Thursday, July 24, 2014

I Must Write My Thoughts About Next Year!

Okay, I was going to try to hold off until August before getting into serious school planning, but my mind has so many thoughts going through it, I need to get some of them out!

My 16-year old definitely has to do something differently this year. There are some outreach places that encourage students to do a single subject at a time, get that whole subject done in a month, then move on. I was thinking this might be helpful for my daughter, give her something different, the sense of accomplishment... But then the thought hit: If part of her problem is that she feels she's not being educated, then is doing nothing but one subject for a month really going to help her? No. Her mind isn't going to have the time to really digest it. It'll get overloaded with information from only one subject. Yes, it will take care of the whole get-things-done part, but is that as important as real learning? Perhaps even enjoying it? And what if the overload causes her to slow down and not get the subject done?

Reading some Charlotte Mason things this evening, one thing that hit me--which has probably hit me before--is this: A single subject can be broken up into different parts and each part gets tackled but once each week. This would actually be super beneficial for the exams at the end of the semester because all the different topics will have been covered and refreshed in the mind over the course of the semester. I could see this potentially not working for her for math because math is the kind of thing you just need more regular practice with, but with English, social studies, science...? I would have to see if the biology is sequential at all, because that could be a bit of a problem, but English and social studies definitely aren't. She has grade 11 English, Social Studies and Science (most likely Biology) left to finish, plus we need to work out if she's met the requirements for grade 11 Art, see about dance credits and perhaps get her into some violin lessons and have her meet the requirements for grade 10 music. To finish high school over the next two years, the government requires that she do grade 12 English and Social Studies, I'm guessing she will do grade 12 math and science just to cover her bases for post-secondary admission (although, if she has the necessary grade 12 credits without those, she could potentially just leave them), the plan is for her to do grade 12 Art and Physical Education and I'm not sure where that leaves her in her necessary credits. I'll have to sit down and tally everything.

I do still have to decide about my son and books we didn't finish last year. (Oh, dear, it just hit me that because I was going to wait until August to plan, I may actually run out of time to have the necessary resources for the beginning of September; I don't feel so bad now about letting myself write out my thoughts!) Main goal this year: Learn to write. Both handwriting (well, he knows how, but it's terrible) and actual sentences and paragraphs. He's going to start off with one of the Writing Strands books as he really has no idea how to write things other than text messages to people. I do want to get him narration more, too, which will help with the writing. There's still some catching up to do in math before he hits grade 10. I know I wrote earlier this year some ideas for next school year. I guess I should check out what I've already said. :D

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