Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

Monday began a new chapter in our homeschool. For the first time in a very long time I did not have on my near-term calendar a trip out of town to care for my Dad or one for cleaning his house. Our new chapter actually began this past weekend when I took a serious look at where MilitaryKid was in his school work.

I can’t even point to one subject and say that that one is really in a shambles because none of them are. But then again, I can’t point to one subject and say that MK is where he would be if none of this past fall happenings had occurred. He is behind in all subjects—or is he? Yes, he is not as far along in history or science or math or Latin or writing as I’d like him to be but he’s doing alright. And afterall, isn’t that one of the benefits of hs’ing; being able to adjust our school life for the little bumps that occur in life. We just happened to hit a huge bump these past 5 months and now we are moving on. So here’s what I did.

Rather than beat myself (and MK) up about only being on page 135 in our Kingfisher History book rather than on page 175 I looked forward. The first thing I did was to determine where MK was in each of his books; and I wrote down the lesson or page number. Next I decided where I wanted us to be by the end of the school term, and wrote this number down next to the first number for each subject. In math it was rather difficult to come up with a number since in addition to lessons, Singapore Math throws in Revision exercises, and Practice exercises, and it is rather hard to know whether MK will need 2 or even 4 days to complete a Revision exercise. I guessed. Sometimes that is the best approach to use, even if it isn’t really scientific to approach it that way. Finally I had my list of start and end numbers. It looked something like this:

History 135 –233

Science Unit 2 —4

Math PM #24 — End (90 lessons)

Writing #10 — 21

Latin #7 — 26

Grammar 60 — 126

My next step was to move to my ‘Overview Planning for 6 Months’ page in my ELAN Student Organizing notebook. Each month has approximately 20 school days, give or take a day here or there. Since we don’t take a week off for spring break and since we aren’t planning any trips before the end of the school year I could go with the 20 school days in a month approach for planning purposes.

My next planning step is to divide the number of pages or lessons into the number of months or school days available. I like looking at things by the month and writing down where MK needs to be by the end of each of the coming months so we are close to where we should be and have some gage to keep me on track. Over the years I have found that if I have a monthly goal, we hit it. Without a monthly goal I’m like a ship without a rudder on the sea and we just bounce around and do little. It isn’t that we even study other things, we just do very little. For me, and particularly for MilitaryKid, without set goals we flounder around.

So I write with a pencil different scenarios. Continuously asking the question, can MK do that much work in history or science or ….? Is it realistic to cover one lesson in Classical Composition in a week or do we need two weeks? What if we take an entire month to do a unit of science, will that be enough time? If we take that much time where will we be at the end of the school term? Will that be acceptable to me? Do we need less time to do a lesson in Latin than one week? Finally I feel comfortable with each of our monthly goals, and this is what we are to reach by the end of Feb:

History pg 163; Outline each 2-page spread. Write at least 3 topic reports including one on the crusades, and Magna Charta. Read at least one historical fiction book and write a summary report on it.

Science Complete Unit 2, start Unit 3. Outline each lesson, take all tests, and do all practice exercises. Read How the Weather Works, & Eyewitness Earth books.

Math PM Finish 6A; Know Your Maths #10

Writing, Classical Composition #13

Latin #12

Grammar #80

Once written I don’t close the book. A final reality check is the next step; can MK really do this quantity of work? Each of us know our own kids best and for MK I know that if I keep him on task, and have a day like Monday, we can reach these monthly goals. Simple goals but at least they are there and are there to help us know we are working.

Monday was fabulous. We got started on school late for us, around 8:30. By noon though MK had all but Latin completed! After lunch we headed over to his science olympiad partner’s home for a 2 hr session on his Bio-Process event. Today was a different story. After returning from walking the dogs the phone rang and I conversed with another SO mom for a few minutes. MK waited for me to get his breakfast, and just after he finished his pancakes my sister called. We conversed about Dad’s estate and MK waited for me to get off the phone before he started working. This is a problem. MK really needs me, or it is his silent-protest that I’m on the phone. Either way the phone has got to be ignored so that we can get back to doing school together. At least we did sit on the sofa and read all of ‘How the Weather Works’ together today. And we flew his Balloon Launch Glider at the gym today, which was really neat. It is so good to be back doing these things again.