2008/09 School Plans

The Official Post

I really like having an official beginning to a school year, even when we’ve been learning off and on all summer long, so Monday will be our first day of school.  A will technically be in 2nd grade, C will be a kindergartner, and I suppose D is an official preschooler now.  Anyway, he says he wants to read, so he’ll be focusing on learning the alphabet, using letteroftheweek.com as well as alphabet pages from First-School. 

For C:

• Reading: We’ll continue to use The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading.  It finally clicked this summer and he can read most 3-letter words now. 
• Handwriting: He’s finishing up the Kumon Lower-case Letters workbook, then will start copywork taken from scriptures, literature, and religious sayings.
• Phonics: Explode the Code primer books
• Math: Singapore EarlyBird Math 2A and 2B
• Folk Tales and Fairy Tales Literature Pockets: 1 pocket per month (with D if he’s interested)
• Five in a Row: 2 books per month (also with D)

(Because I like a visual, even if there is no way anyone can actually read all of the titles of the books artistically placed on my living room carpet.)

For A:

• Grammar: Growing with Grammar
• Writing: Writing with Ease by Susan Wise Bauer-We’re still waiting for the workbook to arrive, but I’m very excited about this and will probably give it its own post sometime.
• Handwriting: Learning cursive with alphabet sheets from LearningPage.com and copywork printed out at Zaner-Bloser online.
• Spelling: Spelling Workout B-Although I’m not convinced it really did anything for his spelling skills last year, he really likes this series and I will wait until next year to start working from The ABC’s and All Their Tricks when both C and A can work together on the same spelling rules and lists. 
• Reading: This child can read just about anything, so I just let him read, although  I also want to go through Beautiful Feet Books-Teaching Character through Literature with all three boys.   
• Math: He has a very few lessons left in Singapore 2A, then we’ll work through 2B and 3A.
• Latin: We’ll pick up where we left off in Prima Latina and do a lesson a week.

Although I plan the rest of the subjects specifically for A, we try to include the younger two as much as possible.

• Art: Although this wasn’t my favorite curriculum last year, we’ll finish up the historical projects in Artistic Pursuits Vol. 1 and then go into Vol. 2 as it also ties into medieval history.  We discovered last year that we are most likely to do art when it ties into another subject.  However, I still want to try using Drawing with Children, I just have to get over my own artistic insecurities before I can teach this.  
• Music: Music is a natural part of life around here, but it was nice last year to have a composer of the month to focus on, so I randomly picked 9 more composers to study, using my composer coloring books and Classics for Kids, among other resources.  A will also continue with piano lessons and the other two are still in Kindermusik classes.
• Science: As we follow the 4-year rotation of science outlined in The Well-Trained Mind, this year is earth science and astronomy.  I’m using Elemental Science, written by another WTM mom, which includes wonderful workbook pages, as well as a schedule for reading and experiments using the Usborne First Encyclopedias and Janice Van Cleave’s Earth Science and Astronomy for Every Kid.  I also bought the Evan-Moor Giant Science Resource Book, full of general science worksheets that will be especially useful for FIAR science activities.  And of course, we’ll still continue with our Outdoor Hour Challenges each week.

•  History: This is the big one.  History firmly remains as our most favorite subject, and although we loved diving into ancient history last year, we may be even more excited about studying the middle ages this year.  Our main curriculum will again be The Story of the World and the accompanying activity guide.  Although after making several orders from Rainbow Resource and cleaning out our bookcases this summer, I discovered I have (too?) much to supplement our history studies with this year including:

The Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages
Usborne’s Medieval World and Castle Search books
Learning Through History magazine
History Scribe pages
Various Dover coloring books, stained-glass books, and paper dolls
Knights & Castles: 50 Hands-on Activities
Good Masters, Sweet Ladies: Voices from a Medieval Village
The Queen’s Progress: An Elizabethan Alphabet
What Really Happened in the Middle Ages
Several Shakespeare books
         and I haven’t even hit the library yet!!  This should be a great history year!

 And for scripture study, we’re focusing on the New Testament this year, utilizing:

• New Testament Stories
• NT Seminary manual
• Gospel Art Kit
• Scripture Study for LDS Families: New Testament

So, there’s the plan.  I hope it all works!  I didn’t change much from last year though and a lot of it is a continuation from last spring since I decided a few weeks ago that we needed some true summer vacation more than we needed to finish workbooks.  I’m just worried about adding in kindergarten work (even though it’s not mandatory for Utah) and finding time for D as well.  But I don’t have a FIAR book or a letter (for D) planned for next week and the Writing with Ease workbook still hasn’t come so next week shouldn’t be too terribly strenuous.  After that, who knows?!  We’ll see how long it takes us to get through everything and what kind of daily rhythm we develop.

Now I’m off to finish my organizing.  Last year I was highly ambitious about having a file folder for every week of the school year with maps, coloring pages, projects, etc. all ready to go at the beginning of the year.  It worked great until we got a few weeks behind on history (more than once) and by about February, nothing I needed was in the correct weekly folder.  So this year I got smart (hopefully!) and did file folders for each history chapter.  Then if we slow down or speed up or get highly sidetracked, I can just rearrange the order of the folders without having to shuffle papers around.  Everything else went in a folder labelled by month so I can still find things, but there’s a little more flexibility to the system.  We’ll see how that goes and probably next year I’ll think of something even better.  Live and learn, and ready or not, here we go!