Next year

Everyone is about to fail math for the semester, so Dave is tutoring non-stop lately, which means we keep finishing school when there are still hours and hours left before he gets home. And it's cold, so the kids don't want to play outside anymore (I already sent them out once today, but I think the window where I feel comfortable forcing them to play outside is something like between 45 and 87ish. It's 38 with a windchill of 30 right now). Anyway, so I thought I'd blog some more instead of trying to figure out what we can have for dinner. Inspired by Kash's recent post, I'm going to blather on for awhile about what the heck we might or might not be doing next year. Mostly for Ari, as the others are comparatively easy to plan for. Milo will be starting MCT Island, and I'm excited to see how he does with that.

Math: he'll be doing Singapore 6a/b. That's the only thing I know for sure at this point. I'm thinking I probably don't want Life of Fred's pre-algebra with economics to be his first introduction to economics; I haven't really gotten a full summary of the economics parts of it, but as far as I can tell it leans toward the libertarian side of things. Perhaps if Paul Krugman had written a kids' intro to economics to balance things out...

At any rate, this leaves me at a bit of a loss...if Singapore 6 is anything like 5, we're going to need something to supplement with. I'm thinking we'll backtrack and do LOF Decimals and Percents, since he never did that. Then I may find some more "fun math" to add in...maybe an online Duke TIP course.

Grammar, Writing, and Literature: MCT Voyage level. That part's easy enough. We're getting to the point in Town level right now where I can tie his assignments there in with his other subjects, so I'm hoping things will be the same in Voyage...he can do lots of writing about history (and maybe science and literature) with his MCT assignments, and he'll be ready to drop the summaries he's been doing in history.

For literature, I'm hoping MCT's promised literature studies--at least a couple of them--will be ready by then. Even better would be if one was ready by summer, so I could read through it and then crib from it as I pre-read some of Ari's other books for the year. Aside from that, I'm relatively happy with how things have gone this year--a mix of books that tie in with history and books that don't, some informal discussion, plus dictation and some close reading. So I hope to continue that, perhaps with a bit more intentionally and planning. Of course, what aspect of my life wouldn't benefit from more intentionality and planning?

History: we'll be doing Story of the World 2 together, so for Ari I just need to find stuff to supplement with. I just finally put History: The Definitive Visual Guide in my Amazon cart, so there! [and now it's the next day; I bored myself with all my planning yesterday and couldn't finish). So my very tentative plan is that he will follow along with us for SOTW and then do extra reading from the DVG (and extra writing). After Christmas I'm going to have him do Duke TIP's "Growing Up Heroic." If this goes reasonably well, I'll have him do their King Arthur course next year--so that will be a history/literature thing. And then I'm looking at Ellen McHenry's Mapping the World With Art. I think he will like that a lot. I think that will be sufficient to overwhelm us both.

Languages: Assuming Spanish is still offered at LEO, he'll continue taking it there. I'm hoping to start Galore Park Spanish with him after xmas, so he'll keep going with that. And then if I stay brave, I might have him start Greek, too (probably Classical Academic Press' Greek for Children; both of us sort of hated their Spanish program, but I hear good things about the Greek. And I think perhaps a lot of the trouble with their Spanish was that they treated it like a classical language instead of a modern language. Chanting verb tenses in Spanish made no sense to me).

Science: oh, yeah. Still no idea. Honestly, I really like outsourcing science, as we've done this year, so if there's a good opportunity to do that again, that may well be what happens. I may add in an online class, too, though, as the science this year has been relatively light for him. And having him do science somewhere else frees me up to put more effort into doing a good job with it for Milo and Gus (I'd like to keep working through the Nebel's with them).

Other: as always, I want him to focus more on piano. He's actually doing well with it now, but he's resistant to organized lessons (from Dave). He's teaching himself to play "Deck the Halls" and "Ode to Joy," and Dave helps him out and makes suggestions when he's open to it. He was picking out parts of "Little Drummer Boy" by ear the other day, which means he has about 100 times more musical talent than I have, so I definitely want him to keep it up.

One of the goals for the rest of this year is to get critical thinking stuff done more consistently. He's got Logic Liftoff and Building Thinking Skills to do; I just need to have him spend a few minutes on it at least a few times a week. And then I need to look into something or other for next year. Yes, something.

For other extra-curriculars...he really enjoyed homeschool soccer in the fall, so we'll plan on doing that indefinitely (Gus also wants to do it again, but I can't talk Milo into it. He's not so sporty). And he's doing basketball at the Y...he just started a couple of weeks ago, but so far he's really into it. I'm good with continuing that next year, too, if he wants to. Maybe Gus and Milo will want to try it, too. They're tall children, after all.

And there we have it. There's really not that much more to figure out, which is nice.