Sep. 2, 2006 - Planning to Use Principle Approach Education
This is what I do when I plan my year using Principle Approach curriculum.
1) Make schedule of what subjects I will teach during what times.
2) Make an academic calendar of what breaks and holidays I'll have, when I start and finish school, what days I'll have special days (literature, history, or science celebration days), and when each week of the quarter is.
3) Take topics covered found in the Noah Plan overviews for my grade and make a personalized quarterly overviews of topics and basic name of designated assignment covered in Bible, Lit, Hist, Sci, and Geo.
4) Plan specific lesson plans for 1 quarter for all subjects. This is a list of what page or lesson and assignment name I teach for a given day for that subject. The key and Principle Approach distinctive is that the principles and teaching methods are identified in the Noah Plan lessons for each subject, each week. This gives me a pretty good idea of what books I've need, what assignments I'll be teaching, and where to find the specific lesson details I'll need at the exact time I teach.
5) Prepare notebooks with labeled divider tabs, cover page (complete with name of our school and teacher, student name and picture, and subjects studied with year and grade), and spine label (same info as cover page).
I recently helped a new homeschool mom do these things for her fifth grader and since she is new to Principle Approach curriculum, we'll be following the same lesson plans for Bible, Lit, Hist, Sci, and Geo. The new learning goal for her this year is in The Writing Road to Reading. She's using a basic math text just to get by.
I am so excited to teach this year because I feel so much better about teaching all my subjects. And I have a better understanding of the flow of my schedule. I'm excited to be better planned. I got so excited about my planning I ended up planning the entire year for Lit, His, and Sci. These subjects were so easy to plan for. All I did was decide which book/chapter we'll read on a given day. The teaching method is the same, so now I have a better understanding of how to get through the subject. And I'm excited to see what we're going to learn, especially after finally having a great emotional connection with teaching Shakespeare this year. It's neat! Every year (this is my third) I fall in love with another unit of study that I had previously know nothing about or disliked.
Principle Approach education is difficult to use, but the more I use it the deeper I get into learning and appreciated all that God has provided for us to learn. I'm sure we all fight the thoughts of hating school from our own school days. Well, Principle Approach makes you a lover of learning. Your children might not appreciate it as much as you, but they will be scholars and great thinkers of their day. Teaching logic in kindergarten by teaching outlining is just one example of how PA students get an early start in life and learning. They'll ultimately be able to read, think, and do more with their life than I ever did at a given age. Teaching sentence patterns (grammer-complements) to your first grader (before they get to 4th grade) will make them better at understanding what they read and how to write better. Teaching your second grader visual math strategies make them quicker at computation which will free their minds for higher math. They won't get stuck at simple computation. PA education is worth every sacrifice of time and effort. If you want to better yourself and reach your own goals?
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