Circle Time 2010-2011 Term I …and More…

In honor of today, this first day of school, I’m finally posting my plans. Good thing they’re ready! I’ve changed a number of things, and I think I’m going to be pleased with the results. All of this summer reading did what I hoped it’d do–it changed me and, I hope, made me a better teacher.

First, here’s our Circle Time plans for Term 1:

Circle Time Weekly Schedule 2010-2011 Term 1

This is the last time I’m using this format. A friend of mine starting transferring it over to a spreadsheet, and I love what she’s done with it and intend to follow in her footsteps for next term.

I’m continuing what I began this summer, which was reading one short Bible story each day, and requiring narration from my oldest. I require my daughter A. to remember something from the story, and she is to speak first because listening to a narration causes her to forget, or to rely on the narration for her information.

Instead of manners this term, a friend and I wrote a short course on the seven virtues. It’s just introductory; a little devotional study. But I think it’ll be great, and it will serve the same purpose as manners in that it will offer correction to the heart and behavior.

We have decided not to enroll the children in Awana this year, for a variety of reasons that I won’t explore. Two out of three children are relieved by this. I won’t say that I think this is a perfect decision, but there will be some benefits. I have had a love/hate relationship with Awana, and one reason for this has been that it appropriates all of our memory work unto itself. We did great on catechism this summer, and I am pretty sure it is because we aren’t drilling for Awana. I have wanted to have a much bigger variety for our memory work, and now I can, without negatively impacting my children’s performance at Awana.

So, we are memorizing a verse to correspond to each virtue. We will also add to our Children’s Catechism work. In addition, I was very inspired by Cindy–not just her interview, but also by rereading her archives–and I decided to begin poetry memorization. We are starting with one of our favorites, Bed in Summer by Robert Louis Stevenson. I have a list of four poems to keep us going, and three are from A Child’s Garden of Verses {Bed in Summer, Whole Duty of Children, and The Cow}. In addition, we’ll do Alexander’s The Beggar Boy, which is in our copy of The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse. {I have no idea how long this will take us, but I suppose the only way to find out is to begin.}

In the past, we have sung one song per day, and used Tuesdays to work on our new songs. I have decided that in addition to reviewing one song per day, we will sing whatever we learned on Tuesdays. The extra practice should cause us to learn more songs, and faster. I have printed up a “family hymnal” for us. This way, my husband can grab it and be sure that our children can sing them all. I usually ask him what songs he wants them to learn, so he should enjoy seeing some of the fruit of these labors.

For the virtue study, my friend found a collection of old letters to give to our boys as additional reading. Not every letter corresponds perfectly to a virtue, but many of them do, and we liked the content {of all but two}. The letters are from an older brother to a younger brother, and since neither of the boys receiving these letters once or twice per week have an older brother {they are oldest children}, I think it will be interesting. Hopefully, they will enjoy the feeling of having an older brother, if only for a few minutes per week.

For artist/picture study this year, I am going to go all-out Charlotte Mason and try visualization. This is where the children look at the picture and try to recreate it in their minds. In the past I have done Art Narration, but I feel compelled to try visualization and see what happens.

I am still doing Song School Latin, mainly at the request of my three-year-old, who adores it. This year, however, my oldest won’t be doing the book work. {Charlotte and Comenius both have me going backwards on formal grammar.} Instead, he’ll be doing Rosetta Stone Latin whenever he visits my parents

I am still toying with my Average Day Chart. I cannot decide if O. is ready to drop his morning nap or not. This morning, we had Breakfast School with our friends {because the first day of school ought to be fun, so I hear–and it was and I’m hoping this is a new tradition}. O. was very whiny by 10am, even though we were outside, and he had previously eaten seven pancakes and four sausages. I had thought that having Circle Time outside was going to solve the Toddler Problem for me, but this had me second-guessing myself.

Maybe he still needs his sleep.

But, if he takes a morning nap, then he won’t be going down for an afternoon nap until around 2:30, which changes my afternoon schedule a bit.

For now, I am assuming that he will be ready to drop a nap in a week or two, and printed up an Average Day Chart that will work for that time in the future. For now, we will modify it as needed to suit the toddler. Here is what I’ve got:

Average Day Chart 2010-2011 (1)

Another new thing I’m doing this year is giving more responsibility over to my eight-year-old. I have read everything to him for Ambleside until now, even though he was perfectly capable of reading them alone. He was an early reader, and I didn’t want him to miss out on being read to a lot just because he began reading at three. But now, he is ready, and I think he needs to explore working on his own a little more.

Every Monday morning, he receives a clipboard with a week’s worth of assignments attached. This means articles he needs to read, cursive worksheets, math sheets, and so on. Each day is paperclipped together so as to minimize the confusion, plus I’m neurotic and put a little M Tu W Th removable tabs on them. On top of all of this is a weekly assignment sheet. Here is an example:

Weekly Schedule

Okay, so I just noticed this says “Weekly Reading Schedule.” Well, it started as a reading schedule and grew and grew. Charlotte Mason wrote that children should have read two full gospels by age nine, so my husband broke Matthew and one other gospel {don’t remember which} into chunks, and he will read them daily until he has read it all. He is not ready to do all of Ambleside on his own, but he is ready to do some of it, so he will read one alone and narrate to me, one alone and narrate on paper, and I will read one to him and he will narrate to me immediately. Some days are lighter than these early weeks {I always weight it heavy in the beginning, when we are fresh and ready to work anyhow}, and on those days he might do only one or two of those three.

I have pretty much told him he has complete freedom–as far as what time to start and what order to do his work in–other than needing to {1} be present at Circle Time and {2} have everything completed in time for our meeting at 1:45pm.

I want school done by 2pm. Daily.

E. arises at 5:30 or 6 in the morning. Part of the reason I wanted to give him this independence is because I know he might enjoy working in solitude during those early hours when his siblings are sleeping.

The end.

Actually, I’ll end with a list of the resources we’re using for Circle Time this year:

• A Child’s Garden of Verses
• The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse
• My Brother’s Keeper (letters from James Alexander to his younger brother)
• Catechism for Young Children
• Song School Latin
• Fables
• The Pilgrim’s Progress
• Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales {not to brag, but I got this on clearance for $17}
• Beacon Lights of History, Volume 02 – Jewish Heroes and Prophets
• Discovering Jesus in Genesis {okay, we ended up moving this to the evening so my husband could lead us through it, but I thought I’d add it in anyhow}
• The Children’s Book of Virtues

I think that is all…for now. We’ll see. My Circle Time grows and changes every year. I think it is still my favorite part of the day.