Several of you have reached out to us to ask questions, and we think that our responses might be useful to the community at large.
Is there a Facebook group or a forum for Ursa Minor Learning?
Not yet. We don’t currently have the time to moderate such a group. UML is our pet project and we both do other stuff to pay the rent, so we are putting our energy into finishing Years 6-8 on schedule. We are considering asking for volunteer moderators from the community if anyone is interested and has experience. Let us know what you think.
Will there be more of a focus on nature study in the younger years?
Yes! We love nature and nature study. We are still working out what this is going to look like. There is a distinct possibility that we will also move beyond the suggestions currently in place for high school with a more detailed plan.
Will you schedule BFSU for Kindergarten aged children?
No. We adore Charlotte Mason’s idea of Masterly Inactivity and will not be scheduling any academics before Year 1. We hope to eventually create suggestions for fun games/fingerplay songs/outdoor time for our, as we’re leaning towards calling them, MI-1 through MI-5s, as well as mother culture ideas for making “letting alone” a bit easier. This is on the 2018/2019 schedule, though!
Will you be offering national histories besides the United States?
Yes. We hope to offer national histories for Canada, Australia, and England in the first round, and then expand as people express interest. If our blog stats are anything to go by the next three popular countries would be France, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. This is also on the 2018/2019 schedule.
Will you being making math suggestions for kids who aren’t obsessed with math?
Yes. Our kids are all math kids. Really, really math kids. We’ve been looking on math curricula as we can get our hands on them, bugging all the moms in our local homeschool group, and reading seventeen-bazillion reviews. We plan to offer three different suggestion: the current one for kids who love and are strong in math, one for kids who may or may not like math but are at grade level, and one for kids who struggle.
Also, please remember that everything on this site is merely a suggestion. Do what works for your family. We don’t know your kids like you know your kids, and we trust that you as parents have got this homeschooling thing. We’re just here to make things easier if we can.
Will substituting coding for a second modern language mean that it counts as a credit for a language?
No, or at least we don’t think so. How credits work and what colleges want varies widely, and so we generally can’t answer this type of question. We think for many kids that a computer language will be a wonderful new dimension of our world to explore. It also may not be the right choice for your kid, so keep in mind that it’s just one option.
Where are your images at the top of blog posts from?
The Biodiversity Heritage Library’s public domain collection on Flikr. You can also check on Photo Credits page for other images on the website.
for Years 6-8) as the spine of our Year 1-9 Science curriculum. We love BFSU, but it is notoriously teacher intensive, so we are in the process of (literally) deconstructing it! This is us laying out all the lessons to organize them physically.
