The Plan for Patrick

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Patrick will be twelve on the Feast of the Guardian Angels.  He's technically a sixth grader this year, but his plan of study is all over the map. Patrick is a very capable student--pretty much everything comes easily to him.  The part of planning for him that is both a challenge and a blessing is that Patrick is an exceptional soccer player.  He is a nationally ranked youth player who is part of the Olympic Development Program; he's a boy with both eyes focused on the National Team and more and that focus colors everything else about him.

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It took me a while to accept this dimension.  Truthfully, I think God put Bobby Convey in my life to prepare me for Patrick. There's a certain knack to balancing an athletic gift with all the other dimensions of a child and I'm just starting to get the knack.  Patrick devotes three hours a day, on average, to playing soccer.  His weekends are all soccer, all the time.  This is his choice.  When you take the ball away, he justs finds something else to kick (balled up newspaper, balled up socks, balled up pretty-much-anything).  Because so much of his time is consumed by his passion, when I plan his studies, I need to plan the most  bang for the buck.

More importantly, since so much brain space is devoted to all things soccer, I have to be very careful to be certain to nurture the spiritual and emotional development of this child.  My limited experience with child prodigies (as a consultant with Major League Soccer as they recruited teenagers) has taught me that there are huge chunks of development that can go unaddressed while the physical prowess and athletic greatness are being cultivated.  My husband and I are committed to the whole child.

This is an incredibly intense child.  That intensity can be a great blessing on the soccer field and in the learning room.  It can make him a fiercely loyal friend.  It can also drive us all crazy with its tunnel-vision. He can easily slip into feeling like he has the weight of the world (or at least the World Cup) on his shoulders. Habit training is ongoing and I also pray daily to touch his heart with things good and noble and so to counter-balance the intense competitiveness that can potentially hurt other people. In order to succeed on the soccer pitch that way he does, he is constantly evaluating himself.  My job is not to take away from that but to make him aware of others as well. He is blessed to live in such a big family, to have Bobby as a role model, to have a big brother who has succeeded as an athlete in his own right.  Without those checks, I'm afraid his ego would be out of control.  We are all about humility--making him aware all the time that without God, he could do nothing.

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The Plan

Religious studies will be the core of Patrick's course of studies this year and next.  Confirmation preparation is something we take very seriously around here and he has a substantial reading list ahead of him.  He and I will begin a confirmation notebook this year, to be completed over the next two years.  We are blessed with a pastor who takes a personal interest confirmation preparation and interviews each candidate.  He mandates a notebook (though his is a bit sparser than mine).  It's nice to know that someone else will read and relate to the hard work we'll put in. Patrick's notebook will have sections for:

  • memory work
  • saints' stories
  • narrative records of corporal and spiritual works of mercy he performs
  • narrations of apologetics books (we'll use the booklist from the Transitions curriculum), plus a few recent additions
  • Catechism narrations
  • Bible history
  • Catholic Mosaic narrations, adjusted up to his level
  • Narrations from Moira Farrell's Level 3 Catechesis of the Good Shepherd just as soon as it becomes available

Science and History

Although I made an attempt last year to set Patrick apart from his younger siblings and pursue Middle School plans just for him, it backfired pretty badly.  He wants to be in our midst and he is a natural leader.  So, to set him to working on the same subject matter (in science, history, even religious studies) just a notch or two above the younger ones has great benefits all the way around.  The younger children have a tangible example of scholarship to which they can aspire and Patrick has living, breathing reasons to do his best (he also has something to feed his competitive nature in a positive way).  So, he'll pursue unit studies with the rest of us, using some of those middle school books as his spines. First up is our bird study.  After the baby arrives, we'll study Ancient Greece.

Math

Math comes easily to Patrick, as it does to Nicholas.  He is comfortable with Math-U-See and has made great progress there.  He'll continue with that at his own pace. I think we'll hit Algebra this year.

Language Arts

I'm very enthused about using language arts materials from Hillside Education. I can't say enough good things about both the quality and the philosophy. Patrick will use Lingua Mater and Novel Inquiries.

Foreign Language

We are blessed to have a friend who is enthusiastically teaching Spanish to our children.  Patrick enjoys foreign language.  He will also complete Latina Christiana I & II, working at his own pace.

That's a full load, particularly when one considers that his "school" day usually ends around 2:00 in order to get him out the door to training and he's frequently not home until 9:00 PM.  It will require a great deal of discipline on his part and mine to accomplish both our academic and our athletic goals.  His coach is very supportive and a big proponent of a quality education.  The coach, Patrick's dad and I have all witnessed the academic shambles of several excellent young athletes who "finished" school early in order to devote their full time and attention to soccer.  We are determined to provide for both academic and athletic success in this case.

For the Birds: A Rabbit Trail

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Throughout the spring and summer, we caught the "birding bug."  We hung a feeder and set out some simple birdbaths and even built a rudimentary nesting box.  We rejoiced in the nest and the eggs, celebrated the birth of the babies,  and mourned the terrible, violent death of the baby birds. As ugly as the twist of nature was, we were still pretty amazed by the birds in our backyard. I especially love the early morning, before the busyness of the day and the traffic in the kitchen frighten the birds away from the window feeder.  This morning, as I sipped a very mellow cup of tea, I pondered the bird-coffee connection (for some reason this made me think of Dawn; I'm sure she'll appreciate it).  We've certainly developed a bird-watching habit.

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As the sunflowers grew, the goldfinches came to entertain and a red-winged blackbird and a cardinal were regulars at the feeder. More and more bird questions were generated while we watched from the sunroom windows.  It is time to officially launch a rabbit trail into the world of birding.

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My plan, rough as it is, is to study birds intensively for the next month or so (until the baby is born) and then to just maintain our watching and recording habits through the next year.  Birding is a year 'round venture and so this is a year 'round rabbit trail, with some instensive time up front. We began our study at Wild Birds Unlimited, a great store and place of resource that is located within my five mile pregnant mom travel radius.

The very knowledgeable and helpful salesclerk got us all set up with an array of feeders and food to take us well into the fall. She assured us that it isn't too late to attract hummingbirds and she showed us how to attract even more goldfinches. We talked a bit about the demise of our nesting birds.  We'll try again with those in the spring. We returned home to set up feeding stations around the backyard, all still within clear view of the sunrooms windows.  And we were richly rewarded with goldfinches and hummingbirds within an hour of hanging the new feeders!

While the children spilled seed all over the backyard filled feeders, I busied myself sketching out content I want them to learn from this unit study.  We know that if they understand the vocabulary of a topic, they know the topic.  So, I began with a preliminary vocabulary list.  I fully expect the list to grow as we read and watch our birds, but this is a beginning.

  • birds of prey
  • swimming birds
  • diving birds
  • game birds
  • aquatic birds
  • songbirds
  • hummingbirds
  • warm-blooded
  • ornithology
  • migrations
  • resident birds
  • homing instinct
  • flight muscles
  • keel
  • humerus
  • upstroke
  • downstroke
  • syrinx
  • hatchling
  • countour feather
  • down feather
  • semi-plume
  • filoplume
  • bristles
  • preening
  • plumage
  • motling
  • nesting
  • scrape nest
  • brood nest
  • woven nest
  • no nester
  • cavity nester
  • mound nest
  • earth hole nest
  • adherent nest
  • platform nest
  • mud daub nest
  • hanging cup nest
  • clutch
  • mating/courtship
  • brooding
  • egg tooth
  • fledgling
  • camouflage
  • field marks

We'll encounter much of this vocabulary in the books I've chosen for the "Bird Basket."  For the younger children, Crinkleroot will be their guide and they will become well-acquainted with Crinkleroot's Guide to Knowing the Birds.

Crinkleroot's Guide to Knowing the Birds (Crinkleroot)

Jim Arnosky does a masterful job of introducing even young children to some pretty sophisticated bird concepts and vocabulary.  It's well worth the search you may have to undertake to find a copy.  Our other "spine" is a brand new book in the the Apologia series for elementary/middle school children.  I'm not a huge fan of Apologia science in high school but I do like the series by Jeannie Fulbright. Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day is no exception. 

Exploring Creation with Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the 5th Day (Apologia Science Young Explorers)

We'll just use the first section of the book (on birds) this fall and then perhaps hit insects intensely next spring and summer.All the bird info this mom needs to know can be found in Fulbright's book and at the Wild Birds Unlimited store.  That's a good thing because I'm going to be doing some pretty intense nesting of my own while we undertake this study!

The bird book basket is at the ready.  This is where the stories and the pictures will take us beyond our backyard and nurture intimacy and interest with all things avian.

Picture Books
DVDs
Biography
Bird Watching with Margaret Morse Nice
I'm looking for a biography of John James Audobon for children.  I know I read one with the big kids but I can't remember the title or find it here.  Any suggestions?
Coloring Books
This will be a notebooking rabbit trail as opposed to a lapbooking one.  The vocabulary lists will go in the notebooks and so will drawings of birds they observe in the yard.  They will map a bird and label the parts and they will draw and label the parts of an egg. We're going to talk a bit about taxonomy and all the birds we observed will be labelled correctly. Our field guides will serve us well in this endeavor. 
In the beginning, we are going to talk extensively about how to attract birds to our backyard.
We don't have a lot of trees of hedgerows for cover, so we're going to have to do a bit work outside.  We are planning to build some nesting boxes, though the nesting season is pretty much past (except for goldfinches). Other hands-on acivities will incude dissecting owl pellets and identifying and labelling what we see, making suet feeder food and making pine cone bird feeders.  In February, we'll participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count. As with all our nature endeavors, there will be much blogging and record-keeping at Blossoms and Bees. Please visit there frequently to see what's new in our bird-friendly backyard!

Kindergarten with Nicholas

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Nicholas is old enough to be considered a kindergartner this year. Many of the  manipulatives highlighted in the preschool series will be at the core of his curriculum as well.

He is already beginning to read and has been reading Little Stories for Little Folks over the shoulder of his big brother. We’ll continue with that and use our word families kits and the movable alphabet to reinforce phonics. We’ll also use My Very First Catholic Speller since it is keyed to the Little Stories. When he finishes the Little Stories, we’ll move on to The Beginner’s Bible. For handwriting, Nicholas will use all the same manipulatives Katie does, plus he’ll begin writing in the first Handwriting Without Tears book.


Penmanship practice will be his copywork this year-- mastering printing, letter by letter. While he won’t be copying the poems we learn as a family, he will be memorizing them. Most of those poems will come from Favorite Poems Old and New and the Poetry for Young People Series. And of course, Nicky will keep signing!


Math will continue along the hands-on trail already begun. He will work with all the manipulatives on the shelf and he’s certainly ready for Addition and Subtraction with Cuisenaire Rods. Nicholas is our “number man.” I think I will also introduce him to the Touchmath method. He has Tourette Syndrome and has tendency to hyper-focus on numbers. (Note to mom: never tell him how many minutes until we do something unless you are prepared to hear him count aloud to sixty precisely that many times and you are prepared to make the event happen exactly when he’s finished counting!) I can’t give him enough “math” to do. He loves all things mathematical and spatial.


He also seems to have a knack for music that no one else has, so we’ll get going with Penny Gardner’s Nine Note Recorder lessons.


It’s going to be a big year for Nicholas in our atrium. We’ll officially begin First Communion preparation. Our plans will unfold over time, but he will follow the same outline for a First Communion album that his brother Stephen did. These albums incorporate the presentations in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program with other lessons vital to First Communion preparation. Nicholas’ album won’t be exactly like Mary Beth’s or Stephen’s –the beauty of these books is that they truly reflect the child who creates them. I plan to scan and post pages here as he completes them.


One book I’m looking forward to introducing for the first time is A Child’s Missal. I think it will make our study of the Mass even more meaningful. Nicholas will also have an opportunity none of our other children have had. He will be able to see a Tridentine Mass as part of his preparation. These indult Masses are new to our diocese and so new to us all. I know his godfather will be pleased. Since Catholic Mosaic will be a family adventure, Nicky will make a liturgical year notebook in addition to his First Communion album. Nicholas is a child with a natural piety and a very tender heart. I’m really looking forward to talking and discovering with him this year. When Nicole died, he was truly perplexed by my tears. He really and sincerely kept repeating, “But she’s not dead; she’s living with God. I don’t know why you’re so sad.” (The repeating thing is a Tourette trait too—but it was really endearing.)


I’ve been on the fence about Latin, quite frankly, particularly since we have a new baby arriving in September and I know enough to know I need to keep it simple. I ordered Prima Latina months ago and think we’ll give a go—at least orally—and see how we do. At the very least, we’re listening to Lingua Angelica.


Our mornings will be devoted to math and language arts and Latin and religion. Our afternoons will be devoted to unit studies. I’m planning to use Five In a Row Volume Four very loosely as a spine with the five younger children (leaving Christian and Michael to their own plans). I love the Five in Row book selections but I rarely follow the guides as written. In this case, I’ll take it up a notch or two for Mary Beth and Patrick and gear it down a notch or two for Nicholas and Katie. Stephen is the only one in the “right” age range and I’ll probably tweak for him too.


I’m a big rabbit trailer and I hope this year will be no different. We love to head off on paths of interest and we love to collect books that enhance the trip. Nicholas will begin with the Five in a Row books, but we won’t limit ourselves to them. I’m planning to use the picture books especially as springboards to study Geography (borrowing lots of ideas for that notebook from Kim), Science, Art, History, and Literature. We’ll create notebooks for each discipline and Nicholas will begin to create his academic archives.


Our first unit to study will be about birds.  We've gotten to be pretty good birdwatchers this summer and we're looking forward to building some different nesting houses and putting up more feeding stations.  For Nicholas, the following books are all in the queue with every expectation that we'll add more (I haven't yet begun to plan this rabbit trail):


Angelo

Albert

Owl Moon

Make Way for Ducklings

Owls

Gulls, Gulls,Gulls

About Birds:  A Guide for Children

 

There will always be hands on arts and crafts and we are planning a picture study of liturgical art as a family.


Nicky has a private blog and he’ll continue to narrate to me and post there. He also loves our ongoing nature study, especially since overcoming his fear of bugs. He’s particularly fond of birds and we are looking forward to much family birdwatching and blogging over the coming year.


And then there is the unit that Nicky is most looking forward to beginning—the one where we watch the new baby grow.  We've begun already, with Angel in the Waters and frequent visits to the midwife. My children will get quite the study of human development this year and no one is more excited or eager to begin than Nicholas!

All together now!: The Beauty of Unit Study

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We've talked about the little ones and we've talked about special needs, but we haven't really addressed the organizational underpinning of learning in the heart of my home.  We haven't talked about "Rabbit Trails," more familiar to some as "unit study."

In the spring of 1987, I read everything I could get my hands on about marriage and weddings.  I clipped magazines, scouted stores, talked to florists, made silk bouquets and tiny little favors. I recorded everything in a beautiful journal.  No one assigned this reading and research and hands-on work. I was driven by my own very intense interest;-)  There was a culminating event at the end of my unit study and many pictures were taken to record what I had learned.

In the spring of 1988, I found myself doing a similar study on pregnancy and babies. And in the spring of 1990, yet another self-driven research project on cancer. All three times, I learned more about a topic than I'd learned about any topic in school. And on no occasion did I learn it from a textbook. Each of these are examples of how we learn in "real life."  It's integrated, driven by delight or need to know, and founded upon living books written by people who are passionate about the topic at hand. And it's meaningful. It's real life learning.

Textbooks present difficult material in a condensed, yet broad manner.  They are notoriously dry, with a few exceptions, and they go broadly over the whole subject matter instead of plunging deeply into a narrower piece of it.  Living books, on the other hand, are infused with the breath of the matter.  They are interesting and compel us to want to know more.

The traditional approach to education relies heavily on textbooks and age-segregated learning.  The approach in my home relies on living books and learning all together as a family.  For my "grammar school aged" children, I plan math and language arts individually and the rest is left to family rabbit trails.

There was one time when I ordered carefully laid out lesson plans for each of them. I thought they would simplify my life. I stayed up almost all night reading those plans.  I reveled in their order, in having "it all done for me." I took comfort in the idea that each day was planned for each child. Then I wondered what I would do when Stephen was interested in the continents Nicholas was studying and Patrick wanted to study the human body with Mary Beth and they all wanted to get in on liturgical art picture study.  My children have never learned in a little box and as I studied those perfect little boxes, I realized they'd never work for us.  The lesson plans, which could not be returned, stayed on the shelf.  The price I paid was the price of my tuition for lessons learned. 

What does work for us and works very well is to plan on math, language arts and Latin at the earliest part of our day and then to leave two chunks of time later--one for the rabbit trail and one for nature study.

We choose a topic, gather lots of books related to that topic, research the topic on the web, ask other folks who have studied the topic and then take as long as we need to get our fill of the topic.  We spent three weeks studying China and creating a lapbook.  We spent ten weeks on Colonial America.  We spent about a week on ants. The building from the littlest up approach works well here (though most unit study enthusiasts advocate a trickle down approach).  I've found that my older children and I can learn a great deal about a topic from a Magic School Bus book or a Gail Gibbons book or a Jean Fritz picture book.  And when the material is presented simply and memorably, they retain it.

So, we start with the content-oriented picture books.  Then we add the picture story books.  Then I add a a read-aloud novel for everyone.  Then I add a read-alone novel for the older children.  From there, we see where the subject matter takes us.  Sometimes there are handicrafts and sometimes there is art.  Sometimes there is music and sometimes there is a great deal to be done outdoors.  I don't force those things.  As a matter of fact, there are times (like when a new baby comes) that I deliberately plan rabbit trails that are limited to the books alone.

One of the greatest joys of learning this way is that academic experiences become family memories.

Remember when we studied apples and we did nothing but peel and cook and can apples for days and days and we had an apple pie contest with the Stantons?  Remember when we worked so hard to put the gardens in?  Remember when we went to that Japanese restaurant?  Every time I see those old split rail fences, I remember when we studied the Civil War.

Who needs review sheets?  We have each other and the vivid memories that come with reading interesting books and doing interesting things.

What this kind of learning means for me from a management standpoint is multi-faceted.  I can't look at five different lesson plans, with five different sets of science plans and five different history time periods and five different geography ideas and know them all well. And that's just the grammar-school-aged children! I can't supervise that kind of learning and I can't give it the kind of depth I want it to have. Granted, it's all there for me, but I still have to plan, because I have to figure out how to ensure that it all gets done.

On the other hand, with rabbit trails, I do have to make an investment of planning time. And sometimes the investment is rather large.  I will sit for hours and pull together different facets of a study.  I don't think I have to do this, though.  I think I want to do this.  There are unit studies out there, pretty much already written and I hear they are quite good.  I just can't seem to keep myself from adding and deleting and tailoring to the tastes of our family.I often say that mom's teaching style is as important as a child's learning style and this teaching style feeds the creative spirit in me.

How do I know what to study next?  I don't really think order is all that important.  And I think it's natural that children in different locales will study different things at different times.  Fourth graders in Virginia schools study Virginia history.  I remember studying New England history in the third grade in Rhode Island.  I'm not sure a child in Arkansas will study either in very much depth, but he'll know a great deal more about the history of the deep south. I don't remember ever studying fossils or dinosaurs.  I studied plants at least three times.

The body of knowledge is so huge now, that children will never know everything there is to know about history and science and geography.  What he really needs to know is how to learn.  He won't get that from reading textbooks and taking the comprehension test at the end of chapter provided by the textbook committee.  When we design a unit study or evaluate one already written, we do it with an eye on what such a study should include in order to provide for real learning of a topic.

There should be:

  • Plenty of reading related to the topic.  Looks for books that engage you. A quality children's book is one that can be enjoyed by an adult as well.  If it's a picture book, the pictures should enhance the text.  It it's a content book it should be written by someone with an engaging writing style who is passionate and knowledgeable about the subject at hand.  If it's fiction, it should captivate the reader and works its way into his memory.
  • Vocabulary:  Every subject matter has a vocabulary of its own.  If you know this vocabulary, you have pegs upon which to hang the rest of the information.  Choose short lists of vocabulary to study daily.
  • Recording:  Children need ways to record the information they learn.  Sometimes this is narration--a child will tell me what he's read and I will record what he says at the keyboard or an older child will write about what he read.  Narrations are kept in notebooks and often embellished with stickers or illustrations.  Another method of recording is lapbooks.  We've had some wonderful successes with lapbooks.  They are both memorable and labor-intensive.  Well worth the effort if you have the time.
  • Some kind of hands-on experience.  This might be a field trip to a historical site or the building of a birdhouse.  Just bring the learning out of the book and into the three dimensional world of the child.
  • Music and art related to the topic.  It usually doesn't take much to find an art or music connection or both.  Don't force this fit--just look for the obvious connections.
  • Poetry:  These are the best of times for memorization and there is always a poem out there perfect for the occasion.  Use them for copywork and for memory work.

I am firmly convinced that children learn best this way.  I am also firmly convinced that I couldn't manage any other style of learning in my home.  It suits us and one of the beauties of home education is that we can choose a style of learning that suits us.  People who know Charlotte Mason are quick to point out that she wasn't a unit study advocate.  I know that.  But I'm not Charlotte Mason (and she didn't have eight children and a traveling husband). I take many of her ideas about learning and apply them to my own household situation.  We use narration and copywork and dictation in our homes much the way it was advocated by Miss Mason.  And we are out of doors whenever we can be--also a pillar of a Charlotte Mason education.  Sometimes our units are nature study units, but always we have nature study going, whether it's unit related or not.

I think that unit study guards us from being intellectually lazy.  We have to ask "What do we want or need to know?  How should we find out?"  It's not all spelled out for us in a lesson plan--Read page 26 and answer the questions.  This will ensure you know what you need to know. Life doesn't work that way.  We need to teach our children how to find out.  Furthermore, we need to inspire in them a desire to find out.  Unit studies inspire that real approach to knowledge acquisition and retention. I wouldn't have it any other way.