not want to intrude on this. As we conclude this year, we will be including a summary of the century underneath.

I can't wait to include this in our history next year as we return to TOG Year 1. We will be studying more than one century so it will be a bit more fast-paced. Using the century chart this year was a great way to introduce the concept and prepare for more. At this time, my vision is to purchase a sketch book and put in the century blocks before we start the school year. This will give us time to walk through the century and choose what we would like to put down.

Century Chart example

Century Chart

Curse you Charlotte Mason! It is evening time and the house is quiet so I have decided to work on my Century Chart. Yes, I am doing one as well! However there should be a disclaimer when venturing in to the wonderful world of CM. You should have some sense of artistic ability!

AHHHH

Is it cheating if I have a friend draw for me? Maybe I can just cut and paste in some pictures? LOL I am at the point where I am only desiring to add items to my chart that I think I can actually draw. Now I know what you are thinking, doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of the project? But really, have you seen me draw?

So here are the more positive notes I can relate to you...I can now verbally describe the Wright Brothers airplane as I have now studied various pictures trying to draw some facsimile of it for about 20 minutes only to decide that maybe they aren't as important as I originally thought. haha

In all seriousness, this is a great tool to reinforce what you are learning. Careful observation and reviewing the dates allows the student to personally own the information. Another thought I have is that I am having to chose what I want to put on my chart which means that I am owning more than what I put down.

Instead of sharing the artistically-challenged Century chart. I thought I'd post some of the more talented ones.

Personal Century Chart

Notice each one is unique

The child's personality is displayed

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20th Century Chart

This summer I attended our local Charlotte Mason mini conference which recapped several wonderful sessions given during the Childlight conference earlier. One of the recaps was in regards to paper trails...the art of Mason's notebooks.

We have dabbled in a variety of notebooks here. Some more successful than others but my older children still struggled with the idea of keeping a notebook for history. Then I learned about Miss Beale's Century Chart and was intrigued. So this month I have been reading and creating my own.

The premise of a century chart is a 10 x 10 grid that represents one century. The example below shows a chart of the 16th century and the key that goes with it.

Examples of Miss Beale's Century Chart


Key to the 16th Century Chart



As you can see each block is not crammed full of information but rather the child selects what is important to him. Another thing that intrigues me is that not every block is filled up. Investigating further I read that the children might have a science century chart as shown below.


This year we are doing TOG Year 4 which looks at the 20th Century so what better way to help my children understand the century than to ask them to build their own century chart. In my next post I will show you how I chose to do this with my three learning levels: 3rd grade; 8th grade; and 12th grade.

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