Just last week we completed the final week I had scheduled for homeschooling. I have decided to do a schedule of 6-weeks on and 1 week off for this year. At the beginning of the year I thought it best to only schedule for the first term as I wanted to be able to evaluate how everything was going before putting an entire year to paper. So, far I have been really well-pleased with our schooling. We are all enjoying ourselves and the kids think school and learning is fun. I feel I am getting into a bit of a groove and maybe, just maybe, am figuring out what I am doing!
However, I have been making some tweeks along the way as I have seen various things not working as well as I would like, either causing me too much work or lack of interest and frustration on Luke's part.
As next week starts the Advent season I really wanted to focus a good portion of our time on the preparation for Christmas and "the reason for the season." That being said our literature, geography and history for our next session will be a unit study based on some of Tomie dePaola's wonderful books about Christmas.
For Science we will be continuing our Nature Study once weekly. We are switching gears for the rest of our science, away from specific lessons to a more interest-driven approach. I started by looking at an approach based on the recommendations from The Well-Trained Mind. Their recommendation for his age is to spend the first 20 weeks on Animals letting the child pick various animals to study along the way. I asked Luke what he wanted to study first and he said Whales. Now, as I cannot completely control my need to have some sort of a plan I took this and ran with it.
I decided we would spend the next session studying sea life. I found some wonderful notebook pages based on the H.C. Holling book Pagoo. Pagoo, for those unfamiliar, is a fiction book that details the life of a hermit crab. It goes into many aspects of ocean life including tide pools, life chains, invertebrates, water cycle and various sea animals- including whales, crabs, octopus and more. We will be doing an abbreviated version of this study as I am picking one topic for us to study each week and focusing on notebook pages for one chapter per week(we will be reading 4 chapters a week- each chapter is about 5 pages).
For religion of course we will be working a lot with our Advent Tomie dePaola study. We will also be doing a Jesse Tree for the first time this year, which includes daily readings and devotions. We will be continuing our Catechism which is one lesson weekly and have increased our Bible reading to daily, as the kids enjoy it so much(we had been alternating with Bible and catechism). I have lined up our Bible readings to start the New Testament this session so it will coordinate with our Advent preparation for Christmas.
Our Art this session will mostly be craft projects from our Tomie dePaola unit study, which includes things such as candlemaking, puppet shows, baking and more. For Art Appreciation we will be studying the works of Caravaggio, which coincidentally will mostly consist of pieces based on events of the New Testament.
Music study will mostly be continuing with our Christmas and Advent carols as we enjoy them so much. For music appreciation we will be doing general studies of the Orchestra from the books Story of the Orchestra and along with a viewing of the Nutcracker.
Poetry will be from Ambleside Online's December Poetry anthology. This past term we set aside one day to read poetry and read several works on that day(reading from A.A. Milne's When We Were Very Young) this term we will be reading one poem daily. For other literature we are moving on to Kipling's Just So Stories one day a week, Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales one day and a selection from 50 Famous Stories the other day.
With our main subjects we will be continuing along as before. Luke has finished his kindergarten Handwriting Without Tears book and will be moving onto the first grade workbook. In reading he has finished the first level of the I See Sam readers and has just started into the second set. We are just plugging away one lesson at a time in math on Right Start Level B. Lastly we have added spelling by way of All About Spelling level 1.
Phew! I think that might be everything, no wonder I am exhausted just thinking about it all! In case anyone is interested I will include some our plans and lessons. If anyone is interested in any more detailed information just drop me a note!
Here is our Nature Study plan for this winter, this covers 10 weeks, I used some studies from the blog Handbook of Nature Study and supplemented with some notebook pages, coloring pages, poetry and more. I see now though that the notebook pages and coloring pages are not in that file, I will try to add those when I have time, unfortunately I will have to hunt them back down as I didn't save them after printing.
Here is our first weeks schedule:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ak27J04qI5Q3dEQ2Q2ZkU2xjVUxCMzY0a1Atd0h3NHc&hl=en
3 Rs
Reading- I See Sam (first 2 lvls to print for free)- daily
Spelling- All About Spelling Lvl 1- daily
Math- Right Start Math-daily
Handwriting- Handwriting without Tears- My Printing Book-2-3 pgs daily
Religion
New Catholic Picture Bible 1 chapter daily
Faith and Life 1 1 lesson weekly
Tomie de Paola Unit Study Reading and Activity 2 times a week
Literature
Hans Christian Anderson- audio book- once weekly
Just So Stories online book, audio book
Fifty Famous Stories online book, audio book
December Poetry Anthology- 1 poem daily
Science
Pagoo
Pagoo Unit Study
Winter Nature Study
Art
Picture Study Caravaggio
Music
Story of the Orchestra
Carnival of Animals
Nutcracker
Free Records we will be using for this(this link has many more wonderful records as well):
A Child's Introduction to the Orchestra
A Child's Introcution to the Instruments of the Orchestra
A Child's Introduction to Ballet
Sites for Orchestra Study:
http://www.sfskids.org/templates/instorchframe.asp?pageid=3
http://www.dsokids.com/
http://www.classicsforkids.com/music/orchestra.asp
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