2011-2012 Curriculum

Another year, another curriculum list...

Elyse is in 4th grade this year. My goals for this year include a solid foundational understanding of basic Latin grammar, mastery of multiplication and division facts, a greater level (amount and maturity) of what I call "output"--written narrations, testing, and overall written work. Here are our goals broken down.

Latin: This is our fourth year of studying Latin. We've completed Prima Latina, Lively Latin Big Book I, and most of Latina Christiana I. This year we are stepping it up. Our main curriculum is a continuation of the Memoria Press series: First Form Latin. This is a traditional grammar-based Latin written specifically for middle school aged kids. Hopefully much of the vocabulary and some of the grammar will be review. We are also continuing Visual Latin, which we started in the summer as a fun way to review some things after Lively Latin. Elyse enjoyed it so much that we will be continuing it. VL shows more of the "big picture" which is great for spatial learners. Elyse is doing awesome with the longer translation passages and less focus on the details of the inflections.

Math facts: Back when we were doing exclusively RightStart, Elyse had such difficulty getting those addition and subtraction facts down cold. After we finished level C, we hopped over to CLE for the built-in facts practice and good solid review. It worked like a charm! When we were well into multiplication facts, I switched over to Singapore Math, which better fits our long-term math goals. However, now we're back deep into multiplication and division, including double digits, and the basic math facts have fizzled out of Elyse's brain. The lack of speed in basic computation is starting to slow everything else down. So, I thought about just giving her a cheat sheet to use, hoping that eventually they would cement into her little brain. But, Josh thinks we should just do some focused practice on them and get them down. He's the expert on dyslexia around here so when it comes to memorizing meaningless things, I'll take his advice! I've got the Quick Practice sheets from RightStart so she'll be doing one of those each day. Also, she'll be doing time on the Flashmaster and other computer/iPhone games. She's enjoying racking up badges on Kahn Academy, also.
The remainder of our math curriculum will be Singapore 4 Monday through Thursday, including a page of CWP and IP everyday. Friday will be select concepts from RightStart (fractions and geometry skills).

Output: The main type of output we'll have is by using Classical Composition. Every week she will re-write a fable using word changes, synonyms, outlining skills, sentence rearrangement, and other methods of creating organization and agility in one's writing. I will also require written narrations of assigned books--mostly those from history. These will gradually be incorporated as the year proceeds. She will also continue working on her cursive as her handwriting still needs improvement.

I hope that really focusing on these things this year, her last year of the neo-Classical "grammar" stage, will prepare her well for the increased expectations that will be required next year in the first year of the logic stage.