A Healer’s Geste

School Year 2010-2011: Hans’ Independent Work

This year Hans is pleased to have his very own clipboard with a check-off list. Here are some of the things on his list (most are once-a-week things):

Poetry Memorization

This year I’ve given Hans one poem per term to memorize on his own. The checklist (not Mom, right? There’s a big difference there) tells him daily to read his poem aloud 3 times. By the third week of Summer Term he already his first poem (4 lines) memorized. In fact, he came up to tell me, “I couldn’t find my sheet with the poem on it, so I just stopped and thought and I thought maybe I could say it without the sheet and I just did!” The poems I picked for him (progressing from quite short to medium-length) are The Whole Duty of Children, Thirty Days Hath September, The Wise Old Owl, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, the Bath Song, and Bed in Summer. Next year, with experience under his belt, I think I will let Hans browse the poetry books and choose his own.

Greek

Using the Hey Andrew Greek Reader & CD, Hans will review the Greek alphabet once a week. Additionally, using just a Greek letter strip I printed out instead of the Hey Andrew worksheets, he will copy 4 Greek letters each week.

Bible Geography

I have the Student Bible Atlas and Victor Journey Through the Bible. Once a week I assign one map or spread to Hans that corresponds with our Bible lesson and then when he comes to narrate during our one-on-one time, he tells me something interesting he observed or learned.

Art & Composer Reading

Over the course of the term, Hans will read through 2-3 books about our artist and 1-2 about our composer. The slideshow depicts the books he’s reading this term.

Geography

This year he’ll be reading slowly and narrating through Minn of the Mississippi & Tree in the Trail.

Also, once a week he’ll color and label a handful of states on a blank map of the US. We’ll see if by the end of the year he (and I!) can’t entirely fill in a blank US map, with mountain ranges and primary rivers, as well.

Grammar

Once a week he’ll read one picture book about grammar, as well. I got the lead on these from Kendra.

Other than reading these fun little books and memorizing the Shurley chants (without doing the Shurley program), we’ll just be incorporating grammar-talk into our conversations. When we do spelling we talk about apostrophes or plurals, and when he has questions about words I’ll include its part of speech as part of my explanation. I am going for an introduction to the words and concepts, assuming they will be more thoroughly fleshed out as we begin Latin next year.

History

Hans is reading the only textbook we’re using for history: A Child’s History of America. The reviews on Amazon are entertaining to read. It is biased and the author comes from a definite political opinion, but all histories are like that and I prefer authors to give their opinions and biases straight up rather than masking their perspectives as objective and unbiased. No one is unbiased and everyone’s writing is tainted by their opinions and worldview. I am inclined to think that perspective and safety in history comes from reading a wide range of authors and stories, so I wasn’t desperately looking for a one perfect text. As it was, this looked like it was decent, was written in a personable style, and — the determining factor — I already owned it as a hand-me-down from my parents. Hans reads one chapter from that a week, and then one or two other books or biographies per week. I also have a stack of biographies (mostly Childhood of Famous Americans) and history or American geography books for him to read in his spare time, but from which he can pick and choose according to his interests.