Binders!

Some glimpses of our daily binder system, for first and second grade (the big kids have theirs squirreled away in their rooms, and they're just full of lesson plans, anyway):

 

This is the first-grader's binder. See how nicely her Mead Primary Journal fits in the front pocket? Her pink pouch holds her pencils, Addition Wrap-Up, erasers, various math manipulatives like dice, and her collection of rosaries. That's her September calendar, colored to mark the liturgical season and the month's feasts, on the right. Friday we'll do one for October. 

The binder holds her reading and spelling (that goat story had her incoherent with laughter this morning) . . .

her math workbook-work (as opposed to things like drawing fractal trees, which we did today in journals) . . .

and random science stuff (this was a parts-of-a-flower coloring page):

The back pocket holds her handwriting book:

Here's a quick tour of the second-grader's binder, with journal, current reading, supply pouch . . .

and reading log.

He does also have math, science, and handwriting sections;  it's just that once you've seen one workbook page or flower-parts coloring sheet, you've more or less seen them all.

Meanwhile, we've abandoned ancient Mesopotamia to the sands of time and emigrated to Egypt. We've watched the Civilizations episode, which features some fascinating recent archaeological discoveries, and are reading Elizabeth Payne's Pharoahs of Ancient Egypt aloud. We'll be using all these resources, though I'm not sure in what order:

And, in what I anticipate will be a crowning moment, we plan to mummify a chicken.

As I say, I spend a lot of blog time on the younger kids, because I work with them more face-to-face, and what they're doing is easily photographable, though now that I think of it, I probably ought to hover with the camera while the senior does whatever it is she's going to do with the lye, red cabbage, and vinegar which she has requested for her next chemistry experiment.

If anyone's interested in seventh-grade or twelfth-grade plans, however, I'd be happy to share mine via email. I am rather proud of the twelfth-grade plans, particularly the History of Ideas course which has the senior reading Anthony Esolen's Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization and, currently, Dante's Inferno. It's a lot of reading and essay-writing this term;  next term she'll write a researched senior thesis on some historical/philosophical topic.

Meanwhile, the seventh-grader has been writing weekly papers on the Phoenicians, Alexander the Great, the Persian Empire (Persia rocks, he says), Roman military tactics, and, this week, persecution of the early Church under the Emperor Diocletian. So far they've been straight expository papers of the "who/what/where/when/why" variety, but I'm starting to let him substitute some more creative writing projects for some of these. His Diocletian paper, for example, is taking the form of a newspaper article;  he could also opt to "interview" an historical figure, have that figure write a long, detailed "Dear Abby" letter, write an historical story in which a young character shares adventures with a real historical figure, and so forth. I had thought that writing would be a blood/turnip affair for him, but as it turns out, he has a hard time keeping his papers under five pages. So . . . there's that to work on instead.

So, the little kids are spending this rainy afternoon cleaning the first-grader's room, but the sounds of something hard, like maybe a golf ball, being thrown down the hall repeatedly are starting to intrude on my reverie here. Perhaps I should get up out of this chair.