From the Teacher's Desk

I've been thinking a lot about our school and what our focus should be. When I can't do it all, what can be allowed to fall to the back burner? What do we have to get done? I can't teach everything to all of them, so our ultimate goal is to teach them to learn and think logically. Our core subjects are math and Latin/Greek (in younger years phonics instruction is core until they are reading well). Piano should probably be next in line. These three subjects teach logical, ordered thinking. Latin and Greek also have the added benefit of teaching spelling, grammar, and vocabulary. Lest you worry, we also cover the more traditional subjects. We're doing a chronological study of history, various sciences, and language arts. But these are the things that can slide for a bit if need be.

This leads me to this point--I'm stuck. I'm trying to decide between Greek and Latin for the fall. Next year we will study both, but this fall I think we're still only ready for one. We'll finish Prima Latina this summer, so I need to decide what to do next. Prima Latina has been a nice, gentle study, but L and Z are at a point where we can and need to intensify our language study. I finally have it narrowed down to what texts we'd use ( Latin for Children or Elementary Greek ). Maybe I should just flip a coin, unless, of course, one of you wants to decide for me.

Oh, and I got to witness an "it's working!" moment a few days ago. The boys were outside for my quiet time when L came in and asked if he could take The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe outside to finish. I told him that was fine, as long as he brought it back in. He took it out and settled into a chair on our patio. A few minutes later Z came in and told me he had promised M that he'd read Beowulf and The Dragon to him. I told him that was fine, just be careful and bring the library book back in when he was done. He settled into a chair, with J on one side and M on the other and read Beowulf to them. It's always nice to have these visual reminders that what we're doing is working, and we aren't just crazy.

And we're back up to a scheduled three hour school day. L was starting to fall back to his habit of cramming 15 minutes worth of work into 3+ hours and I don't want to have to break him of that again come fall. If we all work diligently, we can actually finish in under three hours. One big addition is that M now has a 15 minute time slot for 1:1 time with me to do preschool work. I think he'll be thrilled, and it will be good practice since he'll be enrolled in the preschool portion of our Academy this fall.