Fall 2011 School

We are getting ready to start our new school year . . . in a couple weeks, but I'm feeling excited - our books arrived today, I spent the weekend getting notebooks ready and putting together a schedule - so I thought I'd share our {tentative} plans. 

Curriculum:

Devotional- We are continuing to read the New Testament using Penny Gardner's Storied Scriptures and The Book of Virtues.  I've decided to have A and N start a Scripture Study notebook where they will be making narrations of what we study and keeping any other pertinent papers.  

 Math - Math-U-See Gamma

 Handwriting Without Tears - Finishing up Cursive Handwriting and moving into the Cursive Success

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Literature - We will be adding Shakespeare and Plutarch this year, reading from the Milestone's and Ambleside Online's Year 5 suggested reading lists, and from our many poetry books. The plan is to do a lot more concert reading, something I learned about from the Milestone's Academy founder, so I tried to get enough copies of the books for each of us to have our own, or N and I will share. 

Science & Nature Study - Exploring Creation with Zoology 1 and experiment kit from Rainbow Resource, with a little supplementing from the Zoology Coloring Book.  Nature Study will be from the Handbook of Nature Study blog. 

 History & Geography - We will continue with The Story of the World (SOTW) Volume One: Ancient Times. I was able to get a great deal on the curriculum guide with some student pages so we will supplement with some notebook pages and activities, in addition to mapping, keeping a timeline, and narrations.  

Art & Music - We will continue using the Harmony Fine Arts (HFA) & Music lessons for Ancient Art and the Orchestra. On Fridays we will be doing art projects - pastels, watercolors, etc.

 Foreign Language - I am trying to add this in, but I've tried in the past and its always fallen to the side, so we'll see what happens this year.  We used to do a lot of sign language so I thought that would be easy to add to our schedule with Signing Time and Pick Me Up! From Songs for Learning Signs. My husband speaks Brazilian Portuguese so we are going to start learning some songs from Putamayo Kids Brazilian Playground.  They have a Teacher's Guide with song lyrics and translations. 

Preschool for O & J - These two want to do their own school work so much!! They have their own totes, notebooks, and pencil boxes, and are always asking for their own pages of school work. Despite my aversion toworksheet-like school, I decided to give Rod & Staff's ABC books a try.  We'll also be doing math games, art projects, and reading from the Before Five In A Row, Milestone's Year 0, and Ambleside Year 0 booklists. 

Organization:

 For each school subject, A and O have a notebook with tabs inside separating each sub-subject.  For each subject they will have notebook pages to write or draw their narrations on. 

 All their notebooks and other workbooks are kept in their totes. I have a couple more totes where I keep all the current books we are using together. 

Schedule:

This is a picture of the planner I've made to keep us on track.  On the left axis are the days of the week, and along the top are the different subjects. As we complete assignments I mark them with a highlighter to show they are done.

Monday
Devotional
Math
Handwriting
Shakespeare
Chapter book read aloud (RA)
Science
HFA - Art Lesson
Portuguese

Tuesday
Devotional
Math
Handwriting
Plutarch
RA
Nature Study
SOTW
Sign Language

Wednesday
Devotional
Math
Handwriting
Shakespeare
RA
Science
HFA - Music Lesson
Portuguese

Thursday
Devotional
Math
Handwriting
Shakespeare
RA
Nature Study
SOTW/Timeline
Sign Language

Friday
Devotional
Math Games
Handwriting
RA
Art Projects

Each day has the same general pattern -

Day starts around 7am - wake up & do personal scripture study
Get dressed, hair, etc.
Breakfast & clean up
Bedroom chores
Devotional, math, handwriting, personal reading - I work with O & J while A & N do their work
One or two more subjects, depending on time and attention spans
Morning break - we usually head outside to ride bikes or other PE type activity, and then come in for a quick snack
One or two more subjects, depending on time and attention spans
Lunch & Clean up
Family Work - folding laundry or cleaning zones in the house
Finish school work - done by 2pm at the latest
Free afternoons
Dinner & Clean up
Bedtime

Activities:

We are going to be doing swimming lessons for the fall.  A is doing Scouts and First Lego League. N does Acticity Days (a church group for girls 8-11) and possibly an art class. We'll have weekly activities with our homeschool group through September and then we'll do monthly activities through winter.  I'm in charge of our young women's church sports for our ward which will mean weekly games and possibly practices.  I've had talks with a few friends for a fall hiking group, but we'll see if it really happens. I'm trying to cut back on activities, but it doesn't really feel like that's going to happen!!!

2011 School Update

I have been trying to squeeze some free time out of my day-to-day thingsthatneedtobedone, but obviously blogging hasn't been high on my list.  I do miss it so I'm going to make some effort in the future.  :) 

Instead of trying to do multiple posts to catch up I'm going to review what we did for school in January in one post.  During our Christmas break I talked with my kids about each subject and we discussed what was working, what wasn't, and what ideas they had for improving.  They came up with some really good ideas, we simplified in several areas, and we have been mostly happy with our new plans. 

Devotional

We continue to work on learning new songs and memorizing scriptures.  We started reading the New Testament using Penny Gardner's Storied Scriptures.  They are familiar with Christ's life so they are starting to fit events into a "bigger picture" view.  I'm also surprised at how much my younger girls (2 & 4) know about the ministry of Jesus Christ.  We also read from The Book of Virtues, chapter 2 on Compassion.  We started reading from this in October with the plan to focus on each virtue/chapter per month, but took a  break for the holidays - in November we focued on Gratitude with a fabulous resource from Donnna Young, in December we did a daily Christmas devotional using a binder given to my family years ago, and in January we were back to The Book of Virtues.  I am incredibly tempted to purchase Donna Young's February Devotional.  Hmm.

 Math

We continue to work through Math-U-See, but we are playing more addition and subtraction games to improve their ability to recall math facts. 

 Literature

We are reading a new poetry anthology that is lots of fun - Sing a Song of Popcorn.  I think I picked it up at a yard sale or thrift store.  We were reading Minn of the Mississippi for Geography, but its harder to map than some of the other Holling books so we've moved it to Literature so we can finish it.  We are into Christiana's journey in Pilgrim's Progress and the kids still love it - this week we read about Great Heart killing the giant Maul, what's not to enjoy about that?   I am reading the Kirsten American Girls book with N for her Liberty Girl's club, and A is reading The Sowers book about David Livingston for his Knights of Freedom club.  Free reading - A has taken an interest in Greek Mythology and read the D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths, as well as reading other modern books like The Sisters Grimm series.  N has been listening to Magic Treehouse books, The Fairies Collections, and A Little Princess again. 

 History

We are still learning about the American Revolution.  I'm reading them the Landmark book, The American Revolution.  Its been easier for them to understand after watching the Liberty Kids tv series.  We have also been watching some related videos - the first few episodes of the Story of US by the History Channel, and some others online like these and these.

 Geography

I found the National Geographic book above at a discount store and we decided to use it as our spine book to learn about and map the journey's of famous explorers.  We started with the Norsemen - we read the details in the main book, and also read Lief the Lucky by the D'Aulaires and another short book we have about their travels.  Next I think we are going to learn about the Silk Route in Asia.  We also make sure we pull out our maps with other subjects as well, such as the journey of Kirsten's family from Sweden to Minnesota in the American Girl books.   

 Science - Astronomy

We are still reading Exploring Creation with Astronomy and using the journals for narrating, but we aren't doing the worksheet pages or notebooking projects.  We are trying to do science projects on saturday since Dad is around the help with the project or fielding little kids, so we are more likely to DO the projects. One of the changes the kids wanted for this subject was to learn more about the constellations and do more stargazing .  I made everyone a "Constellation Journal"  where we use star stickers to make the constellation and then we read the story about the constellation.  This is how my son became so interested in Greek myths.  We haven't done much stargazing yet - evening time has so many things going on - but I do want to do it during winter/spring when it is dark earlier.   

 Nature Study

We have been doing the nature challenges at Handbook of Nature Study, but I haven't blogged about them.  Maybe I'll catch up sometime soon?!? N's latest pictures for a winter tree study are above.  For our nature tales we have been reading a book called The Seven Sleepers all about animal hibernation.  It includes the usual animals you think about hibernating like chipmunks, squirells, and bears, but also has information about earthworms, reptiles, amphibians, bats, butterflies and more. 

 Artist Study & Composer Sudy

We started a new artist - Edgar Degas - and we are enjoying him.  Well, most of us - my son isn't so interested in all the ballet pictures and stories, but he's learned to humor all us girls :).  We are still listening to Sergei Prokofiev - next month we will be attending a Utah Symphony Lollipop version of Peter & the Wolf. 

  

Extracurricular

As I mentioned, the kids are still doing their book clubs - Liberty Girls & Knights of Freedom.  They are also attending art class again this semester and studying Van Gogh.  We've already focused on him in our homeschool, but they enjoy learning more about his work and doing art projects.  We are going to be attending some "Lost Art" classes this month hosted by a homeschool mom who lives on a working homestead - candlemaking, all about fiber (wool), and cheese making. 

A has been working on Cub Scout stuff - he recently earned his Religious Knot and Bear Award.  Now he is working on the World Conservation Award as something to do because he has about 5 months before he moves into Webelos.  Theyare both working on their Faith in God, a program for boys and girls in our church.  A and N just finished a Learn to Play Hockey class at the Olympic Oval and really enjoyed it.  We plan on having them do the next class as well. 

 Preschool

My 2 & 4 year old girls are demanding more "school" time of their own.  So we spend 30 minutes to an hour doing stuff together - we read books, sing and act out songs, play games like duck-duck-goose, count manipulatives and toys, go on shape or color hunts, and so on.  They love it.  I have also started doing some printing readiness with my 4 year old - while the 2 year old naps, O sits next to me working on her own "school" while I work with the older 2 kids.  I'm starting to think about phonics/reading, but we are aren't in a hurry. 

Family Cleaning

Also new to our schedule is housework! A few days a week we focus on one room in the house and do some deep cleaning - vacuuming, mopping, windows, baseboards, dusting.  It helps me out and means every room in the house gets some extra attention at least once a month.  Even O & J like having their own damp rag to wipe stuff with.  Adults in training :)

Organization

Our current schedule (yellow paper) is on the wall. In the totes below the schedule I have all the school books we are using divided by day, with each day separated by a colored sheet of cardstock. Each day I pull out the books we will need and then put them back as we complete each subject. For example, on Moday I pull out Famous Men, Backyard Scientist, and the American Tall Tales book. I know from the schedule that we will need to listen to Beethoven during lunch, get out supplies for our science project, and see if there are any people or events from the past week which we need to add to our timeline. We have been listening to the Redwall series in the car, but sometimes we bring the discs inside as well. My school age kids each have their own tote which holds their individual books and notebooks, such as math workbooks, books they are reading, and their notebooks for copywork, history, science, etc.

In our school area we have 4 small bookshelves and they are all covered with books, mostly books the kids can read or look at any time they want, though I have a couple shelves for my notebooks, library books, future books for school, and other totes for several subjects. For example, one tote holds our nature guide books, compasses, flower presses, and anything we might need for nature studies.