•4:29 PM
Those boxes don't look like much from the outside, but there are a lot of good things inside them. We don't typically begin a new school year until January. However, I do order the next year's curricula in July when Calvert is running their discount offers. This summer's discount was particularly good for us, since for the first time we were able to order a re-use package for our youngest, Sweet Girl. I think we ended up saving about $330 or so this time around. The boxes seemed to arrive here only two days after I ordered them. In other words, we weren't even expecting them yet, and when we returned from errands one day, UPS had come and there they were.
It is always an exciting time when our Calvert boxes arrive, even if we won't use the contents for awhile. Sweet Girl will be in third grade come 2011. We really enjoyed Calvert's third grade when Chips completed it, and since then they have actually added a new social studies textbook, entitled Communities. So the course will not be exactly the same; there will be something fresh and new for us this second time around. I remember well how Chips enjoyed reading Smiling Hill Farm toward the end of the third grade year. What a sweet book.
This is my first chance to see the sixth grade package that Chips will be using next winter. It is one thing seeing it in the catalog, but quite another to actually open and see the contents of the books. In short, I am blown away by sixth grade! I don't know if this is because I am amazed that my child has become this "big" already, or because I can't believe how much they pack into their sixth grade course. Surely not all kids cover this much material in sixth grade??? !!! ??? I know I didn't. Whatever, it is obvious that he will be learning a ton! First of all, I cannot believe the amount of social studies that will be covered: two very substantial texts, one for ancient world history, and the other for eastern hemisphere geography. I never remember learning geography to this level of detail, certainly not eastern hemisphere, and I never had a serious ancient history course until high school. Secondly, I am amazed by the language arts book. This will be a serious writing and grammar course for sure. Finally, the literary selections are truly impressive to me. The very first reading book will be the unabridged Swiss Family Robinson (which we recently completed as a family read aloud, so I am fully aware of the complexity of its language), then Anne of Green Gables, another substantial work of literature. Next up, Theras and His Town, which I suppose will mesh with the history course, then King Arthur and His Knights (which I never read) so this will be a first for me for sure. Coming after this is a fun book that I did read as a youngster, The Phantom Tollbooth. There are also several poetry collections, including Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost anthologies. There is more that I could say about the sixth grade course, but you get the idea. I know it will be a productive year!
Having said this, I am mindful of our time schedule and how I will be able to fit it all in. The suggested Calvert schedule says that I should be able to get lessons for both children accomplished between the hours of 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., give or take. We do typically start at 9:00 anyway (I can't manage to make it happen earlier) but we have not been able to go more swiftly than the time Calvert suggests because my kids are so challenged by the material. So I fully expect to need until 2:00 - 2:30 each day.
For those of you readers who don't homeschool, yes, the hours between 9 and 3 are full of work, but then there is no homework to worry about, and no work to do on the weekends! Now that alone is worth a million bucks.
I know I posted a month or so back about my scheduling approach to teaching two children with Calvert, especially since I do consider Calvert rather teacher/parent intensive (to do it well). Well, I have had to change our approach recently to keep things efficient, and I hope to post more about that shortly. For now, we carry on through the summer.... Chips on lesson 106 and Sweet Girl on lesson 117. Might as well. It is truly hot, hot, HOT outside!
2 comments:
That's an impressive amount of material.
No homework and no weekend schoolwork sound really attractive to this mum of a teenager who will be loaded with both in a few weeks.
In answer to your question - no, we didn't see the Aurora Borealis, unfortunately.
I ordered Mark's 6th grade during the July sale, too, and won't open it until the end of this month. No sense to letting the excitement dissipate by his looking at the books for a month before we start school!
And, yes, you did see last year's Calvert books on the shelf near Thor. They keep their positions until the new books are needed, and get revisited a surprising number of times! For example, Thor got a bib from a girl in the Netherlands recently, who said it was a "slabber" in Flemish. That caused Mark to ask if the girl and her English Mastiff were both Flemings, then point to the chapter in History of Art detailing the Flemish artists to prove that they are Flemings! What a wide variety of material comes from Calvert!