Homeschooling: This Year

I really like The Well Trained Mind's attitude toward homeschooling. The general idea is to delve very deeply into subjects--really take your time with them and be thorough. Another concept is that History is the framework for most other learning, including Geography, Literature, and Science. They also advocate a cyclical pattern.

• First grade covers "the ancients" (science is about things the ancients could see: animals, plants, and the human body)
  
• Second grade is medieval/Renaissance (science is the earth and sky observations--thank you, Copernicus!)
  
• Third is 1600 - 1850 (time for basic chemistry: atoms, molecules, elements)
  
• Fourth is modern times (beginning physics)

The idea is that "these divisions correspond to the child's growing ability to think abstractly." The cyclic part is that when you get to fifth grade, you go back to the ancients, but start dealing with it more in depth, as better fits the child's capabilities.

I like this book and its ideas a lot. They make sense to me. I haven't followed them exactly, though. I've used it more as inspiration. For one thing, Sarah's already in third grade. I don't want to start in the middle, so I'm compressing things a bit. We did Greeks last month, Romans this month. Next month we'll cruise on toward the medieval period, and in the spring we'll get to the "correct" time period. This has an added benefit for Lauren. She'll be starting the ancients next year (and we will take the whole year to do it), but she already has some background, thanks to Sarah. Also, it'll be good review for Sarah next year.

I am using the Usborne Book of World History quite a bit. So far, I keep getting it from the library, but I really need to break down and buy it. I'm also trying to get lots of literature from those time periods.

We are doing different things for Geography and Science, but that's for another post.