There are about ten days a year I look forward to with much anticipation. The Catholic Homeschool Conference is two of them. This year I dragged brought Mr. Sloth along with me so he could get a feel for the conference in all it's paperback glory.
I was proud of myself for sticking with my new minimalist goals and I didn't buy anything we didn't need or love. I came with a decent list and stuck pretty close to that list aside from a few extra fillers and Christmas gifts.
I suddenly feel like an old pro as I had my rolling suitcase to carry all my loads of book to and from the van, and I had my list prepared for each of my kids as to which curriculum I painstakingly picked out over months of thinking and weeks of research.
The talks were pretty good. Dr. Meg Meeker was the keynote and the one breakout session I went to was Lacy from Catholic Icing. Not only was it nice to see her I got a few ideas for keeping the littles incorporated into the school day. I'm sure you'll see more about that in another post.
I was also wise enough, knowing that the second I walked in the door I'd be ambushed by the kids wanting to know what books I'd bought. Thankfully I thought ahead and had a fun book for each of them in my hand when I came home. Not only were they completely excited and engrossed by their new books but I was able to sneak the rest of the materials in the house and sort them first and keep their little eyes from seeing some possible Christmas gifts.
I'd say this is about 50-60% of what we need for next year. Some things we have as certain textbooks can be passed down. I still have most of their math and some history books to purchase online yet. No rush though.
I put the books in order of subjects. Aren't they purdy? On the left, Teaching Writing and Structure and then Student Writing and Structure for Demand and myself. Then All About Spelling 3 below (still finishing up 2) then for Happy we have Primary Arts of Reading including the Phonetic Farm and Phonetic Games. However once I got home I realized that they forgot my Phonetic Games, DVD, and Teacher's Manual. And then for Rooster we have the first three books of "Explode the Code" which is a fun phonetic activity book. Below that we have New American Cursive. Demand and Happy will both be working through workbooks A & B this year.
Since our normal Science has an age range in place of an grade style of curriculum we only us it every other year. We used it this year for Physics so next year we'll do some fun physics activities here and there but mostly do Art & Music this year which we haven't done in a while so Demand is excited! I also found this great Dictionary at my friends Usborne table and Demand and Happy are already obsessed with it. Demand keeps not-so-casually finding a word she needs to look up and it's only been four hours since I've been home.
The next table is the bulk of our History program. While the kids love "Story of the World" and it is easy to use and very classical and in depth it's also written by Protestants. I was planning on getting the "Catholic Version" this year but I ended up being kind of disappointed with the structure or lack there of. There's basically a very rough overview of a teachers guide but then a great number of books to read. All the books are great but it seemed a great deal, 50% were based on Catholicism and I want a REAL study of ALL History in all the cultures of the world, not just the fun stuff. Because it's all important. So we decided to merge the two programs. We'll take out conflicting chapters of Story of the World (for the time being) and then read all the great books recommended from the Catholic History program according to the time period we will be studying at the time.
More History material and then a tiny bit of Math. I'm going to half to buy the bulk of our Math curriculum online, but thankfully I just have to buy workbooks for John as we already have the textbooks and then to be honest I'm not sure what I'm doing with Rooster. He's got his preschool material down so I guess it wouldn't hurt to try Kindergarten with him and just go at his pace.
Also, being a history major (yep I have an actual degree in something) I have been finding the history curriculums out there lacking for my taste. To me if you know History and know it well so many more pieces of information will fit into place. This also goes for Geography. So inspired by this, and I've been wanting to do it for a few years now, our family is starting a permanent timeline on our playroom wall. (It's the largest wall in the house. )As we study subjects and topics we'll add them to the list according to time and country so that we can get a grasp as to what was happening across the world at any given time. For example, our kids were confused as to why the children in Narnia had to 'go live somewhere' out of London for a while. If we were to place the Chronicles of Narnia (either the date it was published or when it takes place) on a map would could see when we study WWI WHY the children had to leave. Or what was going on when Hemingway wrote his famous works, or Shakespeare or when Picasso or Michelangelo were creating great works of art. And did you know the pyramids existed when the Holy Family fled to Egypt? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph mostly likely saw the VERY SAME pyramids that we can see today, isn't that awesome?? What was it like for the Creator to see one of the worlds greatest creations one that his enslaved people built! The timeline will also be a great work of art on our walls and something to talk about with guests. So if we study and invention, a poem, a discovery, a war, artwork, music, literature,saints, sinners, etc it will go on the timeline for whatever country produced them. We can't wait to get started! In fact we might now wait too long at all, the kids are anxious to get going with their new books! I can't blame them they all look like so much fun!
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