Wow, it's been almost a month...

Patrick's been enjoying his ride-on toys. He also likes to put on his hat by himself (a big boy thing, I suppose). The combo leads to the following images...





















It's pretty cute.

Calla has been walking as long as she holds on to something - the ottoman in our living room works well for her, since she can push it around and walk behind it. Yes, we do actually have a toy for her that she could push and walk behind, but she likes the ottoman (and Patrick likes riding on the aforementioned toy, not shown in the pictures).

Another school year is about to begin, and I have been promised that I won't be teaching, so that I can concentrate on accreditation. Now all we need to do is figure out who can watch the kiddos on Fridays (Mondays and Wednesdays are already secured). :/

Oh, here's Calla...

Isn't she getting BIG? (BTW, thanks to Sears for the portrait).

We're pretty certain this will be my last year with the school. Childcare is harder each year to arrange, especially part-time. It sucks - you work part-time so you can spend more time with the kiddos, but that means you can't afford to pay for "official" childcare on the days you need it. Otherwise, you'd need to work full-time.

We're also pretty sure that the kiddos will be homeschooled. I went on and on and on (and on...) with a couple of the folks from DR talking about my ideas for it - basically, I want to do unit-based instruction once they hit about 3rd or 4th grade, with units being geographically based, then as they move into upper middle/high school, the units would be more timeline/historically based.


So for instance, we'd spend a year studying Africa, and in the process cover (obviously) its geography and cultures (maybe including trying to cook some dishes), the plant and animal life (including food chain, photosynthesis, plant resipiration cycles, etc. as appropriate to the age), read books about or related to the area, drawing vocabulary and age-appropriate spelling and writing assignments from them. There, you've got social studies, science, literature, writing, spelling, and (though I didn't mention it) plenty of chances to also include art and music. Math would be harder to tie in, but we could at least relate story problems to the unit.

As we'd move to the timeline/historical based units, the approach would be the same, though by then science and math would both likely require separate study (again, tying in topics wherever possible, such as the development of certain scientific theories as we hit the appropriate time frame). This would also allow us to revisit some of the geographical information as events in history center around particular regions. Given that most high schools put US history and government in the junior and senior years, I think this would also work well as we'd go from ancient and hit modern time periods at around those years (and thus be able to incorporate that information in).

Plus sides? Literature, art, music, and cultural information (including non-western cultures) would all be in context. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (for instance) makes far more of an impact read (or skimmed) in relation to its historical setting than outside of it in an isolated lit course.

In addition, it's not something that's tied to particular school years - there's no real reason why my kiddos, barely over one year apart, can't cover the same information. Their assignments may differ a little, but otherwise, no reason to differentiate the years for the two of them. They can both do Africa in the same year.

Minuses? While I'm confident that by the end of the "block" of geographical-based years (ditto the historical ones) the kiddos would have (at the minimum) the same topics as those in school, there would be little chance of switching to traditional schooling (public or private) in the midst of them. It's like switching the way one does math, for instance, and concentrating on adding and subtracting in the first couple of years, then multiplication for a year, then division in fourth grade, and fractions/percents/decimals in fifth (with measurement, Roman numerals, and some other topics sprinkled in among those years). By the end of 5th grade, I'm confident you'd have a student who can do math - in fact, I'm quite confident that they'd be far more secure in the basics, since they worked on *mastering* one before moving on (instead of freaking doing LONG DIVISION in THIRD GRADE **BEFORE** they even finish mastering multiplication facts and tables...HELLO, division is MUCH easier once you KNOW your multiplication well...gah...off the soapbox...), but the kiddo would struggle if they had to go into a "normal" math curriculum partway through and deal with problems that assume they've been working on long division already for a full year.

(Note - I'm not necessarily planning on doing math exactly that way, nor necessarily in that sequence, though I am a firm believer in the benefits of mastering one step before moving on to another big topic. It was just an example.)

It'd also be a lot of work for *me* - helped by not doing two vastly different things with the kiddos, mind you, but it's not like you can order XYZ kit of books for grade 5 and be more or less ready to go (note - I have *no* problem with those who want to use boxed curricula. Heck, I likely will as well the first couple of years, before moving into the above plans). There are some curricula that do something similar to this (Konos comes to mind in upper grades) in at least combining language arts and social studies, but I'm looking to tie in more than that, and I'm not even sure that anyone does what I want to do at those lower grade levels.

I'm excited about the idea. I'm also intimidated by it. Eep!

I (finally) watched a recording of a particular pop-u-la-ler musical that a particular person sent to me. Loved it. Heck, the hubby saw some of it too, and liked what he saw. Thanks, you know who! :) If it ever comes (back?) to town, I so wanna go see.

Long update! Thanks for sticking with it!