LCC: The Reality Edition (Part II)
Christine Proctor shares her "day in the life" story about a multi-age homeschool that includes friends as well as family.
Am I Latin Centered? This year I've made an effort to be, by moving Latin early with Math, trying to learn it myself, and cutting out R&S English entirely, in favor of Classical Writing. It was a step in that direction when I realized I could do more multi-age teaching, and even fold in more children in the process.
Here was our Tuesday. Everyone was up and dressed by 9:00 when our extra kids arrived. (On Monday and Tuesday we have two more students - 3rd and 6th grade sisters.) We all sat down at the tables in the school room and began math. My oldest son (5th grade) was waiting for his math lesson so he began translating a page from his Latin for Children reader while I started with the 3rd graders. My 1st grader was doing three pages of his Explode the Code just to finish it out while I started our math off. I rotated through the six kids and kept a dialogue up with my translator son who was quite proud since he did it all without help. Math finished up and several students slipped off to read their literature books.
After a short break we all returned for Latin. Today I had all the groups together and we played a game from Latin for Children. We kept track of points and tossed some candy bars about - and had fun reviewing our Latin vocabulary from the last few weeks. Normally I have two Latin groups. I start one group on their lesson on DVD and then go get the other one started. Then I spend a little time with each group as they do their assignments and chants. Often we'll get together and have each group chant for the other group. Today we were winding down for the year, though. Our DVD for group one died and we're waiting for the new one in the mail so I'm reviewing declensions and the different cases. My 10-year-old wants to go faster. Yesterday we were translating sentences Latin to English and English to Latin and trying to pick the proper declensions for the nouns etc. It was right on for the lower group and too easy for my 5th grader - thus the translating exercise he did on his own. When I finish my own Latin education this summer I hope to be able to make it more my class and not need the DVDs so much, but that is just how it is at the moment.
Latin was done, and we had a great review. We went into a quick game simulating the Stock Market and read aloud a chapter from Story of the World 4 dealing with stocks. The older kids were given a chance to pick their own stock to follow for the week.
Lunch - We read from Pagoo by Holling C. Holling, and we continued working through the Old Testament.
Recess – Mom finally ate a bit of lunch and then our Classical Writing kids arrived.
Yesterday during Classical Writing, each group put on an impromptu play of the story they were rewriting. They were such fun to watch. A lion was roaring as a mouse chewed his ropes to free him, and Allen-a-Dale was fretting over his cancelled wedding. Today I rotated through the lower Aesop A group, the upper Aesop A group and the Aesop B group. I don't know how I ended up with three groups, but next year I'm trying for two. Since school is only going for a week and a half more I let the groups play outside while waiting their turn to meet with me and do their work. We did dictation in each group today, and continued our analysis of the stories. The upper Aesop group is working on prepositional phrases, and they turned in their final story copies from the previous work. They are excited about rewriting William Tell and are already planning a play to perform for the other kids. The bow and arrow sitting outside the kitchen will be put to good use. The beginning Aesop group has a first grader who is still meticulously working on his Princess and the Pea. He is almost done and totally proud of his work. I cannot wait to help him get his quotation marks in place and print it out. We are creating a class book and will hand them out in a couple of weeks. Each family will have a copy of everyone's stories. We are a kind of interesting homeschool since I plug other kids into what my kids are doing. The parents are thrilled - they don't know Latin and they feel insecure about teaching writing. I'm thrilled because my kids are in heaven working away with friends nearby.
I finish up meeting with the CW kids and plan out what they will finish up during the rest of the week. The kids are off to play in the sun, and I'm about to drag two of them off to the dentist.
The most interesting part of this Latin Centered idea, though, is that I am learning Latin. I spent a good half hour at breakfast with my books spread across the table, and the night before I was working away as the kids went to bed. Often now when I'm doing the dishes, the laptop has LfC B DVDs playing and I try to cement what I'm doing. I find the children's chants so helpful for me. It is better than the dry book. I never knew I was so auditory. My 4-year-old came in and told me, "I was saying that ba, bas, bat thing on the playground, Mom."