Y1 Year in Review (2018-2019)

General Remarks

Justin has a September birthday, and we opted to start him in 1st grade, or Form 1B this school year.  I'm glad he had that additional year to settle a bit more, as I think we had a much more successful year this way than we would have if we had started him a year earlier.  

Justin, in some ways, is like Gregory in that he loves outdoor projects, tools, and working with people on projects.  He has a more affectionate nature though, and he is also our "crazy monkey boy" as we sometimes call him.  He's shot up quite a bit this year, and often seems all arms and legs, especially when he capers around the house, making noise and generally annoying everyone older than himself. 

Justin and Hannah are best buddies, and do just about everything together.  Hannah and Justin both told people that they were in Kindergarten and First Grade, because they do everything together.  Hannah was present for much of the work below, but would often wander away during the more skill oriented subjects like math, copywork, and reading practice.  But sometimes she would do it on her own at the table with us, writing very carefully whatever she wanted to write in pink or purple pen in her notebook or setting out manipulatives and creating her own equations.

I feel like a Mason education is such a gift for a boy like Justin.  Short lessons hold his attention, the breadth of studies keeps him interested, and the overall short day gives him lots of time to build and play outside.  He also benefits from separating the work of the mind from the development of skills like reading and writing.  His mind is fed with all sorts of ideas from a variety of books, even though his reading progress, while still definitely progress, is slow.

Subject Areas

Bible/Faith

3x/wk, 20 min - Old Testament Studies:  1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings

I do this subject with Gregory, Nathan, and Justin and read the Bible text aloud.  Everyone narrates, and we do appropriate map work afterwards.

On most evenings, Justin and Hannah have a Bible story read aloud to them.  This is probably their third time through Egermeir's Bible Story Book, and their 6th time through a Bible story book in general.  Egermeir's, even though it isn't Catholic, still remains my favorite Bible story book because I feel like she has just the right level of detail and I generally like the quality of her writing.  The illustrations aren't amazing, but they are decent and definitely not cartoonish.

Language Arts

Building the habit of narration is of course a huge part of starting a student in a Mason education.  And having heard his siblings narrate all his life, narration was natural and easy for Justin.  He narrates fairly well, but often lets himself get distracted in his narration by all the life that is going on around him.

Justin does copywork in print 5x/wk for about 6-10 minutes.  I've used poetry, nursery rhymes, sentences from his reading, and a short story I made up for him so that he could get more practice writing the names of people in his family.

Justin does reading practice 5x/week for about 15 minutes and we largely work with a moveable alphabet, poetry/nursery rhymes, and his word book.  At the beginning of the year I was generally slogging through simple readers, but after re-reading Mason's section on reading instruction in Vol. 1, I stopped the madness and went back to her much more effective and pleasant method.  I found this quote particularly convicting:

Now, compare the steady progress and constant interest and liveliness of such lessons with the deadly weariness of the ordinary reading lesson. The child blunders through a page or two in a dreary monotone without expression, with imperfect enunciation. He comes to a word he does not know, and he spells it; that throws no light on the subject, and he is told the word: he repeats it, but as he has made no mental effort to secure the word, the next time he meets with it the same process is gone through. The reading lesson for that day comes to an end. The pupil has been miserably bored, and has not acquired one new word. Eventually, he learns to read, somehow, by mere dint of repetition; but consider what an abuse of his intelligence is a system of teaching which makes him undergo daily labour with little or no result, and gives him a distaste for books before he has learned to use them. (Vol. 1, p. 206-207)

I don't know why I had reverted to such an ineffective method, but I think it serves as an excellent reminder as to why it is so important to keep studying and reading Mason's work and the Parent's Review articles.  Just because you've read how to do something once, or even because you were doing something using Mason's methods in the past doesn't mean you will automatically continue to do it that way in the future.  It is so easy to drift back to what we grew up with or what we started homeschooling with, even if we completely do not intend to do so!

Mathematics

I was fortunate enough to go to Sonya Shafer's presentation about Living Math in 2016 and I bought the Living Math book and DVD.  I was so impressed by what she presented, that I knew this was the way to go.  I implemented some of the strategies with my two older sons and it made a huge difference for them.  I was excited to start from the beginning using these living math methods with my younger children.

I purchased Book 1 of the Charlotte Mason Elementary Arithmetic series right when it came out, but I was at a bit of a loss as to where to start with it.  It starts at the very beginning, like the student has never seen a number before or ever thought of counting anything.  That certainly doesn't describe Justin, so I put it aside and we played lots of number games with these great dot cards, used money, practiced counting by two's, three's, five's and ten's using different objects, wrote numbers and equations, and played lots of different games where we made 10's. Justin grew very solid on adding and subtracting into the teens, and I decided it was time to push into tens bundles.  I took another look at the Elementary Arithmetic book and decided to start using that in the Twenty through Twenty-Nine section about halfway through the book.  We transitioned smoothly over to this, and while Justin still misses the dot cards upon occasion, this is more appropriate for him and is helping him to progress further in his mathematical learning.

Literature

While I was planning, I had this brilliant idea that I would have three literature slots, each about 20 minutes.  In one slot I would read from Fairy Tales (I chose an illustrated Andersen's Fairy Tales), and in the second I would read from a rotation of Just So Stories, Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare, and Aesop's Fables.  We would read from one until we finished a story, then move to the next book.  That way we would be reading just a few fables a term and we could still read from these other two literature books I wanted to include in his curriculum.  It was a great idea, but it just didn't have enough reading time in the schedule to make it work well.  Each Just So Story would take 2-3 weeks, and a story from Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare could take 4-6 weeks, which meant that we sometimes only made it through one rotation in a term.  In the third slot I read Velveteen Rabbit, King of the Golden River, and Peter Pan. (although Peter Pan got moved to Morning Time because I realized the other kids were all trying to listen in while pretending to do other lessons)

I'd like to revisit the idea of a literature rotation slot next year, but I need to think about how to implement it better.  I think it is better to just read a handful of fables in a term, and this helps me to remember to read them periodically...  but I would like to be reading more than 3-4 per year!

History

Since Justin is in Form 1B, he was not included in our history rotation.  He'll join us for history next year when he enters Form 1A.  This year his focus was on heroic tales from early America.  He had three history slots, each about 15 minutes.

• America Begins (can you believe I found a copy of this for $15 at a local used book store?  I was amazed!)
• America Builds Homes (we started this after America Begins and I am using a copy of the book which is probably illegal so don't tell anyone.  It is a lovely book though, and really needs to be reprinted!)
• D'Aulaire bios: Leif the Lucky, Columbus, Pocahontas, George Washington

I also read to him from 50 Famous Stories, because I love that book and have used it with his three older siblings.  It feels like a quintessential Form 1 book to me and is always well received.  It proved a favorite with Justin as well, and I'm glad I included it in the curriculum.

Geography

Practical Geography

We read Me On the Map at the beginning of the year, and did lots of work on finding the cardinal directions, observing shadows at different times of day, discussing where the sun rises and sets...  very basic orienteering sort of work.  

In any reading of Justin's that had a geographical component, we would study the globe and find where we live, then find the place we were reading about.  We would do the same thing with our large US wall map.

Cultural Geography

• This is How We Do It
• Frozen Lands
• Lucia Morning in Sweden
• Little Folks of Many Lands

In the half of the year we read the first three books, and referred often to the map to discuss where these children lived.  I felt like the literary quality was lacking though, and they didn't create vivid images of the places they were describing.  I had hesitated to use Little Folks because it isn't a particularly accurate representation of how things are now in various places, but the writing is so much more vivid that I decided to give it a try.  It quickly became a favorite, and I'm glad I switched over.  

Natural History

We were a little light in Natural History this year, although we do read nature lore as part of our family studies.  We read once a week from the following:

• Little Wanderers
• Hexapod Stories

Spanish

We spent about 10 minutes a day on Spanish and I focused on colors, numbers, parts of the body, very basic sentences, and some common animals and objects in our Spanish studies.  We also sing Spanish folk songs as part of our family studies.

For our lessons, I used Oso Pardo, Oso Pardo, qué ves ahí (and used Erin's very helpful videos on YouTube), cards with the animals in the colors from the book, basic questions like "Cuantos libros hay sobre la mesa?", "Toque tu cabeza", "Dondé está la silla?", etc. for our practice.  It was very interactive, and Justin could generally understand what I was saying by the end of the year, and can come up with words and sometimes even sentences to respond.  So, progress!  But I'm looking forward to moving him to The ULAT so that it doesn't take quite so much out of me.

Handicrafts

Justin has been working on sewing, weaving, and knitting for handicrafts this year.  He's also started Sloyd, and is on the 9th project in the first year.  We generally make each project 2-3 times, in different weights of paper.  I had hoped to do Sloyd with him every week, but I think it was more like 3 out of every 4 weeks.

Music

Justin has started piano lessons with Hoffman Academy.  He is doing well with it, and is about halfway through the second unit.  He does a new lesson about once a week, and I usually have him do some practice before doing the practice session on the website.  He's making good progress, and enjoys playing the piano.  He will even come to the piano and play some of his songs when it isn't time to practice, which I consider a good sign.  I generally watch the lessons with him as well as sit with him for the 10 minutes or so that he practices each weekday.

Drawing

I need to do brush drawing lessons with Justin, but it didn't happen this year.  I did have Justin do a couple drawings from how to draw books to share at our Family Keeping Meeting each week and that has helped his drawing ability and fine motor skills.  I also did art lessons with him sporadically, generally from Masterpiece Society.  This is an area where I definitely need to improve as a teacher!

Family Studies

I should probably mention that there are other subjects in a Mason education, but we study those together as a family.