Our homeschool progress with the Well Trained Mind
Just thinking about the classical homeschool method again.
Gosh…there’s so much I didn’t know and so much I have yet to learn about it…I’m beginning to really fall in love with this methodology and wish that my upper elementary and high school education followed this. Man…I would have really soared in my college academics!
Not that I was bad…I did pretty good back in college, but not until my junior and senior year when I’d changed my major, and at this point had matured to the point where I knew what I was in school for (not to play around!) and had finally figured out HOW to learn and how to study.
Without the proper tools, children can’t learn (and neither can we adults). We need the building blocks…the foundational tools first. Then with the proper tools, learning becomes easy.
My first year in college was nearly a dismal failure. Not because I flunked out…I mean, I did okay. I was average, made mostly C’s and a few failing grades and an occasional A or B. But I struggled.
So for me, the key to my success my last 2 years in college (where I made Deans and Presidents list) was not some magic formula…but the fact that I discovered how I learned best!
And that was it.
I simply figured out how my own brain works.
I need audio. I need to hear things repeated over and over again until it becomes part of my thought processes and “gets in my spirit” as I like to say.
So I made tapes. (THis is back when purchasing CD’s was expensive). I recorded myself onto a tape recorder reading back my lecture notes from class each day, and I listened to my recordings over and over again, especially the week of exams.
By exam night, I knew the material backward and forward, and not just out of memorization, but now that I had listened to the notes, the content which may have once been confusing now began to clear up and make sense for me.
Anyways…back to today…
Today, I sat down with Nyomi and we worked on spelling.
Just plain old copywork. We also did some dictation and narration. “Tell me what you learned today about________” and wrote this down in her notebook.
We practiced handwriting. Then I called out spelling words which spelled orally and a few I asked her to write down as I called them out (dictation).
We did a math review of subtraction. (Last week was addition review). We finished the Math U See Primer back in December so now we’re just doing review sheets until we purchase the Alpha set.
In Science, we’re studying baby animals. Today her interest was in ponies so we did an internet search on ponies where we found a site that she could play puzzles and games and find out fun facts about ponies. Recently she loves everything ponies…(especially the over-commercialized “My Little Pony” at Toys R Us).
Now I’m looking up some great internet links by Usborn on history and ancient civilization. We began our study on history, timelines, and archaeology last week. It’s just a basic introduction to the concepts, nothing major. I mean she’s only K-1, so it’s not as though I have to flesh out the details nor be extensive, but I’m excited that she gets introduced to history so early, and even more grateful that that I found The Well Trained Mind to help guide me through this classical method.
Thank you, Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise, for this LIFE-CHANGING book!
February 27th, 2008 at 2:46 am
I added you to my mommy blog at http://lifefrommylaptop.com
March 7th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
We’re in similar boats — I have a 4 1/2 yo and 14 mo old. And we’re getting started using WTM. Bookmarked ya, so looking forward to checking back. Happy weekend!