new CM;Older Girls, Need to Buy Books: Direction?

If you haven’t already, Cyndi, take a look at the SCM Curriculum Guide to see what we recommend in each subject for each grade. Be sure to click on the underlined text to see details and book titles.

Since you asked mainly about language arts areas, let’s start with those. You’ll want to cover

• good literature (which you’re already reading in other subjects anyway, so that’s covered),
• narration (both oral and written),
• prepared dictation (for spelling), 
• poetry,
• Shakespeare,
• English grammar.

Now based on your descriptions of the girls, both here and on other threads, here are some specifics I would suggest for them.

Both

• Poetry: Select a poet and read aloud his poetry. Don’t worry about analyzing, just enjoy the use of words and get familiar with his style. Stay on the same poet for at least 6-12 weeks. You can read one poem a week or several. That’s up to you. Don’t make this subject hard; it isn’t.
• Shakespeare: If you want to, select a play and study it together using the 3 simple steps outlined in this article in our language arts series. (In fact, that whole series on Language Arts might be helpful.) Don’t feel badly, though, if you want to skip this subject this year while you’re making the transition and getting comfortable. You can always add it once you get things settled in.
• Grammar: Based on your description of the two girls’ comfort-zones with words, I would suggest you use Our Mother Tongue with both of them this year. Then you can transition into Analytical Grammar next year.
• If you want to encourage both girls in their reading (and keep up their handwriting skills too), you might let each pick out a beautiful blank journal that will become their Book of Mottoes. As they read the good literature that you will suggest for them, they can copy quotes and thoughts that they especially like from their reading. 

Your 12yo

• Narration: Continue with some oral narration, but encourage the transition to more written narrations. Choose one or two technical aspects about her writing to help her improve. Talk about that aspect and work together to correct it in future narrations. Once she has mastered that aspect, move on to another one. You might also challenge her to write her narration in poetry form once in a while, just for fun. And don’t overlook encouraging her to write her narrations in a variety of styles. You’ll find some ideas for keeping narration creative and interesting in this Narration Ideas list.
• Dictation: Since she seems to already have a good start on the habit of looking at how words are spelled as she reads, you could easily start her in Spelling Wisdom, Book 2. Do two exercises per week.

Your 14yo

• Narration: Encourage her to give an oral narration on a smaller section of reading to encourage and build this skill. As she gains confidence in oral narration, you can make the transition to written narration in baby steps. For example, one idea would be to have her start narrating orally and you write or type what she says. When she gets close to the end, you stop recording her words and have her finish the written narration. Maybe you will begin this process by having her write only the last one or two sentences. But as she gets used to that, you can stop sooner and have her write more until gradually she will be writing the whole thing. As with your other daughter, once she gets comfortable putting her words on paper, you can start helping her to improve one aspect at a time.
• Dictation: In order to build her confidence with spelling, you might want to start her in Book 1. Be sure to do the girls’ dictation lessons on different days of the week to discourage any comparison/competition. If you think your 14yo might find it disturbing that her little sister is in Book 2, go ahead and use Book 2 for both. But you might allow your 14yo more time to study, and therefore do only one exercise per week.

Okay, that should get you going on language arts. Do you need direction in any other subjects?

Although written showing things done with younger kids, I love the example of “Pocketful of Pinecones” by Karen Andreola for a sample of how easy nature study can be (although the mom in the fictional story knows a lot more about nature than I do….)  

A history schedule where I could get all of the Modules in for the 14 and 12yr old?

Looks like you want to cover history in four years then. There have been several discussions about ideas for doing that. The two that seem to bubble to the top most often are either (1) doing Beautiful Feet’s ancients study, in order to cover the time periods in modules 1-3, then picking up with SCM module 4-6, or (2) trying to cover modules 1 & 2 in a year, then 3 & 4 in a year, and finishing with 5 and 6 as usual.

Some notes on those choices to help you make your decision: Beautiful Feet’s study uses many of the same books we recommend for the world history, but it doesn’t cover the Bible history like we do. So you would need to determine whether you want to try to add that yourself or just do something else for Bible. The other thing to note is that modules 1-3 are a lighter work load than modules 4-6. So while it might not be too hard to get through everything in modules 1 & 2, combining 3 & 4 in a year may be a bit heavy. 

 Forgot to ask if Nature Study is to young? for them.

Nature study is for all ages. See if you can get your hands on a copy of The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady at your local library. It will give you an example of what a nature notebook can look like for an adult. Definitely not childish. (And don’t forget that getting girls outside can really help with raging hormones and emotions. Something about God’s nature just helps the body and spirit to reset.)

they LOVED Girl of the Limberlost and so I need more books like that.

Have you looked at the other recommended living science books on the curriculum guide? It lists several biographies that might give you some ideas for those. You might also see if your local library has other Gene Stratton-Porter books.

By the way, Sonya, my husband has read some of your material and he says it is so…well organized like a professor he had in school who made it easy to understand. Coming from him I sold!

Please tell your husband Thank you for the encouragement!