As I’d mentioned, my son, Mr. Brilliant, is in 4th grade. He left/was asked to leave his previous school because, although he was getting straight A’s, he was bored to tears and his teachers all agreed, he wasn’t working up to his potential. That much was clear, while my daughter was sweating bricks for each A and B, he was getting the excellent grades without effort. He was learning that life is a free ride and if it didn’t come easy it wasn’t worth doing.
Not lessons his father and I wished him to be learning.
So, what curriculum were we to use at home?
The easy answer was using one of the on-line K-12 programs issued by the state. Easy, everything comes in a box, you just need a computer and an internet connection and off you go. Or was it so easy? I didn’t want my son parked on the computer, surfing on the net all day. Turns out the state systems are lock-step, it is classroom instruction at home. My son would not be able to work ahead or dive deeply into something that interested him, nor do only the basics on subjects that he’d already covered or were of little interest. Additionally, taking time off to travel would be just as difficult as if he were in a brick and mortar campus.
The tough answer, but the better answer for Mr. Brilliant and our family, was a combination of ‘out-of-the-box’ curriculum with addition of items of my choosing. First we purchased the Oak Meadow 4th grade curriculum. Oak Meadow is a Waldorf based program, the work is gentle and flowing, an ideal step away from the rigid system my son had been exposed to so far. Working with Oak Meadow for the last quarter of 3rd grade, I was able to see where my son’s strengths and weakness lay. My husband and I came to realize that the Oak Meadow, by itself, was going to be too light and too little to keep my son engaged, although the depth of the projects would allow him to enjoy a peacefully educational progress he’s never experienced before. Oak Meadow was also going to allow Mr. B to delve into the wonders of cross-discipline learning (The ‘Stuart Little‘ project would encompass literature, biology and arts and crafts as well as written expression).
I have added a number of items from The Well-Trained Mind program. My son was very weak on grammar and history, two subjects WTM covers well. He also needed to slow his pace and while copy work bores him, the passages he copies from are well written and engage him. Finally, since I am starting at the beginning of their programs, it is maintaining his illusion that school work is easy, but the program moves forward quickly enough, that he’ll feel challenged soon (but not overly so).
Next, how to engage his interest? How do make the process of learning ‘fun’? Enter the Sonlight program. Mr. B insisted that reading books was boring and he wanted to spend this next year doing unit studies, something easy enough to do with Oak Meadow. However I found that Mr. B didn’t have the ability to remain focused long enough to work for weeks at a time on a unit study (though that is something we’ll re-exam in about six months). Sonlight provides excellent books, primarily well written and engaging fictional stories well suited for a boy my son’s age. They have the added a delightfully easy to follow teacher program that makes it pleasant to follow should you decided to work it closely or vary wildly. One book could be somewhat glossed over (My son didn’t cotton to ‘Sing Down the Moon’), while another book could be featured at great length (“By the Great Horn Spoon’ was a massive hit.) and many lessons from one book were re-framed in the next, so the important points weren’t lost if you read one book merely for pleasure while delving into the other book for a few weeks.
So, that covers the core of English, Literature, Grammar and Written Expression. Next up, Math, Science, PE, Art, Music, Spanish and so forth…