Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

If every school day was like yesterday morning school would be a breeze, but then the kids wouldn’t learn too much either. Ahhh, the fun of the first day.

In the past we’ve started school on the same day our local PS starts. Not this year. This year we started a week early so I didn’t take the kids out to breakfast as we’ve done in the past. We’ll do that next week, eating at the restaurant where we can watch the Yellow School Buses pull into the high school, and discuss nonsense stuff.

Yesterday I started with SK who is going into 9th grade. We went over the goals for each of his umpteen subjects for this coming year, tied that in with the goals we have for his high school transcript, showed him his books, and let him get started. He’s taking:

Rhetoric—he’ll work through:

Anthony Weston, A Rulebook for Arguments (9 – 14 wks)

Edward Corbett, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 4th Edition

Thomas S. Kane, The New Oxford Guide to Writing

For each book he’ll ¨ Read a section in the text under study, outline the content of the text. And then provide two examples of the text’s lesson either from someone else’s rhetoric or of you own creation

Great Books (combination of History, and Literature),

I spent quite allot of time this past year compiling book lists off the net, and SK will chose at least 8, hopefully 12 Classics from the Ancient time period to work through.

Math– He’s finishing up NEM 3 and will work through Dolciana’s Algebra II and Trig book

Computer Programing — He’d like to have this as one of his electives this year, but I think he’ll have enough on his plate without trying to fit this in.
Science—Biology,

He’ll use Inquiry into Life by Mader Pat used this text in college and really liked it, so since it was on our shelf it was a no-brainer to go with it.

LA’s —grammar, Well, I think he laughed when I pulled out all the grammar books I’ve picked up for him over this last year. There’s Editor in Chief, Rules of the Game, Jensen’s Grammar books, and a few others. He was happy to see he wasn’t going to work through R&S grammar this coming year.

Writing—he’ll work through Writing Strands 7 & 8, and finish up Vocabulary from Classical Roots

Latin– Henle Latin Book 1; geez I hope he gets through the book this year.

Spanish–he’ll use Rosetta Stone’s Spanish CD’s

Art Unbelievably I actually have a book for SK to work through, The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art history from Prehistoric to Postmodern, Carol Strickland, and he is receptive to read through it.

Music—SK is an avid Classical and Country Music listener and I picked up: The Classical Music Experience: Discover the Music of the World’s Greatest Composers, Julius H Jacobson and Classical Music 101, Fred Plotkin for him to read through.

PE-–For us this just happens; ice skating, roller skating, bowling, pick-up kick ball games, hikes, bike rides,…..

Then it was MK’s turn to see his books. I started showing him the books he used last year that we are continuing with; Spelling Power, R&S grammar 5,…..and then I showed him his history program; Ancients by Pandia Press. Well, he was like a kid in a candy shop when he saw the History Pockets for Egypt book. He was thrilled that I allowed him to jump right into making two of the craft projects from the book. He loves doing hands-on stuff and this history program has lots and lots of that for him. He’s going to have a good time, for sure. He even shared with a neighbor that school was awesome today.

Unfortunately by evening MK was quite sick with dual ear infections. We just returned from the Dr, who confirmed my diagnosis and placed him on antibiotics. So much for school or the beach today.