Is Elephant Poop the Largest Poop in the World?

(hey, it's gross, but kids love it!)

Homeschooling Plan of Study

We are following the plan of study as found in Jessie Bauer and Susan Wise Bauer's The Well-Trained Mind.

Well Trained Mind Well Trained Mind

As the quality of public education becomes increasingly questionable, home schooling becomes a viable option for many concern...

They advocate a classical education, where you focus on the basics and learning takes place in context and according to the children's developmental stages.

  • In grades 1-4, the aim is to give children as much information as possible. They love exploring at this age, so you let them explore everything. They don't need to analyze yet, they just need the information.
  • In grades 5-8, you teach them to organize that information, and to start to use it to make arguments.
  • In grades 9-12, you teach them to analyze and make arguments based on what they've already learned.

Thus, everything you learn you learn three times. For instance, history looks like this:

  • Year 1: Ancients to 400 A.D.
  • Year 2: 400 AD - 1600 AD
  • Year 3: 1600-1850
  • Year 4: 1850-present

Then you repeat this cycle for grades 5-8, and again for grades 9-12. Science is similar.

  • Year 1: Biology (which the ancients would have observed)
  • Year 2: Astronomy and Geology (which they were exploring in the middle ages)
  • Year 3: Chemistry
  • Year 4: Physics

And then, once again, you repeat.

In all, emphasis is placed on learning from original sources. In the book, the authors list many possible resources for each subject, and we have chosen from their list.

The only subject that we're using a "set" curriculum for, including workbooks, is Saxon Math, which can be found here.

We do, however, use a variety of Usborne books for almost all our subjects. They have wonderful pictures, great text, and are captivating. If you want to order any or see a catalogue, you can e-mail Elizabeth Prinzen, who is an associate, at b.eprinzen@sympatico.ca

We also take plenty of field trips, from fancy ones to the museums in Toronto and Ottawa, to small ones to Reid's Dairy to watch the factory, to the fire station, or to the Frinck Centre. We try to take at least one field trip a week.

The girls are also involved in music lessons, swimming lessons, skating lessons, and gymnastics, while only one of these things takes place in regular "after school" hours. Thus, they have lots of time to be home at night with the family!

To see the mission statement and vision statement we developed for our homeschool, click here.

To see the books I recommend on homeschooling, click here.