Brain-in-a-book (what a relief!)

One of the things on my list for today, believe it or not, is to write a little bit for this blog.

I've been bustling around this week working on getting the school room tidied up for the upcoming school year. I also finally figured out how to get some planning done, turns out I really just needed a format.

I found it!

I tried so many ideas for planning my "soft" schedule (meaning it's not rigid) and at last I came up with this binder:

I am all about the binder this year. Each boy has one that will hold any notebooking pages or loose paper for each subject; Language Arts, Geography, History, Art, Latin, Science...you get the idea. I'm going to add a section for them to track all the books they've read. What a good feeling to look back over the titles you've worked through! They also have a tab for tests and scores. Keeping the important things!

I have several binders for myself; one for tutoring the Apprentice Class (this is a seperate lesson plan), one for important papers (all the love notes I get from the boys and can't bear to part with), one for my household paperwork, and one for school at home.

This school-at-home notebook is the one that calms my storming brain. (The window and the birdies beyond help too)

I have three sections in this notebook:

• Calendar (to mark what days we do school, holidays to remember)
• Weekly Lesson Plans
• Curriculum we use, books we read

The weekly lesson plan was the biggest for me. I need a calendar where I can loosely write down what we're studying with Classical Conversations so I can coordinate our home studies. I need a place to set goals with Math and reading. I need a calendar in which I can write up three separate plans for math, language arts and reading, AND coordinate our plans for history, science, latin, geography and reading. I needed a place to loosely list ideas for nature studies so that I can choose it, or not, depending what we stumble upon outside.

I'm really pleased with how it's all falling into place....which was the big problem. I couldn't think clearly for days because I had all these ideas bouncing around in my head, no where for them to fall.

At any rate, sometime I'll photo the school room but for now it's just cleaned out. Phew!

Going to spend the remainder of the week playing and filling out pages in my new favorite book. Next week pressing on to wrap up around-the-house-projects (namely a half-painted bedroom) and the following work I'll plan for tutoring.

Did I tell you what a relief it is to cruise through all my favorite homeschooling-family blogs & see that I'm not the only one who is rearranging almost everything right now? Truth is I'd love to paint the school room before class starts too, but let's not be silly now! It really does help to see all the photos of everyone else's chaos....this is our busy time of year, isn't it?

Have a wonderful day, and soon I'll post some photos of the mess....just have to zoom out. ;)

Slow Start

We're not launching into our school this year, we're sneaking into it.

I'd read it in a book, the suggestion to start just one thing at a time with your school year. And I LOVE it. This week we started our school back up. Having nearly two months off was plenty of unstructured sleep-in-hanging-around-in-jammies-way-too-long time. So we're back to work, but we're getting in our groove gently.

We started Math this week, and it was just right. Just doing math gave me time to get a feel for how much time it's going to take each day. It gave me time to work with each of my three boys and evaluate whether I had the right books to start with and where to start with each of them. The boys got to ease into the idea of sitting down to sit down and do some hard work with me again. We're getting into our groove. Simply.

The new school year can be really overwhelming. And I have a tenancy to start out the year with too much on the agenda, trying to fill in all the gaps with school work. I am hoping this slow start will help me to get a feel for how much work is enough.

This next week we're going to fall into penmanship, reading for the littles and spelling for the bigger. Again, it gives me time to figure out what these topics will look like for us this year, plan them carefully and figure out what kind of prep I'm needing to do.

And so I'm planning to add a little each week, a new topic. How are you starting your school year?

Summer Fun

While the boys and I are certainly taking a summer break. But what I know after a few trial breaks is that we at the Perko house need to be busy-boys.

So though we're not doing much seat work this summer(I may load them up when we're sitting in the car for long drives) we plan to participate in several fun projects and investigations to keep hands and minds busy here at the Boy's Noise School.

Mondays offer a LEGO challenge over at LEGO Quest Kids. The boys love a challenge, and they love LEGOS. There's always something fun for them to build and share with other families that are participating.

Tuesdays Barb over at Sketchy Tuesday offers a challenge to sketch each week. My boys love the weekly slide show & the anticipation of the next subject to draw.

Then on Fridays we'll be participating in Outdoor Hour challenges with Barb at Handbook of Nature Study. We've been loving our studies so far. I'm learning with the boys new questions to ask, new techniques of of observation. It's wonderful.

Hopefully these fun activities, plus a lot of camping & visiting in between should fill our summer nicely & yet leave enough time to swim, watch some fun weekend movies, play games, and of course, read, read, read....

What are you planning for the summer?

Classical Conversations Endorsement

Our Classical Convesations School 2009-2010


This year was the beginning of our Classical Conversations journey. If you have a chapter near you, and it's quite possible you do, maybe you're thinking of checking it out. If so, head on over to the Classical Conversations website and check out why we love it so much, and can't imagine life without it.

So I'll share with you a bit of what we've learned about Classical Conversations....a bit of what it looks like in our weeks and days.

First off, my boys are younger (4, 6 & 8) so we aren't yet doing Essentials or Challenge, just Foundations.

Foundations is a curriculum, but it's different than anything I've ever done. Each week we memorize a fact or statement for Math, Bible, English, Latin, History, Geography, Science, and 8 points on the time line. We also get in on hands on science experiments and art projects/music. Each child also gets to present something each week to their own class. This is one of my favorite parts of CC, my kids are so comfortable speaking to a group now. Then we go home and practice all of this memorization in addition to the Language Arts and Math curriculum that you do independently, as well as any other subjects you care to do. The following week the kids come back and learn new memory work & review what they've learned.

In the Essentials program (4th-8th grade, I think) the kids stay later in the afternoon and learn more about writing, breaking down parts of speech and the English Language. Now that sounds pretty simple but it's seems to be very, very challenging for the kids who are doing that class. We'll be learning more about this in a year or two. I can't yet tell you about how the Challenge program works. We're too far from that to have seen it in action.

So I guess you could say it's supplemental to the basics (math and reading) that you already do. Some moms piggyback lessons on what we're learning at CC....if in science we're studying volcanoes you can study them at home or online, etc. Our family follows History and our time line with The Story of the World.''

Some links to some other bloggin' mamas descriptions to Classical Conversations;
The Ten O'clock Scholar
Pages of Our Life
Home is Where You Start From


If you're thinking of a homeschool program, looking for some curriculum, excellent Christian education, an irreplacable support group, let me encourage you to check out Classical Conversations.

*I'll be posting soon on "Why Memorization?"