Mum's "Year 2" plan

As I plan Tiger's Year 2, I have also been thinking about my own education.  Tiger is being educated in an entirely different approach from how I was schooled, so I feel the need to prepare myself in advance so that I may keep at least one step ahead of him.  While it has been enjoyable to learn alongside Tiger, I personally think that I should be able to at least point him in the right direction for useful resources in his later years of education.  I envisage myself akin to being a knowledgeable and interesting tour guide who can provide useful information about places to visit, about things to see and to look out for, about historical facts of places and people; I would not want to be like a guide who is still learning to read the map or one who is still trying to figure out where to go.

Luckily, as we are following mostly the Classical approach (as described in The Well-Trained Mind) at home wherein there is a four-year cycle for each stage of the child's education, I can learn alongside Tiger in terms of the historical context of Year 2 (The Middle Ages) but in a more indepth way.  In other words, while Tiger will be learning all about the Middle Ages as a Grammar stage student, I will be learning it as a Logic stage student.

The coverage of the Classical approach is so wide that while I can still confidently manage the content in the Grammar stage, I may not be as effective a teacher to Tiger in the Logic stage unless I start going through the learning for that stage now.   By the time Tiger reaches the Logic stage, I will be at the Rhetoric stage.  This way, I can be a more valuable and resourceful partner-in-learning to Tiger.

Realistically, I will not be able to spend 6-8 hours each day to learn everything required of Year 6 like a full-time student would be expected to.  However, I have put together a preliminary list of resources for the year, citing one resource per subject area.  By next summer, I shall be very proud of myself to have studied through the list.  If I can manage more, I will add to it.