The academic year is over and all three kiddos are jumping into the holiday with the exuberant energy of childhood. I, meanwhile, am happy to catch up with my own leisure reading and writing—this post is one.
The Big Nona has just completed her Primary 4, and what follows in this post is the documentation of our teaching/learning materials and process for the mid-primary school years (Primary 3 and 4).
The Overview
Our subjects for P3 and P4 consist of:
1. Mathematics
2. Language Arts: English, Mandarin, and Indonesian
3. Grammar: English and Latin
4. Science
5. History
The learning objectives are:
For Mathematics, the child will master the lessons as paced out by our curriculum of choice.
For Language arts:
In both English and Indonesian, the child will:
- speak the language fluently,
- be proficient in reading at least 4th-grade reading level materials,
- be able to commit to memory and confidently recite a literary piece monthly, and
- be trained in (English) composition skill.
In Mandarin, the child will:
- speak the language fluently,
- be proficient in reading at least 4th-grade reading level materials,
- be able to copy, memorize, and recite the first, second, and third paragraph of the Three Character Classic, and
- cover the MOE’s requirement for the Mother Tongue subject.
For Grammar (English and Latin), the child will master the lessons as paced out by our curricula of choice.
For Science, the child will
- discover the wonder of God’s creation through observing and reading, and
- be inspired to express her wonder through narrating/journaling her discovery.
For History, the child will:
- learn the nature of history as a science,
- read the stories in chronology,
- be confident to relate the story back,
- be able to locate the story in the ancient and modern maps, and
- learn to draw the geography related to the story
Following Singapore’s January-November school calendar, our school-time starts at 08.30 AM and ends at 04.30 PM with an hour lunch break in between, five days a week. Our day typically starts with outdoor activities after breakfast, followed by morning devotion, and then the academics.
The Subjects
Mathematics
This is our fifth year with Saxon Math as our curriculum of choice for mathematics. From 4th grade onwards, Saxon’s textbooks are formatted differently. There is a gradual emphasis on the mathematical concepts presented to the student explicitly in the lessons. What concepts the student has intuitively inferred through the procedures of the previous years, she now understands in clear and accurate terminologies. This is consistent with children’s developmental stage of learning. Where they have been adequately trained to handle basic arithmetical procedures, they are now ready to grapple with the abstract and conceptual as their brains mature toward analytical thinking.
The lesson of the day always covers four components:
1. Arithmetic drill (to improve speed and accuracy)
2. Mental math (in which the student is required to solve problems mentally)
3. Lesson practice (in which the student practices the newly learned concept)
4. Mixed practice (in which the student practices the new and old lessons, this repetition ensures that previous concepts are reviewed and mastered).
It is imperative for the student to complete all four components and in the order above.
Language Arts
At our home-school, the study of language arts consists of three components:
1. Reading
2. Writing
3. Memorizing
Reading
Reading is a daily business. There are three levels of reading that we cover throughout the day: the above-the-level, the at-the-level, and the below-the-level. I will read to the child from reading materials which are above her reading level to progressively increase her reading skill, then I will assign reading materials which are at her comfortable level. Once she is done with her assigned reading, she is free to read anything she chooses for fun.
Writing
Moving on from copywriting, our family is now using the Institute for Excellence in Writing for our writing curriculum. I have only one word for it: excellent. The IEW is part of our program with Classical Conversations (Essentials). It is possible to self-teach this writing program to yourself before teaching it to your student. In fact, I find this to be an important aspect to help me be patient and encouraging toward my student. When I grapple with the complex work of writing myself, I stop pretending that it should be easy for my student. I can empathize.
I wrote briefly about our experience with IEW some time ago here and here.
Memorizing
While modern education has fallen out of favor with memorization, this ancient discipline proves to be vital to the study of language. Every honest teacher knows that one cannot get something out of a student’s brain unless that something has been first put in there. Likewise, one cannot get good writing (and by extension, good thinking and good communication) out of a student before first furnishing her mind with the excellent ingredients: beautiful words, language patterns, sounds, images, and ideas! And memorization has been shown to be the best way to do this.
Our family sources those excellent ingredients from the Bible and The Book of Virtues, a Treasury of Great Moral Stories. Every day, a passage, a poem, or a speech is learned, memorized, and recited, and finally presented before an audience monthly.
For Mandarin, we partner weekly with Tien Hsia Language School to cover the materials required by the MOE. At home, for every lesson we copy one verse from the three paragraphs of the Three Character Classic (三字经). We also continue to memorize and recite poems, and do a read-aloud from story books.
For Indonesian, we continue to read, copy, and memorize parts of Alkitab (the Indonesian Bible) and Kitab Kebajikan (the Indonesian translation of The Book of Virtues).
Grammar
As part of our Classical Conversation Essentials program, the Big Nona is learning English grammar using the Essentials of English Language curriculum. Separately, we are doing Latin with Memoria Press’ Prima Latina for P3 and Latina Christiana for P4. (To save cost, we only purchased the Student Workbook for Prima Latina because I found the lessons relatively easy to infer from the workbook—the Latin declension and conjugation memory work from CC definitely helps. But this is not the case with Latina Christiana. I need the Teacher Manual for Latina Christiana‘s level and above as the grammatical concepts grow more complex.)
Many have written extensively on the importance of learning English grammar and Latin, and much more persuasively than I can do here. However, I wish to encourage home-educators: you can learn and teach Latin even when you have no Latin background. It has been done in our home, I believe it can be done in your home, too. I don’t mean to pretend that it’s easy. It is hard and it requires hard work (though it will be a tad easier if you have a strong grasp of English grammar already). Many give up not because it is hard but because they don’t think grammar or Latin is worth their time. But if you are convinced that they are important, and that they are true, good, and beautiful, I believe you will not shun the hard work they require.
Science
For many Singaporeans home-educating families, choosing a curriculum for Science can be challenging because it is one of the four subjects for which our students will be tested for the PSLE. This means the reason for studying Science can very much be influenced by the exam-oriented concern. We, too, felt that pressure right from the beginning. Aware of the underlying current of anxiety, we prayed and returned to the basics: we asked ourselves “Why do we do Science?” The answer has always been clear: to discover and be awed by God’s creative hands in His creation, which leads to worship and praise toward God. We do science to know (latin: scio) God and to worship God. Once we had clarified the why, we could decide on the what and how with peace and confidence.
The What
The Science curriculum that supports our why best is the Apologia’s Young Explorers series. We knew the decision was right when the Big Nona remarked, “This science book is strange, it talks about God. Science books don’t normally talk about God.”
Have you ever heard your young child express something similar? Have you ever thought so yourself? I had. My then 8-year-old daughter only gave voice to what had been my own experience throughout my entire school years.
Science books don’t talk about God. They treat Him as if He were irrelevant.
But our God is the God of science. So we will see to it that the science we do, not only talks about Him but also glorifies Him.
“There is no such thing as neutral education. Every education, every curriculum, has a viewpoint. To teach children about life and the world in which they live without reference to God is to make a statement about God. It screams a statement. The message is either that there is no God or that God is irrelevant. Either way the message is the same – there is no God. An irrelevant God is the same as no God at all. If God is, then He must be relevant – to His entire creation.”
—Dr. R. C. Sproul
The How
We started with the Botany and progressed on to the Zoology series, covering one lesson in two weeks. The student reads, observes, and conducts experiments before documenting her newly learned facts, observation, or experiment results in her journal. Because she gets to decide what interesting and important bits get recorded in her journal, those facts stick with her better. In fact, the act of narrating the information she just studied helps to assimilate the knowledge into her mind.
History
What is history?
History has been widely misunderstood as the events happening in the past. The Britannica defines History as discipline that studies the chronological record of events, usually attempting, on the basis of a critical examination of source materials, to explain events. In other words, the past events are actually the chronology that history attempts to explain as a science. Understanding that history is really an interpretation—a story that historians wrote to explain some past events, is crucial to how we teach history in our home. It teaches us that historical records (written records and archaeological findings) do not automatically translate to the stories we are reading from our history books. It teaches us that no history books is 100% objective. It is, in fact, impossible for any history book to be 100% objective, which teaches us that every history book has its own bias. The ideal is to find history books with minimal bias in which the author does not tell the student what to think or believe about the issue studied. We believe the religious interpretation of historical events should therefore remain within the authority of the parents, under the authoritative teaching of the Bible through the leadership of the family’s local church.
Why study history?
“You have to know the past to understand the present,” said Carl Sagan. History answers man’s quest for identity because it helps us make sense why we are who we are and why we are where are. It is the collective memory that humanity shares in the progression of time and places. Events are always caused and they always effect. Every individual event is always the result of when and where it is located, and is always the cause to another event in another time and place. For this reason, history must be studied in chronology, within context, and alongside geography.
The what and why above are the considerations for our choice of History curriculum: The Story of the World series. We started with Volume 1: The Ancient Times for P3 and progressed on to Volume 2: The Middle Ages in P4. In every lesson, the student reads one chapter of the book, finds the story’s location on the map, writes a short summary, and draws the map pertaining to the story. As each book contains more chapters than our school weeks (we do 36 academic weeks a year), we treat the extra chapters as leisure reading.
A heads-up for Science and History, these two subjects are content-based subjects and should only be incorporated into a child’s education when the child has acquired the skill to read well. Neither should they crowd out the time necessary for a child to master the three most basic skill-based subjects i.e. arithmetic, reading, and writing (not to be confused with composition). Impediment to these basic skills is impediment to every other learning. Once the three R’s have been solidly grasped, it is not too late to begin the study of Science and History.
Classical Conversations
We are entering our seventh year with CC (seventh year for Foundations and third year for Essentials for the Big Nona and myself as the tutor for both programs). With every growing year, we are loving the community more.
God has been immensely gracious to place us alongside these Christian families for friendships, supports, and accountability. Ultimately, the people we journey with matter as much as, if not more than, the learning throughout our home-education. For this we are deeply grateful to God. And if the Lord wills, the following year will see the Big Nona embarking on the Challenge A program.
The Most Important Thing
Year after year, after year, before the waves of a new academic year engulf us, it is important to remind ourselves again of what the purpose of our home-education is.
To pursue wisdom and virtue, to the glory of God, must be our motivation. To know God and to enjoy Him forever, must be our destination. The education that we are pursuing every day may look like messy tables with strewn stationery, tears over difficult assignments, proud moments when the child finally gets it, happy trips and wonder-filled nature walks. It will certainly look like an ordinarily busy life with its undulating ups and downs. And it is frighteningly easy to get sucked into the busyness of schooling while being oblivious to the fact that we are losing the anchor. Yet, forget we never must, this education we are pursuing bears the loftiest goal with the longest lasting impact.
To know God. To glorify Him. And to enjoy Him.
Forever.
Bring the Love Home 