At the end of Spring Break we had a staff meeting. Mark and I spent some time reviewing where Matthew is at in his school work and what we want to accomplish before the summer.
We found that we are further on in some subjects than others. We don’t have far to go to complete the first grade requirements in Matthew’s favorite subjects: Phonics, Geography, Art History and Bible. But we found that we do have more lessons to go in Grammar, Math and Literature than we have time.
(Art we are mid way in the Calvert series… we are not trying to complete that by any date… it is art, there would be something odd about putting that on a schedule. And anyhow we take many detours in art and do lots of additional projects. Why quantify such a beautiful thing?)
We first thought that in order to complete all his first grade course work by June, when my mum and aunt arrive for vacation we would make some schedule adjustments. Essentially we decided to cut Geography back to once a week, do grammar everyday and be diligent about completing 3 chapters of Math U See a week (this in addition to Veritas Press phonics museum, Veritas Press literature, art, art history and Bible).
So we have been doing this for a week now. I realized that even at this pace it will be hard to complete the Shurley grammar by June. I dragged my feet about starting it and didn’t do the lessons daily… so we are behind. Realistically if we take June & July off and do some other fun things I have planned for August we won’t complete grammar until October. Pretty much it is the same story with Math. We did a different math workbook for a few months as I dragged my feet on buying the Math U See Alpha course. Got started late. It has a lot of practice which involves writing. Matthew as a beginner is understandably slow at writing.
The purest in me wants to start second grade for all subjects in September. That would be clean and neat. School like. Familiar.
But…. Shona…. You are homeschooling…. Who says the Cole school should mirror traditional schools?… Who says that we have to do all second grade subjects at the same time…. It’s about learning not slavery to a system…. Freedom!
Mark is a realist – he says I should cut out the overly repetitive practice questions (some of the questions in Shurley Grammar that Matthew is completing are ones that, in a group school setting would be done verbally by different kids in a class – so he is doing more than double what he would be doing in traditional school). Complete the course when we complete the course. Start some of second grade in September while finishing parts of first grade.
So we are going to continue the new schedule and see how it goes. The important thing is that Matthew keeps learning and loves learning.
So far so good.
