A few changes

We are at the end of week 20 today.  Week 21 brings some new changes in our little school.  I have felt we were becoming too schoolish in our work and not enough enjoyment or meaningful learning was happening.  After reading and thinking and planning for the last two weeks, I have decided to drop a few a few things and add a few things.  Mostly, I'm steering the ship back towards Charlotte Mason... again.

I love and recommend Rod & Staff English 3, Climbing to Good English 2, and Spell to Write and Read.  Great and fabulous programs!!!  I may use them again in the future.  As for now, I decided to drop them and pursue a rigorous CM language arts routine consisting of daily copywork, daily narration (oral & written), dictation, oral reading practice, more read-alouds, poetry, and nature journaling. 

The kids are getting plenty of grammar from their Latin curriculum, which is why I dropped our wonderful English program.  I feel that Latin is serving them very well.  Memoria Press made a grammar book to use along with their Latin programs, which I will be using too.  Grammar will be learned in the context of latin and applied in an informal way to their everyday work.

The children will have copywork every day.  They will also have composition every day, in the form of either dictation, written narration, or freewriting.

The McGuffey readers will be used for copywork, dictation, and oral reading practice.  These readers are valuable for their moral lessons and literary merit.  It progresses from the Primer, perfect for a new reader, to Book 6, appropriate for high school work.  Savannah and Charlotte will both begin in separate lessons in Book 3.  Madelynn, when she is ready, will soon begin the Primer to learn reading, spelling, and handwriting. 

From the McGuffey readers, one lesson will be assigned for the entire week.  Day 1- copy assigned passage of two to three sentences, Day 2- dictate same passage, Day 3- copy a new assigned passage, Day 4- dictate same passage.  So there will be two separate passages in a lesson to be used for copywork and dictation for a week.  Twice during the week, they will read the same assigned lesson aloud to me, practicing elocution and pronunciation.  Spending a full week on one lesson helps their learning become relevant and impressed upon their minds, which was what was lacking in a regular English textbook or spelling list.

Two days will be spent copying a part of their McGuffey lesson, but the other three days of the week will also have copywork.  One day will be sent copying a number of sentences from literature of their choice, one day copying a scripture of their choice, and one day copying a poem of their choice.  Poetry copywork will occur after we have poetry teatime.  Poetry teatime is when we all grab a book of poetry, go outside with a blanket and snacks, and take turns reading poems to each other.  Kids love it.  The kids also already copy their Latin vocabulary every day, two times each, in cursive.  They will continue to copy their Latin daily.

Since two of our days will be spent doing dictation, the other three days of the week will also include some sort of composition not including copywork.  Two days will include written narrations of our science reading that day.  The fifth day is spent doing a 10-min freewrite.  A freewrite is when we (including myself) write for 10 minutes.  That is the only rule.  We write on any topic.  Grammar, spelling, and neatness are inconsequential for this one assignment we will have each week.  This helps the girls overcome any fears of writing and gets the creative juices flowing.  The girls read me what they wrote, or not, and then file it away.  When we have done this for about 8 to 10 weeks, I will begin teaching them how to edit their own writing.  We tried it for the first time today and it went wonderful!  Savannah and Charlotte both continued to write after the timer went off.  Both wrote over a page worth of writing and both wrote a story they made up, but using the characters from Narnia.  I've never seen Charlotte write that much in her life!!  I am very pleased.

Read-alouds and narrations occur two to three times a day.  I read to them while they are eating breakfast from a scripture reader or other book that has to do with the gospel.  Right now we are reading Book of Mormon Stories for Young Latter-Day Saints.  Twice a week we read from our science book, Exploring Creation.  They write their narrations from science and illustrate what they are learning about in a notebook.  I read to them a tale before quiet time in the afternoon, but don't require a narration at that time.  Then at night I read to them after they are in bed, either a novel or from our history books, and do require an oral narration.

Hopefully this made sense.  I'm excited about the changes made.  I love the idea of a CM language arts, but could never figure out how to make it all work together well in a schedule.  I enjoy the fact that a large portion of it is coming from the McGuffey readers to give their learning relevance and meaning.

Oh, kids just asked if they could go write another story... awesome!  Happy teacher here!