Sunday, July 28, 2013

School 2013-14

I had been having trouble getting excited about starting school. Jaan and Raia didn't finish whole AO years, and they're in different weeks of their respective years, and Asya's joining us, and.... But then I came back from camp and couldn't stop thinking about our next school year! Now I'm excited. Oh, and I'm wanting to do the brand-new Year 12 myself. (Remember this? On June 8 there: you could say that picture might show some of the birth of Year 12.)

I'm thinking of things that I really want to do well in the next year:
  • Formal nature study, i.e. nature notebooks (Haven't done well with that since Bogdan reached the age of interference.)
  • Morning together time, with memorizing, music and more (Dropped that when we moved to this tiny-kitchen apartment.)
  • Handwriting!
  • English narrations (Camp showed me that Jaan and Raia can do much more here.)
  • More individual work for Jaan and Raia (Definitely need to think of how to get that in.)
I'll write more about each of those points as I can. This focusing in all different directions stuff is hard for me! I need to get ready for camp here, move to another city AND plan our school year. Sigh. But, I'm excited now, and that counts for a lot.

3 comments:

Mom said...

Excitement in the midst of the overwhelm...now that is truly a gift!

You are beautiful; your children are deeply blessed to have you as their mother.

Silvia said...

Phyllis, I too have a girl almost 9, the one between your Jan and your Raia, who is in year 3 and not much independent, though progress is there and I don't mind sitting and working along with both, she and her sister in year 1.

I just have you as my reference who is one year ahead with Jan. Did you get to finish those years 1 and 3 last year? I remember reading you were a bit behind.

Are you doing year 4 with Jan? If so, are you doing Plutarch and Latin, and do you do all those practices they say daily, daily? We were doing copy work once a week, not daily. Math 3 or 4 times, not always daily. I don't know. If our children don't do much independent work, does that mean is best to do a year 3.5?

Amy from Fisher Academy, started Latin in year 6, when her oldest was in year 6, and it worked well. But I think she did years 3 and 4 and maybe incorporated all (but Latin), of what year 4 entitles, but maybe in smaller dose?

Warmly,
Silvia

Phyllis said...

Silvia, I was going to try to answer your questions with a whole blog post, but I don't know if I'll get to that, so here goes:

1) Jaan and Raia are at the end of the second term of Years 3 and 1. We didn't finish those last year, so we just picked up where they left off.

2) Jaan will go into Year 4 sometime this year, when he finishes Year 3. I did start him on Latin, but not Plutarch and real Shakespeare yet. Those will come soon.

3) We do all the daily subjects pretty much daily. I'm really making a point of working on handwriting this year. Instead of alternating languages, we're spending this term on English copywork Every Day. And then next term will be Russian, also Every Day. Math, they work on daily, although they might not finish a whole lesson every day.

4) People often recommend Year 3.5 when children aren't very independent yet. I'm not planning on doing it, though. At least, not planning on it at this point. :-)