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Mackfam
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| Posted: April 05 2014 at 10:27am | IP Logged
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SallyT wrote:
I don't know whether this is a good touchpoint for more discussion, but I'm definitely feeling discussion-y!
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You are!! And I really love it! It's challenging! I've got to get to my weekend because it's full - so I may not get back to adding my thoughts til Monday, but I'm really looking forward to it.
I'd love to discuss some of my thought process for subbing books into/out of an existing book list! I nodded my head to all of your points.
And, truthfully, I relate to a lot of what you're observing re. your older kids/younger kids. Now, our situations aren't paralleled exactly - my kids were never in brick-and-mortar school so I don't have those memories to contend with. But, in a sense, I do find myself in a different season. I have my older kids that are moving forward. I spent time being very considerate and thoughtful regarding their booklists and now with my younger set, I'm falling back on those. But...guess what...I find I'm substituting books for them even within my own booklists now. (Not a ton, not the whole booklists, but certainly, I make substitutions.) To be honest, it's not a compulsive need to change things or plan. I think it's the luxury, the great privilege of being able to "speak" to a child one-on-one. Anyway...I'll think more on that and respond with my thoughts later.
I definitely don't want to monopolize your thread with my responses either!! So - here's the open door with me waving others in!!!  As I step out to go shovel a new load of wood chips into my happy, eager potager! 
Back soon...
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19 , ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: April 05 2014 at 12:41pm | IP Logged
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Mackfam wrote:
To be honest, it's not a compulsive need to change things or plan. I think it's the luxury, the great privilege of being able to "speak" to a child one-on-one. Anyway...I'll think more on that and respond with my thoughts later.
I definitely don't want to monopolize your thread with my responses either!! So - here's the open door with me waving others in!!! As I step out to go shovel a new load of wood chips into my happy, eager potager!
Back soon... |
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The are all so different aren't they? That is a good way to look at it, too, as a luxury and privilege, because I must admit that I find it a bit muddlesome to realize that this booklist that worked so well for my oldest just isn't going to be as ideal for my second, either because of his abilities, tastes, or my own season in life.  
This discussion has reminded me that I need to start planning next year, and while nursing the baby in the wee hours this morning, I enjoyed pouring over the AO and MA lists (where most of my choices come from). I was trying to envision using the lists as they are but reaffirmed my tweakerness. Still, I do think my tweaking has more to do with the logistical and seasonal needs of our family right now rather than any sense of improving what is available, though, I have come across and used resources as Sally describes in so that I could use what we have and found some gems I will continue to use.
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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony
[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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SallyT
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| Posted: April 05 2014 at 3:03pm | IP Logged
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Back again for a minute --
Planning is something of a compulsion for me -- a pleasant one! I enjoy doing it, though the trap in my personality is to expend all my energy in planning and run out of gas in the doing. That is, planning can be an avoidance mechanism for confronting things I have to do in the present. But that's not specific to homeschool planning. The longer I spend making my meal plans and grocery list, the longer I put off having to go to the store. I'm endlessly flexible in that mode.
But I agree, it's also a luxury to be able to look at past plans and retool them for different children. What worked for one child doesn't necessarily work in exactly the same way for the next, and I feel as though in many ways I have a whole different scenario with my younger children, who are the only ones never to have gone to school. My first two children have done very well on what we've done, experimental though it's often been -- and I credit my oldest's college education for being there, and being a.ma.zing, at the precise time when she really was ready to stretch out and take on such a feast -- but!
But! I look at the younger two and realize that truly, we don't have that many years left to reach for what I see that a rich education can be! It sounds crazy to be saying that about rising 5th and 6th graders, but it's true. The next six years will gallop, and in the meantime, what we do now does in some sense set our course for high school.
With every child I learn to think more chess moves ahead, so when I look at my 6th grader, I'm seeing where I want him to be in 9th and beyond. I'm seeing how book decisions I make now feed us into what I want us to be doing in high school. Which . . . to be honest . . . I'm not sure I want to have to make up from scratch any more. I like the history/literature plans that I've made and continue to make . . . but what if we did line ourselves up to do something more like AO for high school?
That's one thing I'm letting myself think about, as I reflect on the blog post that inspired this conversation. MA doesn't have high school laid out; looking at the PNEU plans Michele has posted there has made me think that I do want to follow that shape more closely with my upcoming high-schoolers, rather than the more standard, if classical-ish, "college prep" program we have done in the past, albeit in a fairly CM-ish way (read, narrate, graduate*).
So as I'm looking over my plans and schedules for next year for the younger two, these are things I'm thinking about. I'm thinking less about what would be fun to do together right now, and more about a coordinated whole that carries us forward through high school. Maybe that's why that blog post did resonate with me -- because I am trying to get a clearer, more confident, more coherent vision of not just next year, but the next six and seven years. And the only way to do that is to re-check my philosophical underpinnings and see where other feet have trod.
Sally
*Or, as my oldest has done: "Read, narrate, graduate, matriculate!" It's been a pretty good formula. But when people ask me what I did to prepare her, and the truthful answer is, "Not that much," this is when I start to feel anxious about the future, because how do you successfully replicate "not that much?"
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mamaslearning
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| Posted: April 07 2014 at 3:50pm | IP Logged
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Just wanted to add this link I found on Erin's blog.
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Lara
DD 11, DS 8, DS 6, DS 4
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Mackfam
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| Posted: April 07 2014 at 9:33pm | IP Logged
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SallyT wrote:
| what I think I've retained from my initial attraction to unschooling and my subsequent experiences in that realm is the sense that rich learning can and frequently does happen serendipitously, in the world outside the schedule of readings -- and if I observe that a particular kind of learning is happening richly outside "school," I count it as school. That impulse too could probably be folded somehow under the CM umbrella, as perhaps a very broad interpretation of Masterly Inactivity. |
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You're right. I would consider this not a broad interpretation at all, but rather an excellent illustration of standing aside and allowing the child to seek after knowledge. Certainly Masterly Inactivity, almost at its best.
I feel much the same way, and would probably consider myself pretty unschooly in the early years...until a child is indicating to me that they're ready to get rolling, at which point, I follow CM in a fairly structured way because it allows for that rigor and depth while not only making room for margin in the day, but also encouraging stepping outside the curriculum to make connections and learn.
Honestly, Sally, I know you don't want to be pegged - but the more I read of your approach -- both philosophy and method -- everything I see is CM.
So....
Sally wrote:
| philosophically, at least, I come down hard on her side. Methodically . . . maybe not so much. |
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This is ONLY my own curiosity! I've heard you say a number of times that you play much looser with CM. But...I'm not seeing it. When I look at your lists, your reading, your ideas, your approach - it seems pretty CM structured to me. So, I'm curious - what methods do you part ways with? Where do you see yourself living out the philosophy yet eschewing methods?
Sally wrote:
On top of all the existential/philosophical angst, I do have a question pertaining more or less to the original post, and it is this:
Jen, but also anyone else -- When you do substitute/DIY/ tweak, within the framework of a given program like AO, how would you characterize your principle for substitution?
Let me clarify: Jen, I know from reading your posts that you have a very clear set of CM criteria for making use of materials that might fall outside the AO perimeter. That I totally get. My question is more about the principle that would lead you to substitute Book B for AO's assigned Book A in the first place. |
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This is an excellent question, Sally. I have several criteria and many of mine line up almost step-for-step with yours. I'll list them in order of my consideration when subbing a booklist:
1. Catholicity.
Not only ensuring a fullness represented in our reading schedule, but also ensuring that young reading is not skewed. Now, for older kids, I don't mind and will even embrace a little more edginess to our reading because we live in area that requires us to live Apologetics on a regular basis and these books provide topics which give us opportunity for discussion.
For Catholic programs, I may make substitutions in order to provide a bit more rigor in reading choices. I actually follow CM's recommendations within a Catholic framework - so a Catholic catechism, a Catholic commentary for a student reading through the Bible (I like Ignatius), etc. I love assigning Aquinas, Augustine, Chesterton, Lewis, Kreeft, de Sales, many other saints - as part of a religion/theology component. So, if I'm following a guideline that recommends a text, here's an area I immediately veer away from that sticking with overview/outline of the catechism in the early years, and building theology and philosophy in later years.
2. Does something comparable/better exist on my shelves already?
I'm pretty frugal, and one of the great things about being attentive to and fastidious about book choices in a CM education is that those books are ready and waiting on my shelves for the next reader. My mom was a CM educator and I inherited her entire library, too, which was a huge blessing for us! We've certainly added to it over the years. The result is a voluminous home library. That means that preference goes to those books already on my shelves.
SallyT wrote:
| So I tend to build my year for a particular child around what's already on my shelf, given that by and large it's good stuff. I won't use it if it's not. |
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Yep. This.
3. My number 3 reason for substituting is Science. SCIENCE. SCIENCE. SCIENCE.
I have a great appreciation of the subject matter: I find it intriguing and I place importance and weight on it in our curriculum because it is IN AND THROUGH God's Creation that we often see Him - how ordered His Creation is, how magnificent, and how fearfully and wonderfully we are made. And I  loathe the fact that almost every CM booklist I know of (AO included) uses the old standby of Apologia or some other "program-y" type thing.   Which I equally loathe.
You most certainly CAN approach science with living books! They are there! I have made use of a few science things over the years that would technically qualify as a "program", but very little and these are generally inserted as (a) a lab, or (b) meant to function as an elementary stand-alone guide for experiments - not used for science reading or an entire science curriculum. SO...one of my biggest substitutions is to pull out the recommended science program and insert living books - regardless of the year.
Another reason for doing this is Catholicity in approach in science.
A couple of my stand-by favorite science resources: Mary Daly's recommendations and scroll through her home page for other science essays and thoughts. I also springboard from MacBeth's science lists pretty extensively. **Note** Some of the books on Macbeth's list assume a maturity of topics (fine for a high schooler, but you'll want to know about that), and most all of the books contain some evolutionary content (also fine with me as we don't run from that here, but again, this is an area that others want to know about up front so I mention it.)A little note to the side....I've been faithful to that approach of living books for science all the way through, and I see the fruits of it in two very different learners. My graduate would not choose science as a favorite subject. Yet she doesn't passionately reject it or hate it. I credit both her ability to speak to science topics as well as her ability to tolerate and even mildly enjoy some aspects of the sciences to her vast study of it through living books. My next student is what I'd consider science-passionate. This student, in 8th grade, already has what I'd consider an adequate high school level understanding of science. I cannot imagine stunting this son's scientific curiosity with texts or programs - and besides, his understanding already surpasses most of that. For this student, I can provide a very rich and interesting booklist that takes him deeper and broadens his understanding - through living books.
This example of two very different students with their disparate science appetite and abilities answers a CM concern that many have: can a CM-structured living books approach fit all needs? All children? All abilities? And the resounding answer is yes, it can - and beautifully. Because it MEETS the child - not the other way around.
Anyway, Science. I almost ALWAYS sub in the science department for both Catholicity reasons as well as content.
4. Discovery of newer/alternative books that qualify as "living" and the desire to work them into the year's schedule.
Now, on this, I really do like to keep up with new books coming out. I keep my eyes open not for programs, but for excellent literary reprints and also new historical fiction. I tend to check Bethlehem, Hillside, and RC History (including their science in history recommendations) for their recommendations and I will usually find something interesting and intriguing enough that I want to add it. I also like reading Tea at Trianon (hat tip goes to Suzanne for introducing me to her blog as well as to her historical fiction). Vidal is Catholic, so I appreciate her perspective, and I always like seeing her book recs to consider them for high school level reading.
5. Need to customize for a child's level/strengths/weaknesses.
I actually probably customize more with an eye toward stretching and/or ensuring that a booklist contains at least one very meaty-really-tough-to-read book per term per child.
I don't typically customize to a child's strengths. My experience is that when a child is passionate in an area, they go the extra mile on their own. Unless the child makes a special request (and they have before), I don't structure a passion on the booklist. For the first time, I am having to customize a portion of a booklist for an advanced learner in one area. That's a first for me, but I guess it does fit under customizing to a child's strengths. BUT...I'm not customizing to *build up* -- I'm really still building a booklist just like I always have - one step at a time, each year a little wider and a little deeper. For this child, in this area, wider and deeper is much wider and much deeper - so there is some customization in one area because of that.
I do consider a booklist in light of any challenges a child faces. I've had one that was fairly slow to read independently, another with gross motor delays, and yet another child with dyslexia. These are areas I like to consider as I'm reviewing a booklist. Certainly, in the early years, I bend the booklist more to accomodate needs, but always with an eye toward stretching that child forward toward independence from that challenge. The children have done great with that approach. All my children have moved beyond any initial challenge to the point that none of them identify with that challenge any longer. Even my dyslexic. I credit Mason - not anything innovative I did. Mostly, I just got out of the way and made sure not to draw undue attention to or spotlight a challenge. I really believe that the key for any success was the rigor of the CM philosophy and method that seamlessly moves alongside a respect for where a child is at a given moment. There isn't anything that screams *remedial* - everything is living and rich. There is no hint or whiff of "I'm different and I can't do this" implied anywhere in a CM curriculum - even those that must accommodate learning challenges.
6. A child asks to swap a book off the schedule and onto his free reading list.
This happens when a child is connecting with a book on the schedule so much that they cannot bear to read it at my set pace (which will always be much slower than their independent reading pace). I am pretty strict about not doing this a lot because I think it is important to moderate this Feast of Ideas. In moderating and narrating, so much more is retained than if ideas are gluttonously consumed. Having said that, there are certain books that I allow a slide onto the free reading list. At which point...I've got a hole in my booklist. I've learned to have a some excellent backup books in place for just such an occassion. These are typically the excellent books that I wanted to add to the initial booklist, but couldn't because that would have been too much. So, I keep them on the free-read list, and then they're availiable if a book slides off the schedule.
** Books that are set aren't a good fit.
I don't know that *fit* is a huge consideration for me. I don't really look too closely at a child's personal pref when choosing books. I tend to consider period of study, reading level appropriateness, literary value. If all of those line up, then I move forward. I can only think of a very small handful of books that my children have really disliked. Most of those, we press forward with anyway - because the literary value is high enough that it's worthwhile. Churchill comes to mind for this.
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Those are the considerations I can think of. Over the years, they've become like old friends so that customizing and substituting through a booklist is a comfortable thing now. Building a booklist is something I enjoy so much!
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19, ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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SallyT
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| Posted: April 08 2014 at 6:56am | IP Logged
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Wow, this is all great.
Re method:
Chiefly I tend to focus far more on what goes in than on what comes out, and am much laxer (?) about requiring narration of a given book after one reading. I do understand the *why* of this part of Miss Mason's method and don't really part ways with the idea, BUT -- some of my children, like me, are people who need to let things settle before they can talk. If I put them on the spot, they clam up, even after years of "tell me about what you read," gentle prompting questions, etc. If I ask them to write a narration, it's "Uuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhh . . . here's my tiny sentence." (I think this is going to be my automatic code for pre-teen-boy writing from now on).
So I tend more to let things rest in the mind for a while -- I do trust that they're doing the reading I assign -- and bring them up casually later on, like when we're driving in the car. This happened yesterday in fact -- my 11-year-old has been reading a Bruce Bairnsfeather WWI book, which I know he likes, but about which he has been practically mute when pressed (which is about the only time this particular child is EVER anything remotely like mute, but anyway).
So I've just let it go for a bit, but yesterday as we were going somewhere in the car, I said something like, "So, how far are you in Bullets and Billets again?"
He said something like, "Oh, pretty far. It's a good book."
I said something like, "Great. What's been going on?"
And he launched into a word-for-word re-narration of all his favorite parts (mostly the funny parts -- there's one scene where they build a dam, apparently using a lot of coal to do it, and then realize that they want to build a fire, so they take the dam apart again to get the coal out, because they'd rather be wet than cold. He thought this was hilarious and told me the whole scene in a very "British-Narrator-on-Audible" accent).
I do understand the value of prompt narration and the mental discipline it builds, but it just isn't as much a part of our picture here. I tend more towards the British university model of read-read-read-read-read, talk things over with your tutor periodically, and do Tripos or "schools" at the end. Maybe. Or just take summer break because everyone is totally out of gas.
And in some ways, particularly in high school, we're somewhat more child-led. My current high-schooler (like your 8th grader) is very passionate about science -- and funnily enough, what awoke that passion was probably the least living book we've ever used, Michael Spear's All Creatures Great and Small. Everyone hates that book! But it lit his fires, weirdly enough, so I haven't written it off as a resource possibly to use again. He tends to be impatient with too much rhetoric -- he just wants the concepts to run with.
He's now 16, and I could not possibly keep him in science books. He reads constantly and buys his own -- some of what he reads I also read, but I can't keep up. Science writing is fascinating, I have to say, and I have him to thank for turning me on to a lot of things. One of the most gripping books I've read in years is Gina Kolata's FLU, which is like a whodunnit about the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, which he read at the height of his microbiology and germs phase. He reads a good bit of history as well -- Stephen Ambrose is a favorite -- but the science stuff is an obsession.
So my job as I see it is to keep things in balance. I'm the literature pusher, though again, he's several steps ahead of me -- we're doing medieval and Renaissance history and lit this year, but meanwhile he's reading his way through Cormac McCarthy . . . who is maybe the foremost living Catholic writer in America, but man, it's all a little grim and intense. Flannery O'Connor will seem positively cheerful when we get to her. Meanwhile, building high-school courses for him is chiefly a matter of trying to figure out what he hasn't read already, and keeping records is chiefly a matter of going, "Please write down what you've read. Please."
And we have the college as a resource, so we have gone that route in high school, particularly for foreign language, science, and hopefully math next year, though this child has also done a history, and he wants to take rhetoric his senior year to knock out a college writing credit. So we do do a good bit of outsourcing that way.
One way or another, it's been all very eclectic. And it's worked for my older children. But there's a five-year gap between my current high-schooler and the next child down, who's only 17 months older than my last, and when I look at my younger children, I do see something very different. I'm moving more in the direction of structure, because for a variety of reasons I sense that the younger children need it more. Their childhood has been in many ways quite different from that of the older ones, and maybe it's a function of having done this so long now and being more comfortable with my own authority, but I am tending more towards a . . . well, a *more* structured CM approach . . . as they get older.
Have to run now, but thanks for the conversation! More later.
Sally
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: April 08 2014 at 7:48am | IP Logged
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Just yesterday, I listened to Julie from Bravewriter's most recent podcast , which is about narration, and it meshes with a lot you are saying, Sally. I think you would enjoy it.
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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony
[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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Mackfam
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| Posted: April 08 2014 at 8:23am | IP Logged
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The way you describe your "conversations" Sally is how I handle narrations with my older children. I DO put in a lot of time and effort with younger children in setting the habit of narration. As they get older (Forms III/IV +), those narrations look more like a dialogue with back and forth. Still, I do still hold to the value of those early narrations because they set the habit and so much mental preparation for writing is there.
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Jen Mackintosh
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SallyT
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| Posted: April 08 2014 at 8:26am | IP Logged
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Oh, thanks! I've been reading her a good bit lately. Her whole mode speaks to me a lot.
And Jen, I really like what you have to say about learning challenges and how CM meets and stretches the student beyond those challenges. That is where I'm aiming, though I'm still sort of processing my youngest's recent diagnosis. She is the kind of person who'll settle very comfortably into "My Cozy Learning Problem," so I do have an eye to stretching beyond that, knowing that it's not going to be easy or particularly pleasant on the front end to do the pushing. In one sense a lot of my philosophizing has been triggered by having a child for whom reading has not come easily, when to a great extent my other children have just been academic self-starters and natural autodidacts. (well, there was my oldest and the disaster that was math, but that's pretty much vanished in the rearview mirror by now).
On another note, one other thing I've had trouble making myself do, especially in the face of an enthusiastic reader, is moderate the pace. I'm getting better at that as, after all these years, I get better and better at planning and scheduling. But I will still tend to let a child devour a book he really loves -- and reread and reread it. Overall, though, keeping everything on the buffet in manageable portions is becoming easier for me to do.
I have to say, Jen and Lindsay, one real life-changer for me right now is the idea of planning a 30-week year, instead of 36. Both of you, I think, mentioned doing this, and it's made a lot of my planning for next year come into focus. I think this will really help my high-schooler, who will probably be working into the summer to finish this year, thanks to the time he's had to spend on chemistry, plus his job. But it's also helped me to feel relaxed and confident about the coming year with my youngers. I've planned three pretty rich 10-week terms with the idea that reading *can* spill over, and that we can have a lot more flexibility in our schedule throughout the year. I've planned the terms out broadly, but for everyone I'm going to do a far more specific week-by-week breakdown, as I've done for high school in the past. Usually my MO with the youngers is "just read, and when you finish one book, we'll start another." But I'm breaking readings down far more specifically for next year and moving both of them to a set of printed plans with a checklist, as a further step towards independence.
And I enjoy all this as an intellectual exercise. To revisit the blog post that triggered this conversation: one thought that came to me as I was driving to my chiropractor's appointment this morning was that to me, the idea of not having to put curriculum together isn't freeing. I know that for some people it is -- they want to focus on teaching, not planning. But for me a huge part of the teaching is in the planning. When the plan is in motion, I'm *not* "teaching" so much. I'm there, I'm conversing, I'm facilitating, I'm sitting with -- and that's because I've set up a little culture in which I can do that. Being handed a set of things to do seems a little like -- well, I don't know what would be a good analogy. Suddenly trying to live in someone else's house? Even if I really like it and sort of wish I did live there?
Aaaaand I have to run again, so I'll just leave that hanging.
Sally
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SallyT
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Cross-posting with Jen -- I was initially answering Lindsay!
Sally
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: April 08 2014 at 4:40pm | IP Logged
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Tangent Question:
Why do you think that AO organized the history the way it did? My understanding is that CM used a two track system closer to the way that MA does. We've had lots of discussions about how to do history, doing two tracks, etc... I was just looking at both histories, and since MA introduces the country of origin first and AO goes chronologically, I think it will work out for ds1 and ds2 to both do Our Island Story next year, though I am still trying to make sense of where that will leave them to pick up down the road.
**That's neither here nor there, but it is one area where I just can't make sense of not tweaking! **
Anyway, MA's history is more intuitive for me to look at, and I was just curious if anyone had any ideas on why AO opted for a single track (that is still somewhat confusing to me with all the books laid out as they are). Just having certain books done per year is much easier for me to wrap my head around than piece-mealing them all together so everything is strictly chronological.
And I think it was here that I learned that Charlotte didn't think things *needed* to be piece-mealed, that children could make their own connections. I don't think the AO history is bad at all--its stellar--I just find it mind boggling to navigate.
I don't know about Jen. I stumbled on 30 weeks because the Latin curriculum was only 30 weeks I was pregnant and figured that we needed at least enough time to get that done, and the rest was gravy BUT I really like it!  And I'm planning to do it again this year. My boys go to German camp for 2 weeks in August, most definitely to count as school, and there are a lot of days spent birding and in independent learning that I don't want to interfere with. I helps me make peace with my love of unschooling.  Some of our best read-alouds happen during those weeks!
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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony
[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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SallyT
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Joined: Aug 08 2007
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| Posted: April 08 2014 at 5:28pm | IP Logged
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I've just been kind of AO-ing my rising 11th-grader's program for next year, and I wondered the same thing about their history.
Because of the cycle we've been on, he's up for an America-centered year, which I was able to construct by basically splicing together at least the idea of Years 9-11, with many of my own resources. I did glean lots of good reading ideas, however, and so far, having just planned out Term One on a weekly basis, I'm pretty happy with how things are falling together. It's not as *much* as AO schedules, but then we're covering a much larger timespan, from New World discovery through the end of the 19th century, and I am including a greater concentration of American literature. 12th grade will focus on the 20th century, and I'm already looking forward to that, even though that planning is a whole year away!
Meanwhile, I feel better than I ever have about the balance between a spine text (Johnson's History of the American People) and other readings, about how I've scheduled in novels, about including much more Shakespeare than I have in the past (3 plays rather than 1 yearly), and so on. I'm using their Year 11 Bible readings for the year and Imitation of Christ for devotional reading . . . This feels like a really good, right structure to me, and while our readings are heavy on excerpts, not whole works (not *all* of Walden or Self-Reliance, for example), there's still a lot of good, rich stuff.
He'll be taking several classes at the college -- Physics, a math (probably trig), and German -- which will be fairly demanding, so I'm trying to keep things in balance here.
Anyway, like you, Lindsay, I find MA's history much more congenial, maybe because it's more or less what we've been doing all along. I think that no matter what, I'll probably continue to follow my basic history cycle through high school, though I've contemplated adding National History (U.S.) through all four years in a second track. I haven't done a dual track through high school yet, but I've come to love it in the primary/middle years.
Gotta run yet again!
Sally
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Castle in the Sea
Abandon Hopefully
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4Real Forums : Philosophy of Education
Topic: CM and DIY Curriculum
