2010-2011 School Year Review

Well, with our previous year of craziness, I can't exactly say that we have "finished" the school year. We still have 2 weeks of History to finish up at the start of this year. But I'm sticking a fork in '10-11 and calling it done.

We follow a classical education model as laid out in A Well-Trained Mind. The classical model, to me, makes the most sense and offers such a deep and wide wealth of knowledge. Each school year focuses on a historical time period and all of history is broken up into 4 sections. The four sections are repeated three times in the student's primary/secondary education, therefore solidifying the concepts as he progresses through grammar, rhetoric and logic phases of learning. Most of the literature is gleaned from the historical time period (e.g. The Odyssey during the Ancients, Beowulf during Middle Ages, etc.).


Here is what we did last year:

Saxon Math 1 for Little Man.
Kumon Numbers, Counting, and Misc. Math for Littlest Man

First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind for Little Man's Grammar/Copywork
Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading for Littlest Man

Spelling Workout A for Little Man 


Zaner-Bloser Handwriting for both boys

Story of the World: History for the Classical Child, Volume 1: Ancient History
Science: Animal Studies using this resource, Human Body studies using this book, and a little bit of Plant Studies using this one. We picked several topics out of each book and did further reading from the library and projects, too.

Music: Classical Music studies with these fabulous CDs.

Art: Lots of miscellaneous projects from various sources, including some great Usborne books.

We also LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this history resource--The Usborne Internet-Linked History of the World. The boys cart this behemoth of a book all over the house and it has been taped together at least twice. They love it and it is fantastic.

So there you have it! Our year in a nutshell. All in all, we loved everything we used. I am continuing with almost everything this coming year.