Language Arts- Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (last few lessons), then will use real books & readers for reading practice (Bob books sets 3 & 4, Dick & Jane (these are soooo funny to Eowyn, and I find the illustrations to be very attractive! Way nicer looking than the Bob books, IMO)
books, and level 1 & 2 readers from the library), and will start...
First Language Lessons Level 1 for English grammar. She has started LOVING read-aloud chapter books now. I have a bunch I hope to read, some tying in to history, others just fun. Among them are The Little House Books (we're mid-way through Little House in the Big Woods), The Never Girls series (we're on Book 2), Captive Treasure, The House at Pooh Corner, Now We Are Six, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. We might start The Chronicles of Narnia or Prydain, we'll see. We also are going through all the nursery rhymes along with Liam & Levi.
Ready for her first day of K5 |
Spanish - we're doing a weekly little co-op with a friend who has littles the same ages as Eowyn & Liam. So fun! This will tie in especially with our geography & culture when we get to our Argentina units (see below).
Classical Conversations-- we attend this co-op for 3 hours once a week (for us it's Mondays which is perfect!). Each week we have "grammar" (basically the building block-nuts-and-bolts of any subject) to memorize: Latin words, the next chunk of the history timeline (same as last year), a history sentence, set of geography facts, a science question, and a portion of John 1 in Latin. We also do an art project together. Liam gets in on the school action and goes to his "cyass" with his beloved Mrs. Tina and a new teacher, Ms. Jasmine. She came up today when I read the word "jasmine" aloud to Eowyn... he is always listening!! Anyway I love CC because they are so chill despite being thorough and well thought-out, and have so many songs to help the facts "stick"! And the fact that it's a three-year cycle so the kids will get all the material a second time by 4th grade, and we can build on it. (spiraling is a great teaching technique!)
Geography-- (with our friend) following CC Cycle 3 loosely, so learning states & capitals. Each week we read about a state (library books) and/or cities in it. We use a magnetic puzzle (from Costco!!) as well as one I made out of cardboard, a states coloring book I copy out of, maps and our globe. We are first learning all the states & capitals, then will "zoom in" on South Carolina for a while, going (more) in depth into our own state geography as well as our history-- I forsee field trips to Columbia! We also will study New York, Georgia, Oregon & North Carolina more in-depth since we have relatives there, and then expand to US features like rivers, mountains, lakes & deserts. (We use a lot of songs from CCHappy Mom's youtube channel to help remember capitals.) Finally we'll skip across the hemisphere to study the geography and culture of Argentina, which is where our fellow co-oppers lived and still have roots.
History-- (with our friend) following CC Cycle 3 loosely, so covering US History starting before Columbus. We are using the American Girls books (as read-alouds) especially "Felicity" and "Kirsten" a LOT as these tie in perfectly with E's interests, listening level and all the fun extras (paper dolls, crafts, recipes, movies etc.). My sister & I racked up finding the books for about $2 apiece at consignment sales, and the library also has them all. We have historical paper dolls-- this series, from the Pilgrims through the Civil War, (thank you, Tia Nicole)-- and I'm excited about how studying the Native Americans, Pilgrims & Colonists will coincide well with Thanksgiving. :) Of course my childhood favorite Little House on the Prairie series ties in excellently.
Science-- following CC Cycle 3 loosely, so learning about the human body first, then basic physics (parts of atoms etc). We are using The Magic Schoolbus: A Journey into the Human Body Experiment Kit (which she loves! Seriously, the look on her face when she "gets it" has been worth the "price" of homeschooling already. I am so glad I got to be the one to see that!!), and various books on each topic from the library. I have Reader's Digest's The ABCs of the Human Body as a resource for all the topics too. [Any ideas & resources for the physics aspect would be great; I haven't planned that far ahead!]
PE- she's taking gymnastics for 2 months (thanks to Livingsocial) and if she likes that can continue, otherwise she can go back to ballet/tap (I think she'll go for that).
Bible- we are going through the life of Moses (so Exodus- Deuteronomy) in BSF and I'm doing the Home Study sheets with her (and the boys, who are mostly oblivious, though Liam did have a great retelling of Moses' escape down "da deep wata" from wicked Pharaoh as a baby... on a surf board.) during breakfast or lunch. I HOPE to get back to catechism somehow, someday this year, maybe using these books as an aid. We also read Wisdom & the Millers periodically and this is a hit.
about to go in to CC on our first day (Lil Bro is trying to show "5" like sis) |
General- I have found the "What Your __ Needs to Know" series to be VERY helpful. You could really use this as a curriculum base and just supplement a writing/how-to-read and math curriculum. I am finding it very helpful to just have in the car for whenever we have down time & need to read something (there are so many interesting things in there, stories, poems, history, science, etc.). I'm especially using What Your 1st Grader Needs to Know for Geography & History this year.
How it Works... (-ish =D)
We spend about 1 hour each morning on "school," total, and on Mondays and Fridays don't do anything beyond our co-ops. Afternoons are taken up by lunch, outside play and nap time (every day for boys, every other day for E) or rest time (she picks a type of toy and plays with it quietly while L naps. Options include reading, books on tape, drawing/coloring, playing with blocks, figurines, Barbies, doll or any bin of toys from our "toy library.")
oh wait, this isn't actually school |
Well, that's what I've mapped out for the year and we'll see how it goes! Any suggestions or comments are welcome!
3 comments:
Love it! As you know, we are doing lots of the same stuff, though not nearly as much as you are doing. We tried to use real books and library readers after the Teach Your Child to Read book and found it frustrating. Either the books were too difficult (and frustrated E) or too easy (which made me feel like we weren't making progress). Plus just having to find that many level-appropriate books each week was one more thing on my to do list I didn't enjoy. So we gave up on that approach and decided to go with the American Language Series K books to continue Phonics. No preparation required from me and they are great at introducing then repeating new phonics rules at a rate that Elliot is making progress but doesn't get frustrated. Anyway, just wanted to mention that in case you start into real books and have the same trouble. Though I'm thinking you will probably be better at picking out books than I was, so it may not be a problem for you :)
Super helpful, thanks Denise! Have you all looked at Bob books? E loves them and they seem appropriate.
We checked a few of the early sets out at the library and they were too easy for him. I didn't realize there were higher levels until recently... I'll have to see if the library carries them!
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