Well, our next formal educational year begins just after Labor Day. My list of things to do is shrinking! Yay! I'm shaking in
Anywho, I thought I'd share what we are using/doing this year. I thought other home educating parents out there might find like to check our plans.
Institute for Excellence in Writing's: Student Writing Intensive Continuation Course Level A.
The first part of the course was a hit for us last year. My boys loved Mr. Pudewa and they learned a ton (so did I!). We are on for another year or two. Apparently this course can last for 1-2 years. I'm thinking it will probably take us closer to two years because I also plan to do weekly written narrations.
Written narrations. Charlotte Mason-style. The boys will chose something they have read during the week on which to write up their narrations. We will also continue oral narrations. Narrations are great because they require the child to listen carefully, organize the information they have heard in their minds, and speak it out loud in their own words. Nutmeg will begin to do oral narrations as well about halfway through the year.
Dictation. I will choose a passage of literature for the boys to study and write throughout the week. At the end of the week I will dictate the passage to them and they will write it down. Afterwards I will correct any spelling mistakes and they will practice those words.
Writing our Catholic Faith. Cursive for the boys, print for Nutmeg.
Finish Prima Latina and begin Latina Christiana I (watch the instruction video once a week in the evenings with Dad).
Phonics Pathways for Nutmeg.
Math facts. Always.
Book of Centuries. This is a book I constructed. You can buy these but after looking around I found it would just be easier to make my own. I took a nice, plain black journal and made each two page spread a century. I labeled all the centuries and the years (in 10 year increments) on each page. On one side the boys will neatly write (this will continue this book until they finish school-God willing!) the year and the person, event, etc next to it. On the opposite side they may use for sketches. Artifacts, boats, armor, etc.
Simply Grammar.
Singapore Math. Standards Edition. Kindergarten B for Nutmeg. Level 4a for the boys.
Memory work. We'll do this just after breakfast again this year. It doesn't take more than 10-15 minutes. Verse(s) of the week, states and capitals,memory review from last year and selections from Shakespeare. This year we'll study "Twelfth Night."
Artistic Pursuits. Level K-3. Once a week.
Music Masters. Music and biographies of composers in the car each week on the way to our homeschool group.
Apologia Botany. Alongside this spine text we hope to learn about beneficial plants in our backyard. We may even collect plants, dry them, and use them this winter. I may write more about this later. Books we will utilize for this are Backyard Medicine and Peterson's Guide to Medical Plants and Herbs.
RC History Volume II. (the Roman Republic falls and becomes an Empire, Empire falls, early Church history and onto the early Middle Ages) Connecting with History program. This is a big change for us. We are vamping up the history studies hugely this year. Perhaps I'll be able to write more on this later. This program is a lot of reading. Our read-alouds all together, the boys' independent reading, and Nutmeg's literature will come from selections from this time period. I plan for the boys to do one writing project and one hands-on project at the end of each unit (7 units). We've already started our reading for the year. We are reading Augustus Caesar's World.
Homeschool group. We are also branching out in this capacity this year. We are driving an hour once a week to a large (80+ families) homeschool group in the area. We are all super excited. It is perfect timing for our needs. Nutmeg will be in a pre-school/kindergarten class and the boys will take PE and a science experiment class (which is about botany this year-wahoo!!). If our budget allows in the future semesters, the boys may take up to four classes. On the way to and from our group, we'll listen to "Music Masters" and audio selections from RC History.
Faith. Memory verses. Bible story during breakfast. Many selections from our history program. I would like to find one more thing but haven't yet discovered exactly what I'm looking for. I may wait on this one.
**Oh one more thing (I think), I forgot to say we'll do a relaxed tour of the United States this year. I'm thinking if we do about one state a week we'll do about half of the states. Then we can do more over next summer or continue next year. As our story time before bed at night we'll read picture books centering on the state of the week. I'm going to go alphabetical, so our first state will be Alabama. The kids will also have a "geography" tab in their notebooks. They'll color in the state on the map of the entire United States in their notebook, write the name and capital, and also color a sheet of the state by itself marking the rivers blue, the mountains brown, the capital yellow, etc. If I'm super organized, we'll MAYBE eat a meal during the week reminiscent of the state.
Very Impressive!!! I can attempt to enrich reading with Emily on Skype, with Max attending to listen and say words....
ReplyDeletesomething tells me she can read stuff now, and Max knows so much more than most kids since he is the fourth child, and learns a lot from the others. Maybe they are just good for me, but I am impressed with their behavior these days as siblings!!!! They seem to adore each other.
Max fixing his own breakfast in the jammies I got at Walmart last visit was super cute!