The Plan

Once I had committed to doing some sort of immersion homeschool, I began the gargantuan task of choosing a method/curriculum, developing a schedule, etc.  Sorting through all the options for curriculum and information on methods is really quite overwhelming.  There are so many choices!  I found it all very exciting, though, especially because I love any excuse to put off cleaning my house.  For this post I won't go into detail as to why I chose a particular method or curricula, but will give my reasoning for each in separate posts.

I chose to enroll my son (age 5) in a Classical Conversations (CC) group, which will begin meeting in September.  Classical has geography and history at its foundation and provides memory work along with art and science projects.  It is one day a week where my son can receive instruction from an adult who isn't me (which benefits both of us!).  As its name implies, it follows the Classical Method, which is the approach I will be using.

I am going to attempt to have my son learn the memory work in English and Spanish. My thought is, "If he can memorize sentences, places, science facts, etc. in English, then he can also memorize them in Spanish." Plus, it would benefit me to learn more academic terms in Spanish. Most academic terms are very similar in Spanish and English, so hopefully it won't be too much of a stretch. I may be crazy, and it may not work, but we are going to give it try. I plan to allow my 3-year-old to participate in as much of the studying as he likes. If he gets bored with it, I will have puzzles and activities for him to do while I work with my older son.

In addition to CC, we will be using two math programs: Singapore Math in English and MEP (Mathematics Enhancement Programme) in Spanish. My plan is to alternate weeks in Spanish and English. My 3-year-old will do math along with us (at his level) for as long as his attention span will allow.

Since my son is only Kinder-age this year, we will devote the bulk of our time to developing Spanish vocabulary, grammar, reading, and speaking. Part of the instruction will come from Educazion.net, a Mexican online homeschool. The other part will come from lessons and activities that I put together myself, consisting of a vocabulary theme, books, reading/writing and hands-on (art, science, music, fieldtrips) activities. Yes, it is very time-consuming to develop my own activities, but I just couldn't find a boxed curriculum that suited me. My younger son will participate fully in the Spanish activities, and is also enrolled in Educazion.

For my Kindergartner, I am going to be somewhat lax on English grammar this year. We will learn the grammar from CC and set aside plenty of time dedicated to reading, all kinds of reading. I'm comfortable with dedicating most of our time to Spanish language arts because my son already has a strong foundation in English. For the 3-yr-old we will spend a large amount of time on English phonics and reading. Once he becomes proficient in English, we will move on to reading in Spanish.

As far as religion, we will tie that in with our Spanish lessons, and CC also has a religious basis.

So, that is the grand plan. I will made updates as we modify it.