Seven Habits for a Highly Effective New Shool Year

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Maureen invited me to chime in here and I'm glad to give my off-the-cuff offerings!

1.  First things first:  Take some time to pray. Pray really hard that God will enlighten you and help you to discern what it is He wants your children to learn this year. Be still and listen.  Look at the circumstances of your life.  He knows them all and therein is part of His plan.  Don't whine about the obstacles; dont' wish them away.  Instead see them as opportunities to embrace His will.

2.  Have a plan:  Think this through.  Really consider the best way to answer the charge the Lord has given you.  Research materials; ask questions; watch what other people do. Then, take it again to prayer and come up with your very own plan.  God knows you intimately and these are the children He gave especially to you.  He trusts you to raise them for His glory.

3.   Order your environment: Clear out the physical clutter and you will clear out the mental clutter.  Everyone will think better if there is a place for everything and everything is in its place.

4.   Get the routine down:  Before the official start of "school," give as much thought to household routines (your character training curriculum) as you do to academic goals.  Work dliligently on training those habits in the waning days of summer.

5.   Refuse to over-commit:  Do not overschedule. STAY HOME.  As great as all those co-op activities look, take care to guard the rhythm of your days and to protect your energy level.  Just say "no."  Home education is about family--over-commitment will wreak havoc with a peaceful family culture. It seems the larger your family is, the more protective you must be of your time and your energy.  Sacrifice the good (and there is so much good in the world of outside classes, co-ops, and activities) for the better.

6.   Remember the airplane:  On any given flight, the plane is off course most of the time.  But with corrections and tweaking, it almost always arrives at its destination.  So it is with home education.  Don't despair if you are re-writing your meticulous plans by October 1st and chucking them altogether for Plan B by November 1st. Just keep praying and keep listening.  You'll reach the destination.

7.   Schedule confession and adoration:  Make it a weekly family outing.  You all need the grace.

Resource List for Confirmation Preparation

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I've received several requests for a more detailed resource list for Confirmation preparation. This is a resource list for the Confirmation notebook.  Please bear in mind that this is a two-year project.  Some of the books have more mature content than others but are wholly appropriate for young adults on the verge of Confirmation. I begin with the less intense books and move to the others.  The success of this preparation rests solely on lots of discussion. When to begin preparation is really a matter of the parents' discretion.  Some children will not be ready for this kind of study before they are well into the teen years.  Others will begin to ask questions and initiate discussions that indicate their readiness at twelve or thirteen.

Apologetics

A Philadelphia Catholic in King James’ Court (Kennedy)

Prove it! God (Wellborn)

Prove It! Church (Wellborn)

Prove It! Prayer (Wellborn)

Prove It! Jesus (Wellborn)

Did Adam and Eve have Belly Buttons? (Pinto)

Boys to Men (Gray and Martin)

You Can Become A Saint! (Budnik)

Mere Christianity (Lewis)

We’re On a Mission From God (Bonacci)

Rome Sweet Home (Hahn)

Surprised By Truth (Madrid)

Surprised By Truth II (Madrid)

Welcome Home (Claveau)

Your Questions: God’s Answers (Kreeft)

This IS My Body (Shea)

By What Authority? (Shea)

The Screwtape Letters (Lewis)

Real Love (Bonacci)

Witness To Hope (Wiegel)

Letters to  a Young Catholic (Weigel)

Catechism

For discussion:

Catholic Christianity (Kreeft)

For memory:

Things Every Catholic Should Know

For narration:

Prayer

The Apostle's Creed

The Sacraments

The Ten Commandments

Church History

To be narrated:

God's Merciful Love

A Life of Our Lord for Children (Hunt)

The First Christians (Hunt)

The Great Adventure (Cavins)

Salvation History (Hahn)

Mrs. Carroll's History Sampler Series

Stories of the Saints

To be narrated: Vision Books for Youth

The Plan for Patrick

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Patrick will be twelve on the Feast of the Guardian Angels.  He's technically a sixth grader this year, but his plan of study is all over the map. Patrick is a very capable student--pretty much everything comes easily to him.  The part of planning for him that is both a challenge and a blessing is that Patrick is an exceptional soccer player.  He is a nationally ranked youth player who is part of the Olympic Development Program; he's a boy with both eyes focused on the National Team and more and that focus colors everything else about him.

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It took me a while to accept this dimension.  Truthfully, I think God put Bobby Convey in my life to prepare me for Patrick. There's a certain knack to balancing an athletic gift with all the other dimensions of a child and I'm just starting to get the knack.  Patrick devotes three hours a day, on average, to playing soccer.  His weekends are all soccer, all the time.  This is his choice.  When you take the ball away, he justs finds something else to kick (balled up newspaper, balled up socks, balled up pretty-much-anything).  Because so much of his time is consumed by his passion, when I plan his studies, I need to plan the most  bang for the buck.

More importantly, since so much brain space is devoted to all things soccer, I have to be very careful to be certain to nurture the spiritual and emotional development of this child.  My limited experience with child prodigies (as a consultant with Major League Soccer as they recruited teenagers) has taught me that there are huge chunks of development that can go unaddressed while the physical prowess and athletic greatness are being cultivated.  My husband and I are committed to the whole child.

This is an incredibly intense child.  That intensity can be a great blessing on the soccer field and in the learning room.  It can make him a fiercely loyal friend.  It can also drive us all crazy with its tunnel-vision. He can easily slip into feeling like he has the weight of the world (or at least the World Cup) on his shoulders. Habit training is ongoing and I also pray daily to touch his heart with things good and noble and so to counter-balance the intense competitiveness that can potentially hurt other people. In order to succeed on the soccer pitch that way he does, he is constantly evaluating himself.  My job is not to take away from that but to make him aware of others as well. He is blessed to live in such a big family, to have Bobby as a role model, to have a big brother who has succeeded as an athlete in his own right.  Without those checks, I'm afraid his ego would be out of control.  We are all about humility--making him aware all the time that without God, he could do nothing.

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The Plan

Religious studies will be the core of Patrick's course of studies this year and next.  Confirmation preparation is something we take very seriously around here and he has a substantial reading list ahead of him.  He and I will begin a confirmation notebook this year, to be completed over the next two years.  We are blessed with a pastor who takes a personal interest confirmation preparation and interviews each candidate.  He mandates a notebook (though his is a bit sparser than mine).  It's nice to know that someone else will read and relate to the hard work we'll put in. Patrick's notebook will have sections for:

  • memory work
  • saints' stories
  • narrative records of corporal and spiritual works of mercy he performs
  • narrations of apologetics books (we'll use the booklist from the Transitions curriculum), plus a few recent additions
  • Catechism narrations
  • Bible history
  • Catholic Mosaic narrations, adjusted up to his level
  • Narrations from Moira Farrell's Level 3 Catechesis of the Good Shepherd just as soon as it becomes available

Science and History

Although I made an attempt last year to set Patrick apart from his younger siblings and pursue Middle School plans just for him, it backfired pretty badly.  He wants to be in our midst and he is a natural leader.  So, to set him to working on the same subject matter (in science, history, even religious studies) just a notch or two above the younger ones has great benefits all the way around.  The younger children have a tangible example of scholarship to which they can aspire and Patrick has living, breathing reasons to do his best (he also has something to feed his competitive nature in a positive way).  So, he'll pursue unit studies with the rest of us, using some of those middle school books as his spines. First up is our bird study.  After the baby arrives, we'll study Ancient Greece.

Math

Math comes easily to Patrick, as it does to Nicholas.  He is comfortable with Math-U-See and has made great progress there.  He'll continue with that at his own pace. I think we'll hit Algebra this year.

Language Arts

I'm very enthused about using language arts materials from Hillside Education. I can't say enough good things about both the quality and the philosophy. Patrick will use Lingua Mater and Novel Inquiries.

Foreign Language

We are blessed to have a friend who is enthusiastically teaching Spanish to our children.  Patrick enjoys foreign language.  He will also complete Latina Christiana I & II, working at his own pace.

That's a full load, particularly when one considers that his "school" day usually ends around 2:00 in order to get him out the door to training and he's frequently not home until 9:00 PM.  It will require a great deal of discipline on his part and mine to accomplish both our academic and our athletic goals.  His coach is very supportive and a big proponent of a quality education.  The coach, Patrick's dad and I have all witnessed the academic shambles of several excellent young athletes who "finished" school early in order to devote their full time and attention to soccer.  We are determined to provide for both academic and athletic success in this case.

For the Birds: A Rabbit Trail

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Throughout the spring and summer, we caught the "birding bug."  We hung a feeder and set out some simple birdbaths and even built a rudimentary nesting box.  We rejoiced in the nest and the eggs, celebrated the birth of the babies,  and mourned the terrible, violent death of the baby birds. As ugly as the twist of nature was, we were still pretty amazed by the birds in our backyard. I especially love the early morning, before the busyness of the day and the traffic in the kitchen frighten the birds away from the window feeder.  This morning, as I sipped a very mellow cup of tea, I pondered the bird-coffee connection (for some reason this made me think of Dawn; I'm sure she'll appreciate it).  We've certainly developed a bird-watching habit.

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As the sunflowers grew, the goldfinches came to entertain and a red-winged blackbird and a cardinal were regulars at the feeder. More and more bird questions were generated while we watched from the sunroom windows.  It is time to officially launch a rabbit trail into the world of birding.

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My plan, rough as it is, is to study birds intensively for the next month or so (until the baby is born) and then to just maintain our watching and recording habits through the next year.  Birding is a year 'round venture and so this is a year 'round rabbit trail, with some instensive time up front. We began our study at Wild Birds Unlimited, a great store and place of resource that is located within my five mile pregnant mom travel radius.

The very knowledgeable and helpful salesclerk got us all set up with an array of feeders and food to take us well into the fall. She assured us that it isn't too late to attract hummingbirds and she showed us how to attract even more goldfinches. We talked a bit about the demise of our nesting birds.  We'll try again with those in the spring. We returned home to set up feeding stations around the backyard, all still within clear view of the sunrooms windows.  And we were richly rewarded with goldfinches and hummingbirds within an hour of hanging the new feeders!

While the children spilled seed all over the backyard filled feeders, I busied myself sketching out content I want them to learn from this unit study.  We know that if they understand the vocabulary of a topic, they know the topic.  So, I began with a preliminary vocabulary list.  I fully expect the list to grow as we read and watch our birds, but this is a beginning.

  • birds of prey
  • swimming birds
  • diving birds
  • game birds
  • aquatic birds
  • songbirds
  • hummingbirds
  • warm-blooded
  • ornithology
  • migrations
  • resident birds
  • homing instinct
  • flight muscles
  • keel
  • humerus
  • upstroke
  • downstroke
  • syrinx
  • hatchling
  • countour feather
  • down feather
  • semi-plume
  • filoplume
  • bristles
  • preening
  • plumage
  • motling
  • nesting
  • scrape nest
  • brood nest
  • woven nest
  • no nester
  • cavity nester
  • mound nest
  • earth hole nest
  • adherent nest
  • platform nest
  • mud daub nest
  • hanging cup nest
  • clutch
  • mating/courtship
  • brooding
  • egg tooth
  • fledgling
  • camouflage
  • field marks

We'll encounter much of this vocabulary in the books I've chosen for the "Bird Basket."  For the younger children, Crinkleroot will be their guide and they will become well-acquainted with Crinkleroot's Guide to Knowing the Birds.

Crinkleroot's Guide to Knowing the Birds (Crinkleroot)

Jim Arnosky does a masterful job of introducing even young children to some pretty sophisticated bird concepts and vocabulary.  It's well worth the search you may have to undertake to find a copy.  Our other "spine" is a brand new book in the the Apologia series for elementary/middle school children.  I'm not a huge fan of Apologia science in high school but I do like the series by Jeannie Fulbright. Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day is no exception. 

Exploring Creation with Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the 5th Day (Apologia Science Young Explorers)

We'll just use the first section of the book (on birds) this fall and then perhaps hit insects intensely next spring and summer.All the bird info this mom needs to know can be found in Fulbright's book and at the Wild Birds Unlimited store.  That's a good thing because I'm going to be doing some pretty intense nesting of my own while we undertake this study!

The bird book basket is at the ready.  This is where the stories and the pictures will take us beyond our backyard and nurture intimacy and interest with all things avian.

Picture Books
DVDs
Biography
Bird Watching with Margaret Morse Nice
I'm looking for a biography of John James Audobon for children.  I know I read one with the big kids but I can't remember the title or find it here.  Any suggestions?
Coloring Books
This will be a notebooking rabbit trail as opposed to a lapbooking one.  The vocabulary lists will go in the notebooks and so will drawings of birds they observe in the yard.  They will map a bird and label the parts and they will draw and label the parts of an egg. We're going to talk a bit about taxonomy and all the birds we observed will be labelled correctly. Our field guides will serve us well in this endeavor. 
In the beginning, we are going to talk extensively about how to attract birds to our backyard.
We don't have a lot of trees of hedgerows for cover, so we're going to have to do a bit work outside.  We are planning to build some nesting boxes, though the nesting season is pretty much past (except for goldfinches). Other hands-on acivities will incude dissecting owl pellets and identifying and labelling what we see, making suet feeder food and making pine cone bird feeders.  In February, we'll participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count. As with all our nature endeavors, there will be much blogging and record-keeping at Blossoms and Bees. Please visit there frequently to see what's new in our bird-friendly backyard!