The anxiously awaited arrival of the curriculum has come, and now that it is unpacked and glanced through, I'm trying to figure out exactly what to do with it. I'm aiming at this point to start lessons in February and give Punkin one more week of very informal learning and playing as part of our transition.
Now I have to answer a few questions for myself and Punkin.
* What type of schedule would work best?
* How long should lessons be?
* Should we do all the subjects everyday or rotate?
I love the idea of unit studies. For those who are uninitiated in the world of curriculum, unit studies are when you revolve all your lessons around one theme. For instance, you do a week or month surrounding horses. You could read Black Beauty and study horse breeds. You could study how horses have been a part of our history - taking pioneers west and helping to fight wars, for just two examples. In math, you could talk about measurements - horsepower and how horses are measured in hands. You could end by visiting a horse farm.
I use that example specifically because my daughter loves horses, and I wonder if that might not make a good theme for our first month. However, I also want to have a somewhat organized and logical progression for learning, and am not sure how to do that with unit studies. Right now, I lean more towards them being supplementary and not primary because of this.
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