A new school year is fast approaching. The Dude is very excited to be going into the 2nd grade. He is looking forward to all his new studies with the exception of the dreaded copywork. I have been busy researching living books, comparing what other moms are doing, scouring the library and purchasing the finishing touches (yesterday I replenished the art supplies…so inspiring!) So what are our course of study plans for grade 2? Brace yourself it appears to be a never ending list! Keep in mind that the items listed are for a full year of study and will not necessarily be done everyday or every week for that matter. We plan to spend 15 minutes or less on each subject on the days they are scheduled, with the exceptions of Nature Study, Art and Handicrafts. I am planning these subjects in 1 hour blocks depending on what we are working on for that week.

***Bible/Character Building – We are continuing our New Testament readings of 1 chapter or less everyday. When we finish we will simply start back in Matt 1:1 and do it again. Our goal is to be able to read the Bible in its entirety every year. So each year as he grows as a reader we will add a little more until we are accomplishing that goal. Once Awana starts back up, He will be working through his 3rd and final book in Sparks. This is where we get most of our memory work for the year. Something new this year will be our scripture memory box where we will be able to easily review past verses. This went really well. He enjoyed Sparks as always and finished the 3rd book and the review book. He also read a chapter from the NT almost everyday. He started Titus this morning.

I am excited to be combining our Bible studies with our history and geography this year. We will follow module 1 from Simply Charlotte Mason (Genesis-Deuteronomy). Another favorite. We had a great time learning all about Egypt and the geography of Africa. His godmother is going to Mali in a couple of weeks for 2 years. I was pleasantly surprised that he knew she was going and could easily point it out on an unlabeled map for her.

This is also the first year for us to do any formal character studies. The Character First cards will give us a starting place. I am still trying to decide if we will use the student guides that go with the cards. And just how long we will focus on each trait (1 week, 1 month, etc.) is still up for debate. The bulk of our time will be spent as it always was; learning from real life situations and reading great books together such as: A Child’s Book of Character Building (book 1), What Do You Say Dear?, What Do You Do Dear?, Goops and how to be them, Miller Series. At some point in the year we will focus on a Missionary. I am considering Food for Cannibals as well as the Jungle Doctor series of books for this task. Finally, we will use ideas from CharacterJournal.com to keep a running notebook of our virtues. We did not do most of this. We started out using the character first stuff and quickly let it slide. We did however, enjoy the Goops book and Child’s Book of Character Building. Mostly we just focused on character areas as they became an issue.

***Math – This is our first year using Right Start (level C). I am optimistic! We will start the transitional lessons before the official school year starts to help us…well, transition! We will play at mathisfun.com. I also found this really great calendar notebook from mama-Jenn’s blog. I love this idea! The Dude will do this during circle time with the littles so he doesn’t get bored! Right Start was GREAT! I got nervous towards the end of the year because everything else was done but we were still doing math. I thought that we got really behind. Then I remembered we started with the transitional lessons first putting us back a few weeks. We only did the calendar notebook for about a month if even that long. Great idea in theory, just not very practical for our family at this time.

***History/Geography – As I have already mentioned, these subjects will work together with our Bible lessons. We love this subject. The Dude is VERY excited to be focusing on Ancient Egypt this year. We have a lot of hands-on fun planned, as well as a ton of living books. Our book list:

• Boy of the Pyramids by Ruth Fosdick Jones LOVED this book.
• Pharaoh’s Boat by David Weitzman
• Growing up in Egypt by Rosalie Davie
• Seeker of Knowledge by James Rumford Good read.
• Shipwrecked Sailor by John L. Foster
• Croco’nile by Roy Gerrard
• Mystery of the hieroglyphs by Carol Donoughue
• Pyramid by David Macaulay Great book
• Anything we come across that strikes our fancy! We did not read everything from our list mostly because I gave up using the library midway through the year after racking up a VERY hefty late fee! We had a lot of other books on hand that we really enjoyed.

Our geography lessons will focus on Egypt and the continent of Africa. The Dude LOVES maps. He often brings me maps for places that we most often “travel” so that I don’t get lost. Places like the local park or grocery store. He is so thoughtful like that. We will use Uncle Josh’s Outline Maps for most of our work. As a special treat, we splurged on a Montessori puzzle map of Africa to use for our map drills. I am so glad we got the puzzle map. He really loved this.

***Science/Nature Study/Health – The Dude will work his way through Simply Charlotte Masons’ 106 Days of Creation Studies. We are really looking forward to doing some “real” science this year. Nature Study will still come from 2 sources: time spent out of doors and classic living books. The only thing new will be these outdoor hour challenges. We already have Anna Comstock’s Handbook of Nature Study and now we have a “guide”. For health we will use Brainpop jr because our library has it available for free. Turns out our lib does not have Brainpop jr. So we used some of their free items and made a lapbook about our sense of sight. He enjoyed all the hands on activities from science this year. And I enjoyed that it was easy to implement.

***Language Arts – Elson Readers (I am having trouble finding a link for this one. They are all available free online. I have them on my Nook. You can also purchase.) for daily reading practice. Gentle intro of grammar using English for a Thoughtful Child. We will review Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights dream using a Jim Weiss CD. Additionally, we will write a letter each week to either a family member down south or to the Dude’s best friend across town. Just as a side note, I have been feeling a lot of pressure (mostly from myself and too much web searching) to present a formal writing workshop where we integrate the writing process with the writing traits. I even purchased the Write Source textbook to get us started as I have no idea what any of these big words mean! I have since been gently reminded by reading these posts from wildflowers and marbles (I am always so inspired by the wildflowers and marbles mom. Even the structure of this post is inspired!) that the tools we already have in place: reading great literature and living books, oral narrations, copywork, journaling, and in the future dictations and written narrations are my writing workshop for the Dude. When done consistently, these seemingly simple tasks create great/proficient writers, speakers and spellers. So I will be patient and not push him too hard this year! We did not use the Elson readers. He read through the Ramona and Beezas books and Ralph the mouse books instead. I also freaked out forgot again about the Mason theory on English/grammer. I got another grammar program for this year!

***Foreign Language – An area where we have probably bitten off more than we can chew!

• Spanish: El Espanol Facil (K-3 version). I really like the notebooking ideas that come with this program. Also, Lolo has promised to spend time each week speaking with the Dude ONLY in Spanish. Now if we can just get Lola to only speak in Tagolog we might save a buck or two! ;0 This was fun, but I am not sure how much we really got out of it.
  
• ASL: Hands on Sign Language. This will be the first item to go if we become overwhelmed. Not because we are not looking forward to it, but because Spanish is our first choice for foreign language studies. If we keep this on the schedule, I hope to tie it in with our monthly volunteer activities. Well we never managed a formal volunteer activity, but ASL is a favorite in this house! He picked it up right away and really enjoyed it.

***Fine Arts – Unfortunately, this is an area of study that tends to be more of a lofty idea that never officially makes it onto the schedule in reality (with the exception of piano and poetry). To combat my tendency to not prepare these very important and FUN studies I am going to do something amazing…PLAN the studies in advance. Genius!

• Instrument – The Dude will continue with his piano lessons which he loves. Recently, he was introduced to jazz after going to a local school concert with one of our neighbors. Now he really wants to learn to play the trumpet and saxophone! As it turns out, both of hubby’s brothers played these instruments in their younger days…and still have their instruments! Since the saxophone is larger we will wait until the Dude is bigger for that one and play the trumpet for now. Piano is still going strong. His teacher took the summer off so he worked on the Super Mario theme song in his free time! The trumpet…well started out OK, but it “hurt his lips” so he was not as inclined to practice. And since we did not have a muffle thingy 🙂 I did not push it!
• Poetry – We will start the year with a poet study on Lewis Carroll. Technically we have already started. We are currently reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. We will learn about the poet (did you know Lewis Carroll was not his real name?) and read lots of his poems and other writings. The rest of the year will be spent reading a poem a day. The Dude will also memorize 1 poem (hopefully per term).
• Music Appreciation – I plan to compile CDs by term for our composer selections, hymns, and folk songs. We will simply listen/sing along with the weekly selections (probably during lunch and while in the car). We will follow the Simply Charlotte Mason lists for composers and hymns for each term. We will additionally learn a little bit about the composer from the following resources: classicsforkids.com, My Father’s World CDs, HarmonyArtMom, Then Sings My Soul by Robert J. Morgan, Hymns for a Kid’s Heart by Bobbie Wulgemuth, and other living books. This was fun. We were not consistent with the folk songs mostly because everytime I thought about Ella Rea I was reminded of Delilah being scalped by her sister!
• Picture Study: Using the Simply Charlotte Mason Artist list, we will choose a new artist every 6 weeks, studying at least 4 pieces per artist. We hope to learn the artist, title and possibly time period for each piece. Again we will learn about the artist through living books. I hope to have the Dude copy either a particular piece or technique for each artist during the course of our study.
• ART: We are so eager to get started! The Dude loves to express himself artistically. I on the other hand struggle to draw stick people. I want to encourage his love for the arts, if for no other reason than to give him something to look forward to each day after copywork (I can see the Dude rolling his eyes now)! For this reason we are adding more than just the basic art project each week. We will delve into art theory using How to Teach Art to Children by Joy Evans. Once a week we will talk about the different elements of art with a hands on activity. I plan to use our expanded vocabulary in our picture studies as well! We will keep a “formal” art journal using mostly ideas from artprojectsforkids.org and Journal Spilling by Diana Trout. Finally, we will have a fun project day. Depending on the week we’ll either explore our element for the week further, copy a technique from our artist study, integrate another subject into our art (Pharaoh masks for our Egypt study, etc.), or just have additional free expression time. I will be relying heavily on the deep space sparkle website for this subject! This went well…until about March and then art kinda fizzled. I am sure it had nothing to do with overwhelming surplus of art in the beginning of the year!
• Handicrafts – We will pick a selection from American Boys Handybook by Daniel Carter Beard, Handicrafts for Boys, or The Boy Mechanic to implement each week. We will see how this goes. As a creative boy, he really doesn’t need a lot of direction here! I am coming to the realization that most boys have a MacGyver in them. Just give them a sting, a stick, a piece of gum and 5 minutes and they will come up with something handy! Didn’t happen!
• Family Read Alouds – My favorite part of the day, though I find that I get rather sleepy these days nestled up on the couch with all the littles, no matter how good the book. I love to read over the kids as they play quietly, get ready to sleep, eat a snack, or just want to cuddle. I love how they all gravitate to the book and stare at the pages full of words as if just being closer to it allows the story to become more vivid in their minds. I love when they ask me to reread a certain part because it made them giggle. I love that they draw, reenact, and talk constantly about whatever we read during the day, “Remember when…..that was so cool. Right mom?” We love good books. And with that these are our literature selections for this year: Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Robin Hood, Pilgrims Progress book 1, A Wonder Book (Hawthorne), Tanglewood Tale (Hawthorne), Black Beauty, Little House Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, Farmer Boy. These will mostly be read before bed and during the day as time permits. So many books, so little time! We did not read all of these. It was almost like the minute I wrote how great our read aloud times were my kids decided that was no longer going to be the case! We have had a time of training the littles to sit quietly and be respectful during readings. They tell me all this training is well worth it in the end! 🙂
• Electives – Because we do not have enough already! Actually, almost everything in this section is something that we do because we love it. The only reason I mention it here is so I will never forget it! (A problem that seems to get worse with each child!) Hubby and the Dude will continue to play chess, but on a more regular basis (weekly). Swimming lessons, Tae Kwon Do, and Ice Hockey will give us more than enough physical exercise. We might take a break from one of these sports to participate in another depending on his interests. The Dude wants to start a lego/comic book club. We might do this in blog form, where we offer different challenges and post results with regular meetings and by meetings I mean playdates. We will also plan some sort of formal volunteer work at least once a month. Ideas so far: play piano at a retirement community, pick up trash at the local park, serve at the soup kitchen downtown, something at the school for the deaf (not sure what yet), you get the idea. The Dude will continue to help me in the kitchen and with his regular chores. We did not continue ice hockey. He played baseball instead. Also their Lola’s took them to swimming for me each week, which was a HUGE help. I had a few hours all to myself every Tuesday. I got so much done…I NEVER spent that time eating nutter bars and watching Netflix! lol.

The Dude will keep a notebook with sections for each subject where he can journal as we go. As well as, adding meaningful dates to our book of centuries. We will also continue with our narrations for a lot of our readings (not the family read-alouds). OK, so I kept a notebook of his work! We are going to start a timeline on our wall this year. I think it will help keep things straight and we will reintroduce the book of centuries when he is older.

So that’s it. Our entire year in a nutshell. Next up…Princess Preschool. That’s just what we are calling it for Sissy. I already have my goals for her and most of the materials bookmarked. Time to print, color, laminate, cut, etc. Oh Joy! Not really. Turns out I loath cutting things and being crafty! We got it done, just not with great enthusiasm!

~As I finish this post, I have discovered that Sissy has “decorated” my planning pages to the point that I cannot read my day 1 plans for the year! AGHHHHH! Deep breath, smile…and now back to the drawing board.

PEACE

*edited to add reflections from the past year!