My classical education "plan" for next year...

[mommydama]

which may be starting sooner than I thought, actually. Mari and I are flying through Calvert K, I want to go through a K skills book with Zoe to assess where she is, but I'm not going to wait until next September to start this stuff. I'm tentatively planning to do "school" year round, with several breaks here and there. I'd like to start purchasing and learning how to use SWR and Rightstart by March at the latest.

Still tweaking...

Reading/Spelling/Writing/Grammar: Spell to Write and Read
Math: RightStart (Mari–Level B, Zoe–Level A or B, depending on K math assessment)
History: History Portfolio Junior and/or CCH’s history units
Science: Kingfisher First Animals Encyclopedia,My Body, Green Thumbs
Art: Artistic Pursuits or Lamb’s Book of Art 1
Music,: Recorder and/or Violin Lessons

Draw, Write, Now just for fun. Mari LOVES copywork and drawing, what could be more perfect?

Comments

[corin13.livejournal.com]

Classical education- can you summarize that for me? How does it apply to the early school years? And is the drawing part of the classical curriculum? What is the significance of teaching drawing?

[mommydama.livejournal.com]

Classical education divides learning into three stages called the trivium. The stages are grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The grammar stage: "The first, for receiving and gathering up information - Knowledge." The logic stage: "The second, for arranging and connecting the information in a logical order - Understanding." The rhetoric stage: "The third, for putting this gathered and ordered information into practical expression - Wisdom." (quotes from this article, which does a great job of explaining the trivium: http://www.triviumpursuit.com/articles/trivium_in_a_capsule.php)

Roughly, the grammar stage is 1st-4th grade, logic stage is about 5th-8th grades and rhetoric is about 9th-12th grade. This corresponds very well with child development and how children learn in each stage of growth.

Some other important parts of classical education is teaching history in the order it happened and in a cyclical pattern (you basically get all of world history three times, once in each stage). Learning a classical language such as Latin and/or Greek is also encouraged (we will probably start with Greek, it makes more sense for us as Orthodox Christians).

Drawing...well, it isn't a necessary part, I don't think. But my girls love to draw, paint, etc, and I'd like to follow a roughly sequential curriculum for art and art history so that it corresponds to what we are doing in history especially. There is a "grammar" to drawing, learning basic skills to put to use later. It makes sense to me.