Second Grade Plans

Little Man isn't so little anymore! He will be in second grade this year. Here are our plans so far:

Bible:
TruthQuest Beginnings, which starts in Genesis and goes through the Old Testament
The God's Mighty Warrior Devotional Bible

Language Arts:
Understanding Writing - this program looks great and is very "Charlotte Mason" in nature. The author places a lot of emphasis on communication as a tool to honor God and edify others AND it can be used to teach multiple ages, each at his own level. We'll see how it goes!
Explode the Code - these move kind of slow for my taste but Little Man loves them and that's worth a lot.
Copywork and handwriting practice, Reading practice

Math:
Miquon - Little Man is very good at math and he actually enjoys it. Although Saxon has been great for my older son, who likes to know exactly what is expected, I think Miquon will provide more challenge and variety for Little Man.

Science:
Considering God's Creation
Science topics from Five in a Row

History:
TruthQuest Beginnings and TruthQuest Ancient Greece - Little Man will not be delving into the mythology and pagan religions of the ancients. He'll be included in the read-alouds that we do as a family and we'll also do some fun projects and Evan Moor History Pockets.

Unit Studies:
Five in a Row - how we love this program! So many great books and great memories made.

Other:
Amanda Bennett Great Composers unit study
Creating a Masterpiece art DVDs
Abeka Health
French in 10 Minutes a Day

Seventh grade plans

I have loved reading the "Not Back to School" blog hop over the last week. In fact, that's one of the things that inspired me to get back to blogging. I'm a little late with my entries, but I'll link up if there's still time.

Without further ado, here are the plans for Z-Man's seventh grade year:

Bible:
TruthQuest Beginnings (which goes through the OT)
Because You Are Strong Bible Study from Doorposts - this is a wonderful resource that he will work on in the mornings with Dad.

Character:
Laying Down the Rails for Children - another wonderful resource! Can't wait to start using it.

Language Arts:
Understanding Writing - this is new to us this year. I really like the fact that it emphasizes the fact that any communication we do is for the purpose of honoring God. I also liked that I could use it for both kids, each on their own level. I'll let you know how it works out.
Growing with Grammar - A nice daily workbook that gets the job done.
Phonetic Zoo Spelling - this is an audio CD from IEW. Z-Man can do it independently with his cool red headphones while I work with Little Man.

Math:
A combination of Saxon and the Key to Decimals and Key to Percents books. We worked through the Key to Fractions books last year and they really promote mastery of the material. They did put us a little behind in the Saxon schedule though, so this year we'll try to alternate between the two.

History:
TruthQuest Beginnings
TruthQuest Ancient Greece - We LOVE TruthQuest! We've read so many wonderful books. Definitely the highlight of our day. For the most part, this covers all of our family read-alouds as well as both boys' individual reading.

Science:
Apologia General Science

Other:
Abeka Health
Download N Go Composer study
French in 10 Minutes a Day
Creating a Masterpiece DVDs
Mapping and timeline to go along with our history studies
Basketball and flag football leagues, gym at co-op

And there you have it. I think it will be a great year!

Little Man's First Grade Curriculum

Can I just tell you right now how happy I am to be able to do Five in a Row with Little Man?

This year, for the first time, I took Z-Man with me to the homeschool convention. (He loved it!) When we visited one vendor that carried a lot of the FIAR titles, they were like old friends to him. We both have such wonderful memories of learning with those great books. I'm delighted to be able to make some of those memories with Little Man this year.

Five in a Row covers art, geography, social studies, science and even a little bit of math.



Math
Life of Fred - do you ever remember laughing while reading a math book? These are genius.
Living Math books - there's a good list here.

Phonics
We'll continue to use Explode the Code and our Bob Books.

Little Man has made tremendous progress learning to read, especially given that we just found out this summer that the vision in his right eye is 20/200. Basically, that means that he can see the huge E on the top of the eye chart. He's been wearing glasses all summer and may get an eye patch on the good eye in the middle of September, which will force the right eye to work. So it's hard to know what to expect, really. We'll just keep plugging away. Say a prayer for him if you would.

The following subjects will be done together with Z-Man:

Bible
We'll be going through the TruthQuest Beginnings guide, memorizing scripture and also working on character.

Art
Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes
Artist studies, including Frederick Remington and Winslow Homer

Music
Composer studies, including Haydn and Aaron Copeland
We'll attempt to learn to play the recorder. WAY out of my comfort zone here!

History
Z-Man is going through TruthQuest American History for Young Students III, which covers the Civil War to 2000. Little Man will snuggle on the couch for picture books, so I order plenty from the library. He usually wanders off for the chapter books and says, "tell me when there's a picture." Still, it's pretty amazing what he retained from last year and he'll be going over these time periods again later.

Science
Most of Little Man's science will come from our FIAR books, but he will be welcome to participate in Z-Man's earth science and creation science also.

So there you have it! We're looking forward to getting started next week. I wish you all a wonderful school year!

2012-2013 Curriculum for sixth grade!

Wow! I don't think I've ever taken such an extended blog break since I started this blog but, thankfully, it's just because we've been busy having a great summer! I hope all of you have enjoyed this beautiful summer as much as our family has.

I'll try to post some of our summer fun pictures soon, but today I want to talk about our plans for the upcoming school year, since I'm knee-deep in planning, as I'm sure many of you are.

Z-Man will be entering sixth grade. I know I talked last year about how much we love TruthQuest History. It's simple, uses living books and points out God's hand in history. Well, listen to this: about three weeks ago, Z-Man asked me if we could start our history reading early. Start a "school" subject early. Like, in the middle of summer. Just because he likes it! Isn't that the best thing you've ever heard?!

"Yes, Honey, if you're very, very good and do all your chores without complaining, I guess we can start history early." Oh my goodness.

History:
So we've been reading pioneer stories and will be moving on to the Wild West soon with TruthQuest American History for Young Students III, which goes from the end of the Civil War to 2000.

Bible:
We will also, in our Bible time, start TruthQuest Beginnings and go through that very slowly. If we don't finish this year, no big deal.

We'll continue to work on character using a lot of resources. That might have to be a separate post.

Science:
Creation or Evolution: A Home Study Curriculum. Very excited to start this!
The Earth: Its Structure and Its Changes. We did Forces and Motion last year and I really like this series. Very hands-on.

Art:
Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes

 Draw and Write Through History: The 20th Century
Artist Study - Frederick Remington, Winslow Homer, John James Audubon and several others.

Language Arts:
Rockets, Radar and Robotics: Technology-Based Writing Lessons from IEW. Somebody gets it at IEW, that's all I can say.
Take Five Minutes: A History Fact a Day for Editing. A cool fact every single day, written by some poor soul who can't spell, punctuate or capitalize. I do believe we can help them.

Geography:
Map Skills. A very simple workbook that gets the job done.

Math:
Saxon. It works for Z-Man and we're sticking with it. There were no tears over math last year. Could just be his age but I'm not taking any chances.

Music:
Composer studies, starting with Haydn so we can listen to "Creation" while we're studying creation. I love it when things go together.
In what I'm hoping was NOT a super-collosal mistake, I bought all of us soprano recorders. We'll see how that goes. I can always put my hair over my ears to hide those little squishy earplugs.


Stay tuned for Little Man's First Grade curriculum choices very soon!

What's working, what isn't

We've just finished our second week of the new school year and, overall, I'd say it was a great success. As is the case in each new year, however, there are a few adjustments that need to be made.

What's working

Giving Z-Man more control over his day. I've been giving him a daily checklist. He likes to know exactly what's coming. I may even start giving him a list for the whole week.

Seat work for Little Man, but only in small doses with me right by his side.

Short lessons, Charlotte Mason style. It already feels like a more relaxed atmosphere.

Nature Study using the Outdoor Hour Challenge. Last week, we studied milkweed, this week goldenrod. Good fun and I actually learned a lot!

What's not working

Including Little Man in our history reading. He loses interest very quickly when there are no pictures. Since the TruthQuest guide includes book recommendations for all grade levels for each topic that is covered, I'll start ordering more picture books from the library. We'll all read those together and then Little Man can have play time while Z-Man and I read the more advanced books.

Sleeping in - I haven't been getting up before the kids and that is NOT a good way to start the day. The remedy for this is obvious, but painful.

Five in a Row - we just haven't been getting to all of our FIAR studies the way I'd like to. This one just requires a little more effort on my part. The FIAR books are like old friends to Z-Man and I want to make sure that Little Man has all those good memories too.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the way the year is going so far. And now that we're back in our school routine with a little more structure in our days, I hope to blog a little more faithfully. I certainly appreciate you all sticking with me over the summer though! Thanks so much!

Plans for the 2011-2012 school year

If you're a homeschooling family, 'tis the season for planning. Or rather, finalizing the plans that you started back in March when the planning bug usually hits. Or is that just me?

Anyway, Little Man will officially be a kindergartener this year and Z-Man will be in fifth grade. Which means he'll be in junior high next year. How is that possible?!

Here are our plans, more or less:

(Click on any of the pictures or links for more information.)

Subjects we'll do all together:

Bible

This is technically not a school subject. I tell my kids that it's way more important than school.

As a family, we're currently reading through the kid's Bible story book illustrated by Tomie DePaola.

It's a good one to read at night because the pictures aren't scary.

Z-Man and Mark have been getting up early to work through one of the Kay Arthur Bible study books for kids.

We'll also continue our Bible memory using the Seeds Family Worship CDs. Love those! And we'll hopefully continue to learn some great old hymns.

Science

We plan to use some really fun books that I found at the convention this year:

Forces and Motion, which explores physics with fun experiments like figuring the speed of various wind-up toys,

and The Earth: Its Structure and Changes

I'm also planning a rather lengthy study of the human body with TONS of hands-on projects using primarily these three books:

My Body - Trace your kid and paste on all their body systems!

Considering God's Creation - which is just a wonderful natural science program all by itself, and

Reader's Digest How The Body Works - this book is just staggering. There are so many cool projects and experiments that you could easily work on it for a full year.

History

We'll be continuing with TruthQuest History, which made history my absolute favorite part of the day last year. We read so many great books! Z-Man will be in the second American history book which goes from the Constitution through the Civil War. There are some new products available this year on the TruthQuest site: a series of notebooking pages, lapbook pages, maps and timelines that correspond exactly with the guides. The end product should be a nice book of our history studies for the year. Little Man will be encouraged to listen in!

Art

We'll try to work through Evan-Moor's How to Teach Art to Children

and also Drawing With Children.

We'll continue with our artist studies, focusing on two artists per semester.

Music

We'll continue our composer studies, focusing one two to three composers per semester. We listen to their work, listen to shows on Classics for Kids, and read a biography like the series by Mike Venezia or Opal Wheeler.

Separate Subjects:

Math

Z-Man will continue to work independently through Saxon 65. Little Man will do "living math" from our FIAR studies and real life problems that we make up for him.

Language Arts

Little Man would like to continue to learn to read. He seems to progress in spurts. We use a plethora of things to help him, including letter magnets, Bob books, Starfall, Leapfrog videos and more. He will also start Explode the Code this year.

Z-Man will work on the book, All Things Fun and Fascinating, from the Institute for Excelling in Writing.

Five in a Row

Little Man will have his own special time to read all the great FIAR books! I am SO glad that I get to go through them all again! What a wonderful program. Z-Man has such fond memories of all these books that I probably should have included this in the "subjects we'll do together" section of this post. I'm sure he'll want to sit in on it.

So there you have it! I think it's going to be a great year!

If you're like me and you love seeing what others are doing, hop over to the "Not Back to School" Blog Hop at Heart of the Matter! The button doesn't seem to bring you to the right place, so click the words instead.

Good Reads

We do quite a bit of reading in our homeschool. We read books all together in the morning - FIAR, science, history, biographies, books on whatever we happen to be studying. Then, in the afternoon, while Little Man takes a short quiet time, Z-Man and I read more advanced books (or "books without pictures" according to LM) from our TruthQuest History guide. Z-Man usually has something he's reading on his own as well.

In my planning notebook, I keep a list of all the books we read throughout the year. Recently, I came across Goodreads.com, a more high-tech version that I can keep online, complete with pictures of each book. There are many other features that we haven't used yet, such as to-be-read lists and even an option to email interested friends and family each time you finish a book.

Z-Man has his own account, but I sign in and enter the books for him because they advertise books on the main page and also show what others are reading. There have been a couple of times that there were some inappropriate images there. Once you get into your own list, though, there are no ads or other images and he can scroll through all the pictures of the books he's read, rate them with one to five stars and even write a review. I think he was kind of surprised to see how much we've covered this year.

Now if I could just get to my own reading...

Summer, maybe?

Confessions of a compulsive planner

I know it might seem ridiculously early but just about this time each year, I start thinking about planning next year's studies. It looks like I may not be alone in this. I've read more than one "planning" post on various blogs lately. Dawn's blog has been one of my favorites for a long time: By Sun and Candlelight and she has some great planning ideas.

Since we use a unit study/living books approach, my first planning step is deciding what we'll be studying for the next year. Last year, we travelled the world. This year was a little more random (oh wait, I think the word is "eclectic.")

Our first unit study was weather. My initial plan was to do one Five in a Row book that related to weather for each week of our study (four FIAR books total.) This turned out to be a little bit too much for us. We either did the weather unit OR the FIAR work, but very rarely did we get to both. I love FIAR way too much to let that happen!

Light was the next unit study on the schedule so we tried a different approach. We first rowed The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge for a whole week, then we used that as a jumping-off point for our study of light and worked on that for the next two weeks. That went much better.

From the Big Picture to the Daily Schedule

This, by the way, is most definitely not a "how to plan" post. I just thought I'd show you how I do it since I really enjoy reading how other people do it.

Once I have an idea of the FIAR books I want to schedule and the other unit studies we may want to do, I make a list of library books, videos, craft projects, potential field trips, etc. for each one so I can see how much time to allocate. I put each unit into a yearly plan which lays out every week of the year. The ocean in January, snow in February, that sort of thing. Then I plug in all the other subjects. Certain things, like Saxon math and our Bible study, are easy to schedule. TruthQuest History is a little more challenging since I don't know what subjects we might find particularly interesting and want to camp out on. For that reason, I only make four or five weekly schedules at a time. Even then, I usually end up with a lot of arrows and things crossed out or moved around.

And from the weekly schedule, I make out a daily schedule. In the beginning of the school year, it looks like this:

Isn't that lovely and hyper-organized? Unfortunately, it doesn't last - but fortunately, it doesn't have to. The daily lists I scrawl on one side of my planner work just fine too.

I keep all my forms, lists and plans in a three-ring binder, along with our reading log, thoughts for next year's studies, holiday plans, etc. I decorate a new one each year. This year's may seem a little uninspired but I liked the paper so much I didn't want to put anything else on it! It makes me smile.

I hope this has been a little bit helpful. As I said, I always enjoy a peek into other people's homeschools - hopefully you do too!

Fourth grade and Pre-K plans

Better late than never! Here's what we're studying this year:

History - TruthQuest History: American History for Young Students I

I am delighted to have found this program. It presents history as HIS story and examines man's beliefs about God and humanity and focuses on how those beliefs affect every aspect of a society. (Very Francis Schaeffer) It uses living books and teaches through stories - no dry textbooks here! Because there are books listed for multiple grade levels, I plan to include Little Man, to some extent, so that he can be part of the discussions. In addition to our reading, we'll keep a timeline, do some map work and throw in some History Pockets when we can.

Science and Pre-K - Five in a Row

Oh, the joy of being able to do Five in a Row again with Little Man! And since I know Z-Man will not be able to resist listening in on books that he has come to view as old friends, our science program this year will be based on Five in a Row. We'll group books together that have a shared science theme and do science units - weather, light, simple machines, oceans. Each boy can participate at his own level. One thing I know they'll love is doing LOTS of experiments. For the weather unit, we'll be using Exploring Weather from the And God Created Science series. Tornadoes in a bottle, make your own clouds, rain gauge and barometer - good fun!

Language Arts - I really like the Charlotte Mason approach. We'll be taking passages from Bible readings, poetry and other reading to use as copywork and dictation. We'll take our language arts lessons, spelling and vocabulary words from those passages. Z-Man will continue to work on cursive. We'll also read poetry that relates to our studies. Z-Man will work on narrating after we read and he'll either write those narrations or dictate them to me to type. Little Man is working on letter sounds and is doing great.

Bible - We're planning to use Bible Study Guide for All Ages again. They just love those stick figures! We'll continue to learn some new hymns and work on character qualities using the online Character Journal. It really bothers me that we only do that during the school year. The Bible is not a school subject. I want my kids to know that it's infinitely more important than that and we should be seriously studying it all the time.

Art - In addition to the Five in a Row art lessons, we'll focus on early American artists, starting with Benjamin West. Many of his paintings will tie in very nicely with our Bible reading and American History. We'll read some biographies too.

Math - mostly Saxon, but I have found some football math that Z-Man loves. I'd like to transition to more of a math unit study format but Math on the Level wasn't in the budget this year and I don't feel quite confident enough to plan that out on my own. We'll just try to supplement with a lot of living math books for now. Little Man has lots of math manipulatives to play with - that really could be a whole separate post.

That's pretty much it. We'll be listening to various composers and reading the occasional biography as well as listening to Classics for Kids. We plan to read poetry at lunchtime and are focusing on Christina Rossetti first since her work is a good, kid-friendly introduction to poetry.

Oh! I almost forgot one of the most important things! Z-Man now has time scheduled every day to pursue studies of his own choosing. Right now, he's chosen to study World War II so we made a trip to the library and found a very intriguing book about trickery and deception in WWII:

We've had three days of "school" so far this year and so far, so good!

What Worked, What Didn't

As we wind down our school year, I wanted to assess what worked for us and what didn't.

What worked:

Getting up before my kids! It is impossible to overstate the difference this has made in our homeschooling and life in general. I've been getting up to pray and read the Bible and just get myself going before the commotion starts. Little Man, especially, hits the ground running in the morning. It helps to be prepared.

Workboxes. They definitely give our day the structure the kids need and that I have trouble providing otherwise. (I'm just not a structured kind of girl.) We use a lot of fun things that wouldn't get pulled out otherwise AND we get more done during the day. I don't feel the need to always fill all of the boxes and I think that helps me not to slip into just filling them with busywork.

Pre-K first. Sitting down and doing fun "school work" with Little Man first helps to fill his little tank. He is MUCH more likely to play independently once he's had some Mommy time.

YouTube. Adding YouTube videos to our studies was a huge hit. It was especially effective in teaching hymns. It probably goes without saying that I pre-screen all videos before showing them to the boys.

Stick Figure Bible Study. We've used Bible Study Guide for All Ages this year and each lesson has a page of stick figure people illustrating the story. They loved this! We have a Wii, an iPod and various other technology in this house and my kids loved the stick men. Sometimes you just have to shake your head and be thankful.

Read-Aloud time on the couch. One of the great blessings of homeschooling.

Lapbooks. We'll have to include more of these next year. Z-Man loves showing people the finished product and they provide great review!

Having a loose schedule for the entire year. Just enough so I know what's next but can still be flexible when needed.

What Didn't Work:

Taking days off because Mommy didn't get her act together to plan out our day. Ugh. This is fine every once in a while, but these days tend to multiply, especially if they occur in the beginning of the week. It's hard to get the boys back on track after an unexpected vacation day because they tend to think the next day should be the same. And the next, and the next...

Math. We used Saxon this year and it worked in that learning occurred but it was a huge struggle. I don't want the mere mention of math to cause dread and resignation or, worse, whining and complaining. I'm still looking into alternatives for fourth grade next year.

Busyness. Weeks where we had something scheduled every day were just too much for all of us. I want to be more judicious about what we say yes to in the future.

Some of the Dave and Neta Jackson books about missionaries. Don't get me wrong - they are great books. I couldn't put some of them down. But I also couldn't show them to my eight-year-old. He's a really sensitive kid. They might not be a problem for a lot of kids his age.

Hopefully this little exercise will help me as I plan next year's studies. But first - our summer fun camps! There will be a sports theme this year, at the boys' request. More on that very soon!