Change of Plans. . . A Classical Education

We've moved, had a new baby, and the hubby is now traveling a lot. . . It's been crazy lately. With all of this going on, I have also decided to "makeover" the way we do homeschool. The main reason: there needs to be more discipline around here. What I mean is, each kid needs to start taking more responsibility for himself/herself. 

I recently heard of The Robinson Curriculum (RC) and started reading articles on websites on classical education. I still love Charlotte Mason, but I want my kids to have longer attention spans and not have to jump from subject to subject every 15-20 minutes. Plus, I want them to be able to learn independently. I'm convinced that I can meld to two together to make my own personalized curriculum. 

Here's what it's going to look like this Fall, so far:

*Wake up!

*Morning Routine (make bed, brush teeth, get dressed)

*Breakfast

*Vocabulary Word of the Week

*Bible verse copywork

*The 3 Rs- Reading, Writing, Arithmetic (1 hour each, at desk)

My goal is to get school started before the littles wake up so it will be quiet in the house. The 3 Rs will be the sole responsibility of the big kids and the area I want to use to improve attention spans. I will check their progress daily, but--as I've learned from RC-- they will ultimately teach themselves. I want them to be very independent learners, which they are for the most part already, but I want them to understand math and science better than I do. 

The 3 Rs will come from Saxon Math 5/4, an essay a day, and the RC reading list. 

*Lunch

*Other subjects (Science, History/Geography, Art/music appreciation, Lang Arts, Latin, Spanish) and Extracurriculars (guitar, piano, art)

The other subjects are for fun/practice since they will learn most of these through their reading. History lessons will come from The Story of the World (SoW) but mostly from independently reading biographies. B will be doing SOS science 5 just to try it out. Sis will be using Bob Jones. We are doing life size human body cut-outs from Weaver to learn anatomy. We love to study maps and will be reading Holling C. Holling books. We will do Latin and Spanish twice a week and Language Arts will come from their Language Lessons notebooks that were started this past school year. Art and Music appreciation will consist of one composer/his music and one artist/artwork each month. 

Sis is learning piano. B is learning guitar. Both have their own software for this. For art, the kids will be watching DVDs. 

*Chores

*Free time/soccer practice

What have I gotten myself into?! We have soccer practice/games every day but Sunday and Monday. Free time will only be rewarded if the 3 Rs are done with no whining, compiling, and without wasting time.

*Dinner (if I have any energy left)