Home Education Update . . .
Well, my sister and I went to the SETHSA homeschool conference this past weekend and it was incredibly inspiring. We heard Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise speak, roamed through roughly 200 vendor booths and even bought curriculum materials for history and Latin. Yes, LATIN!
We’re in agreement regarding the advantages of a classical education in that history should be taught chronologically, so that children have a better concept of the order in which events happen. So we’ll be using Susan’s The Story of the World, Vol. I, available through Peace Hill Press, along with the Teacher Guide/Student Activity Book. All three of our kids will be learning Ancient History (6,000 B.C. – 400 A.D.) at the same time, with assignments being geared for their individual capabilities. We’ll be looking for age appropriate reading material that corresponds with this historical time period (such as “The Children’s Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy“!), and doing cool hands-on projects from the activity book. I think I am just as excited by how much I am going to re-learn during this adventure as by what my daughter will learn.
As far as Latin goes, my sister (and the “experts”) assure me that the study of Latin will help immensely with English grammar and other language studies. My sister studied Latin for two years in high school and says the kids are at a great age for this because they have such an easy time with memorization. So we both purchased Martha Wilson’s Latin Primer, Book I, along with the teacher’s guide and a CD with pronunciations. My sister swears she’ll help me with this if I need it. She better!
Well, Small Girl is wanting to call one of her friends so I’ve got to sign off for now. I’ll post more regarding what we saw and what we want to do later! Ciao!
A Scribbler & A Shutterbug 
I agree that Latin will help with a lot of things. You would be amazed what an advantage even my miniscule amount of latin was when I took my EMT course.
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Sic biscuitus disintegratum.
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Moose — You’re a show-off! I’m guessing that means something about crumbling cookies?
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Wow- that’s wonderful! I know you’ll have a lot of fun with everything… and yay for Latin! I did it in junior high… it helped when I went on to learn French, and I can even use it to figure out a lot of Spanish (which I’ve never studied). And I highly recommend the hands-on kind of stuff; those are some of my best memories from when I was young. (We did KONOS, along with a lot of other stuff.) But anyway… so glad to hear everything’s going well!
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“hE sAiD lItTlE bUt To ThE pUrPoSe”~Lord Byron (1788-1824)
:*:rAnDoM PrOpZ:*:<//3 bRITT
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I dont home school cuz I dont have kids, but if I did this post would have made me excited about the new year.
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Latin is wonderful when it comes to expanding vocabulary. The reason being that many european languages are based in latin. English, spanish, and I think French are all three romantic, and in turn it can become easier to learn between those three. This is also why so many english, spanish, and french words sound similar.
As for history… yeesh, public schools history education is SO screwed up. I agree with you that you need to teach your kids the history of the world FIRST, then teach them all of the little small things. I didn’t know that the middle ages and renaissance happened AFTER the fall of the Roman empire untill after I was in highschool. Thats no way for a man to live! And I still don’t know squat about the napoleanic period. Which reminds me, it probably wouldn’t hurt to read up on the years between the renaissance and the industrial revolution.
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Glad you enjoyed my post. At first I balked at coming up with 56 things, but it really started to flow after a while. And I’m sure by the time I was done, everybody was thinking ENOUGH already!! It might be easier if you do it in 2 or 3 different sections, instead of trying to do them all at once. (I got on a roll, though, and just plowed right on through!)
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