**These photos may disappear soon. I accidentally
deleted an album off my picasa web site and I believe these
photos were in it. Silly me!**
This is our extra table in the kitchen where the kids
can work on projects or sit by themselves if they need some quiet.
The table where most of school happens.
Our bookcase, Ryan’s old desk, in the middle, and
my printer/copier and stand.
The recorders came in the other day and the
music books were in on Monday.
I am looking forward to our music class this year! 🙂
I’ve been working on getting the kid’s school work organized
and everything ready to go for Monday, August 15, 2011.
Can’t believe it’s here, but kind of glad, too. These
summer days seem crazy without much of a schedule to follow
and I love to have a schedule to follow. Helps keep me motivated!
Here is our curriculum lineup:
Bible: We’re going to do a character study for the first half of the school year (though it may get interrupted with Advent, we’ll see). There are verses for each character trait we’re learning about and the kids will be memorizing a new verse each week. They will do copywork of their new verse at the beginning of each week and recite their verse on Friday. At least that’s the plan. 🙂 This will be done Monday – Friday.
Math U See: They will be continuing in their books they got earlier this year – boys in Gamma and Grace is Beta. Our first week or two of school will be reviewing Addition/Subtraction/Multiplication and maybe read some word problems and work through them together. I’m planning on having fun the first couple weeks of school. This will be done Monday – Friday.
Easy Grammar: Nathan will continue working in his book from last year and Ryan will review rules and do some practice pages, but we’re concentrating on his reading a lot at the beginning of the school year. Grammar will come later for him depending on how his reading improves. He seems to really want to work hard since reading is something he really struggles with. This will be done Monday – Friday.
Spell to Write and Read: Everyone is doing this subject. All 3 will start where they started last year and move through the word lists for the first couple weeks of school for review. Then we’ll continue where we left off last year. Also, we’ll be adding more hands on activities for Ryan and Grace. This will be done Monday – Friday.
Explode the Code: Ryan and Grace will be working on this subject. Grace is in books 2 & 2 1/2 and Ryan is doing 3 and 3 1/2. I am going to try incorporating some of the suggested activities from the teacher’s book with these subjects to make them a little more interesting for both. This will be done Monday – Friday.
Handbook of Nature Study: This is a new subject for us, but it will be fun and will help us get outside a little more during the fall and even winter so we can observe the beauty that surrounds us. I ordered these neat notebooks that have the top half of the pages blank for drawing or attempting to draw what we’re learning about and room for thoughts or copywork on the subject we’re learning. I’m looking forward to doing this with the kids! This subject is Monday – Wednesday – Friday and maybe more if the kids want to. We shall see. 🙂 Nathan likes to read and answer questions, so this year he’s going to be doing a book we picked up at the Homeschool Convention we went to last year. It’s called Creation or Evolution by Mike Snavely.
History: I found this book called The Founding of the United States Experience at Ollie’s Bargain Bin last year and never used it, so this year we’re learning how our country was founded and I have worksheets and ideas to incorporate from a couple online sites. I’m quite excited about this. I planned it for the first part of the school year. Not sure what we’ll do after that, but I’ll be looking around. This subject is Monday – Wednesday – Friday.
Art: I got a video for free called Art Class and it’s by See the Light . The teacher is Pat Knepley and there are 4 lessons on this video. Figured it would be a fun way to start the school year. May order more if the kids really love it. I’m not artistic, so it’ll be nice to have a structured class, kind of. I’ll also use some helps from
Practical Pages and
Garden of Praise. Not sure if we’ll do this Tuesday AND Thursday or Tuesday OR Thursday. We’ll see what the kids would like to do. I want to focus a little more on art and music this year.
Music: As mentioned above, we’ll be learning how to play the recorder this year and it’s something the kids seem excited about learning! I’m glad I know how to read music some and can teach them a little. 🙂 This is also Tuesday AND Thursday or Tuesday OR Thursday. Not sure about this one either. Ryan is showing interest in my guitar, too. We’ll see how far that interest goes. I have a video for beginners and since I’m a beginner I can help him a little bit (very little bit, lol).
Handwriting: The kids are going to be working on their cursive writing this year. I almost forgot to write about this subject. I got these books from christianbook.com or something like that. lol Can’t remember for sure. Ryan and Nathan know how to write cursive, but need the extra practice and Grace will be learning to write in cursive this year. Not sure how many days a week this will be. Maybe a page a day. Sounds like a loose plan so far. 🙂
Reading: All will be required to read 20 minutes per day. Look out library, here we come!
Field Trips: We are working on planning some field trips with year with Renea and her kiddos and a few other homeschool friends.. Our first one is already scheduled for August 25th to Inventionland. It looks like a really neat and fun place to go. I’ll blab all about it once we get back from that place.
So that is what our new school year will look like, roughly. I’m sure we’ll have to tweak things along the way, but I’m excited to see how it goes!
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