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.

Why does summer go so fast?

Oh my! The summer is flying by! Please forgive my extended absence from this blog. The weather has been lovely and we've been out having fun.

Some of the things we've been up to:

Baseball!

Picnics and water gun fights

Enjoying the fruits of summer

Weddings!

Meeting new friends

I'll certainly try to get back here a little more frequently in the next few weeks! I hope you are all enjoying your summer as much as we are!

General Herkimer's Home

As you may remember, we visited the Oriskany Battlefield a few weeks ago, site of the bloodiest battle of the Revolution, and also a major turning point, contributing to the eventual victory at Saratoga. In the battle of Oriskany, General Herkimer was shot in the leg (his horse died under him) and, refusing to leave the battlefield, directed his troops from his position under a tree. He was then carried the roughly 40 miles back to his home, where he later died as a result of a poorly executed amputation of the wounded leg.

He died reading Psalm 38 from his huge German bible and feeling that he had failed in his mission. Tragically sad.

But we needn't dwell on that. We visited his home yesterday and focused on what life was like before that.

His house was beautiful and has been meticulously restored by the good state of New York.

Apparently, he was quite enterprising and made a nice living running a portage business, taking boats, their contents and passengers around the (small) waterfalls.

We toured the house, admired the grounds and the views and even went on a scavenger hunt for information in the family cemetery.

We learned about trading, making fire with steel and a flint and hunting.

Z-Man even got to hold the musket!

And, since it was 97 degrees(!!!), we visited the nice, cool, root cellar more than once. Loved the root cellar.

It was a wonderful trip and well worth a visit if you ever find yourself near Little Falls, NY.

Fencing

We've been trying out a new sport here: fencing. I question the sanity of putting a sword in the hands of a five-year-old who has been known to throw some pretty colossal fits of temper, but so far it's worked out. It turns out it's not a sharp sword and they do wear a helmet.

Plus I figure I'd better let them try it before it's outlawed. Better read this before you let your kids play tag or kickball this summer!

Anyway... back to cute pictures of my kids before I get myself all worked up.

Little Man looking determined.

Z-Man fencing his coach. The coach really loves what he does and seems to genuinely enjoy the kids.

And just for fun, here is the sword fight scene from Princess Bride. Enjoy!

Some Revolutionary trips!

We're just finishing up our first year of TruthQuest History (AHYS 1) and I have to say that it has been a resounding success. We've gone from the early explorers through the Revolution and have met fascinating spies, heroes, traitors, generals - it's been great.

And now, since it is spring and we live in NY, we are finally getting outside!! On Friday, we joined several families in a trip to the Old Stone Fort, a church-turned-fort that saw a little action in the Revolutionary War.

Yes, that's the actual cannon ball hole - from 1780! Pretty amazing.

There were several other buildings on the grounds, one of them a one-room schoolhouse where the kids each had their own little slate to write their lessons.

Over the weekend, we visited the Oriskany battlefield, site of the bloodiest battle of the Revolution. There is a monument with names of the dead and many signs giving a play-by-play of the battle. Please excuse the iPod photo - we forgot our camera again.

One sign reads: "British and Indians here ambushed the Tryon County Militia as they were marching to the relief of Fort Stanwix (Rome.) General Nicholas Herkimer, though wounded, rallied his forces and directed the fighting until the enemy fled. Defeated at Oriskany and unable to force the surrender of Fort Stanwix, the British retreated to Canada. These reverses, with their defeat at Saratoga, thwarted Burgoyne's plan to divide the colonies by conquering New York." Herkimer later died at his home following an unskilled amputation of his leg. We are actually scheduled to go to his home for another field trip in two weeks!

I'll keep you posted!