With just a few days left until the beginning of our new school year, it is time for me to wrap up my plans… So far I have just shared our plans for World History, American History, Math and Religion. I had hoped to do a post on each subject but time is flying and I need to stop planning and get ready to start implementing… So, I am just going to quickly outline the rest of our plans in this post…
Phonics:
This year I will have my oldest son’s tutor coming 3 mornings each week. I am really excited about this. Not only will she be helping Captain, but she will also be teaching me how to teach the younger children. After struggling so hard the last few years (even though I know now it was all due to a learning challenge), I am very burned out when it comes to teaching phonics. I am SO thankful for help in this area!!
Mrs. K uses a variety of resources and is trained in the Lindamood-Bell method of teaching phonics. Next week her and I will be sitting down and planning out the phonics curriculum for my children this coming year. I am actually starting to get excited about it once again!!
Spelling:
Seeing Stars®: Symbol Imagery for Phonemic Awareness, Sight Words and Spelling Program- Building Spelling Skills Grade 1
andGrade 2
- Spelling Time (for Reinforcement)
Grammar:
Handwriting:
The boys will be doing plenty of handwriting in their Spelling books, as well as with their copywork assignments for Religion, History and Poetry. However, they love the Seton Handwriting for Young Catholics series, and so I did order book 2 and 3. They will probably complete 1 page per day.
My girls will be using Handwriting Without Tears. Twinkle Toes will be going through Letters And Numbers For Me and Chiquita will be using Get Set for School. They both will be working with the various Hands-on Materials.
Geography:
Our Geography studies will be tied in to our History lessons, depending on what we are studying each week. We will use our Globe and the Blackline Maps of World History Book and CD
We will also be playing lots of games as we continue working on memorizing the States and Capitals. Our favorites are:
Science:
The boys will be using Harcourt Science and Lesson Plans from Kolbe Academy. We will also be doing Bi-Weekly Nature Hikes and keeping Nature Journals. I also plan to have a book basket available for extra reading using the suggestions over at Serendipity.
Music, Poetry and Art:
For these subjects we will be using the plans over at Serendipity:
I have the guides printed out for the first couple weeks, books and CD’s ordered or requested from the library, and some very excited children looking forward to beginning. It should be a fun year!
I am also still considering whether or not to put the boys in Music Lessons– either Piano or Violin. I am torn since we are putting most of our extra money (and then some) into the tutor this year, so this might just have to wait till next year. We’ll see.
Preschool:
I almost forgot to mention Pre-School. I have used the Little Saints Preschool Program with my other children and plan to pull it out once again this year. (In fact we have already started!) I also couldn’t help feeling completely drawn to try out Elizabeth’s Along the Alphabet Path (especially since it goes so well with our music, poetry and art plans), so I printed out the Storybook and Booklist this past weekend, we may just follow it loosely, I’m not sure yet… I also ordered some of the Kumon Workbooks
After gathering all my plans in one location, it looks like we are going to have a busy year. I better get *busy* making that schedule!
Sounds like you are ready!!
I am going on week 5 and switching things around… but that is the good thing about homeschooling. If something doesn’t work you can alwasy change it!
sounds like you will be busy. glad you have it all planned out, good luck with that implementation.
r
Have a blessed year. You are one of the best homeschoolers out there! What lucky kids!
Excellent choice of course materials you got there. I plan to homeschool my daughter, too. This will be my first time and I'm quite excited. I've been looking for suggestions by other homeschooling parent-teachers on what resources and curriculum to take. Yours are by far, the best I believe.