Art

We love art. We've used private instructors, K12 art classes, a book entitled "Drawing with Children" and a set of wonderfully set up kits that guide the artist through replicating famous pieces of art. The kits are called "Master Kitz". CJ has completed 6 of them. Here are some of his finished pieces.

The trivium model through highschool

One thing I've learned in life is that planning ahead is good and necessary, but plans have to be fluid because life happens and if we don't allow ourselves some flexibility in our plans then we may miss out on some very important and life giving adventures. We've said from the very beginning of our homeschooling adventure that we are taking it one year at a time. I don't know how long we'll continue with homeschooling, but I wanted to figure out a "plan" that would take us through high school. I like having a road map. But I know that, at least in my life, road maps are often looked at once or twice and then tossed. We try and find our way and go towards other interesting things instead of following the "plan". I realize that we probably won't follow this plan exactly, but I put it together based on what I have seen work with other families and what I have read about in Susan Wise Bauer's book "A Well Trained Mind". This guide is based on CJ's current levels in Math and Reading, and could easily be adapted as needed for children at different levels. One reason the classical method has been really nice for me as I learn how to help my kids learn is that it divides learning into 3 phases which are roughly related to ages, as opposed to specific goals to be met at certain ages.

Classical Conversations at home

Since we have been living in Malawi, where there is no Classical Conversations community with which to do our community days we've been taking a slightly different approach to using it as a "spine" for our classical learning. We review Cycles 1-3 throughout the year (we already went through each Cycle while in a community back in North Carolina). I've put together a schedule that works for us.

We correspond our "read aloud" time to a different time period in history every day of the week. Here are some of the favorites:

Here is our current weekly schedule:

Curriculum and life update

We have been living in Malawi, Africa for over a year now!! My husband is working on a USAID contract working with early grade literacy in the country. We have continued using Classical Conversations at home, and enjoy a lovely home-school cooperative here in Lilongwe that meets once a month. I teach Spanish, writing and ballet classes to small groups. It has been a great adventure. CJ has a fabulous piano instructor that comes to the house 3 times per week, an art instructor that comes to the house once a week, swimming at our neighbors pool with an instructor and karate at a local school. We live on a compound with 6 other kids, so having other kids around to make forts with, build things, collect snails and lizards, climb trees and generally just be kids has not been a problem at all. The kids here on the compound mainly only speak Chichewa. CJ and Naomi only speak a little but they all somehow communicate flawlessly. I wanted to update this site with a curriculum guide I put together. We get an amazing education allowance through my husband's work, which has allowed me to buy materials we never could afford before. Our favorite part of the day continues to be an hour or more of me reading aloud to CJ and Naomi while they build with Legos, draw or just play quietly. We have a wonderful collection of books we have been able to buy with our education allowance, which is especially needed here as there are no libraries in Malawi. This is a very brief description of what we have used during the grammar stage with CJ since 2012: Curriculum Overview for the Grammar Stage of Learning (ages 4-9)