The School Year Begins

This week we begin school. I spent much of the summer designing an American Christian Economics course based on James Rose's book, "A Guide to American Christian Education", preparing a "Classic Grammar" course, and going through the mentorship level of the "Principles of American Government" skype course. Here you will see what I have outlined for the first week of classes:

Setting up the notebook

 

Cover Page--Goal is to create interest in the subject and a reason to learn it. You could include a verse, quote, or poem. Anything that would be meaningful to your child and/or your family. Think of way to express individuality on your cover page. Individuality of your child, your family, or your subject (i.e., illustrate it, take a picture and add to the page, diagram a sentence, work a math problem, include a timeline, ...).

Binder Tabs--This year I figured that my son was old enough to create his own tabs. He chose to use the computer and learned about using online templates to create his tabs. Just be sure to include a tab for "Vocabulary."

Classroom Constitution--You will find some excellent examples of a Classroom Constitution at the FACE website. (You will have to join in order to see the printable examples.) We enjoyed reading--and signing--our Classroom Constitution and placing it right after the cover page in the notebook.

Introduction of Text and Other Resources--I have found Pinterest to be a great resource for storing Internet links for the class. It is also possible to create a blog just to store the links you would like to use for your particular course.

Define Course--We defined "American Christian Economics" beginning with the word "Economics", then we added "Christian", and finally "American." Of course we used the Webster's 1828 dictionary. It is important that everyone agrees on what the course is about!

Course Outline--After spending many hours developing the American Christian Economics course, it was a pleasure to briefly overview it with my son. On the other hand, if you have no outline, you could probably copy the Table of Contents of your textbook, review it, then place this behind the Classroom Constitution.

Next time... Establishing Routines