Curriculum Line-Up

For me summer time means planning and prepping for the next school year.  I feel very confident that the more planning I can get done now the more we'll be able to accomplish during the school year.  Without the dreaded...."oh, we can't do that yet, I don't have it ready!"  So, August has found me working diligently, every chance I get, to prepare for our coming school year.

Summer Time = Planning Time Series: Part 1

Since we have long winters here, we want to soak up as much of summer as we can.  So, we plan to start school right after Labor Day.  That leaves me with about  3 weeks to pull everything together. 

My curriculum is chosen.  I even ventured out and wrote some myself this time!  My orders have arrived like Christmas presents in the summer!  And now, I am organizing and prepping the curriculum to be ready for our school year. 

For me, this is one of the most important parts of preparing for homeschooling.  By diving into the curriculum and knowing how I want to approach each subject, I can establish our routine with confidence.  Each year brings certain changes to how we go about things.  I made some different curriculum choices this year, which will adjust our former routine a bit.  Plus, this year we add another "official" homeschooler to our class.  We will now have a 5th grader, 3rd grader, and Kindergartner (and a 1 year old to keep things lively!). 

Binder Organization

I bought each of my kiddos a 1/2 inch binder this year.  I had seen some ideas about having a daily notebook to use almost like a "calendar time" in a binder.  So I was going to give that a try this year.......well......it didn't really happen for us.  You know how some things look like great ideas, but then your realize there's only 24 hours in a day! 

So the binder idea morphed a bit.  First it became kind of a daily planner for each of their checklists and a few other whatnots.  But it started to seem like one more bulky item in their stack of books each day.  When it dawned on me.....Get rid of the stack of books!

Actually, I wanted to do this for several weeks before I finally took the plunge.  I was concerned what I would do with all the loose worksheets when they are finished.  Nightmares of drowning in papers.......well.......maybe I should just keep their workbooks intact.  But no, the idea kept pestering me.  I knew there was a better system for us.  My solution....another binder - hahaha! 

OK, so here's how my new system works:

We now pull their worksheets from their workbooks and put them in their daily binders. 

No more stack of books!  Simplicity!  I love it!

 

I found some Post-Its labels that I added to the checklist pages, turning them into subject dividers. 

School Has Started!!!

Touchdown is in 4th Grade

Squirt is in Preschool

Curly Girlie is in 2nd Grade

We've been chuggin' away at school for four weeks now -WHEW!  With a newborn, that's quite a feat.  We certainly haven't been able to do it all.  And some days have been real flops.  But to be honest, I'm rather impressed that I even started school with a 3-week old infant!

My oldest wanted to change his "blog name" this year to Touchdown.  He is in 4th grade...where has the time gone?!?!  Curly Girlie is in 2nd grade.  And Squirt is in Preschool.  And our littlest one...well, we'll just say she's in Snuggle School!


Snuggle Bunny

 

Here is what we have planned for this school year:

Changes and Adjustments Part 2

Changes are a part of life. I am learning that just about the time I think I have something set the best way I can imagine, something comes along that forces a change. Whether it's a physical, tangible reason to change or just that tugging at my heart telling me a change is needed. I sometimes really want to fight the latter - ignoring or dismissing those persistent thoughts. But what I really need to do is pray. Find out whether it is God leading me in another direction or not. And follow Him! Whether a big decision or a smaller one, sometimes it's just not easy to change. And leaning on God is the only way this stubborn girl can manage. 

Another change we recently made is with our spelling program. My Little Buddy was using Spelling Power this year. It's a nice program with some great ideas, but it just didn't click for us. It was hard for me to forgo the money I spent on that and spend more money on another program mid-year. But we finally hit a wall and I

Changes and Adjustments Part 1

Changes are a part of life.  I am learning that just about the time I think I have something set the best way I can imagine, something comes along that forces a change.  Whether it's a physical, tangible reason to change or just that tugging at my heart telling me a change is needed.  I sometimes really want to fight the latter - ignoring or dismissing those persistent thoughts.  But what I really need to do is pray.  Find out whether it is God leading me in another direction or not.  And follow Him!  Whether a big decision or a smaller one, sometimes it's just not easy to change.  And leaning on God is the only way this stubborn girl can manage. 

I am a planner.  I love to make plans.  I work out the details and the timing.  I write them out and make them all pretty, etc.  But not too long ago I realized that the planning I was doing for our homeschooling seemed off somehow.  I loved filling in my little planning boxes.  I would open my planning folder while we were doing school

Word Family Books

I was reviewing my Curly Girlie's spelling list with her today.  She's in 1st grade.  I noticed that all the words, except for 2 sight words, ended in "ay".  And it occurred to me that we could make a Word Family Book! 

I love ideas that have us doing something different than workbooks.  Especially when it's a quick and easy project to pull together on a moments notice.  I always get my best ideas at the last minute, so if it's not quick and easy - or I don't have all the necessary supplies - it just doesn't happen around here.  But this project was doable -

USA Geography

We are not actually studying United States geography this year.  We are doing a world geography through My Father's World.  But our "trip" around the world begins in the U. S.  And our USA activity today was so cute, I had to share!

It was actually a challenge: Choose 4 colored pencils.  Color every state on a state map without having any bordering states with the same color.  Hint: start with the 4 corner states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. 

Science Experiment: The Water Cycle

Our science reading today was on the water cycle.  Right away I remembered that we had this Pop Bottle Science Kit that might be of use to us.  (Sadly, we've had it for a couple of years now and haven't used it yet - so I am so glad I remembered it for this topic!)  I found an experiment in it right away that would help show the water cycle.  It was called The Rain Maker.  It was very simple and easy to follow, and luckily I had everything (lol)...hot water, ice and this handy-dandy bottle the kit came in.

New Schedule

We are trying out a new schedule this week.  So far, it seems to be going well.  I was feeling too pressured by our old schedule of "cram everything in the morning so we can have free time all afternoon".  Well, it was a little more organized than that.  But I am NOT a morning person - even half a pot of coffee can't change that!  And we all seemed to be continually frustrated throughout each morning. 

I love hearing from other homeschool families that they do all their schooling in the morning and are done by lunchtime.  Accomplishing it all in a much shorter school day than a traditional school.  And as much as I wanted to lay claim to that benefit of homeschooling, it just wasn't happening for us!  So I relented and rescheduled our day to include schooling after lunch. 

To see this load before us that we were trying to accomplish in just the morning hours left us feeling defeated by lunchtime.  So our afternoons ended up being as rough as our mornings.  Now with our new schedule spreading things out more, we are able to include some fun things like going for a walk with the dog each day.  And I think some of the things that had before seemed like just another chore, now are a lot more enjoyable. 

So here's our new schedule:

Passports Please!

We are using the curriculum My Father's World for our History/Geography.  They have a great 5 year cycle that starts with a full year of in depth geography.  This lays a great foundation for the next 4 years of studying history chronologically.  One of the many things I love about MFW that you only need this one curriculum for all your children.  And it includes Bible and Science that coincide with the history/geography that you are studying.

So this year, as a part of the great geography study that we are going to do, they supplied us with passports for each child.  And while my Little Squirt, being only 3, will probably not participate in any other realm of geography this year, I did get him one of these passports.  These passports will be used as we "travel" around the world.  We will be placing flag stickers in our passports for each country that we visit.  Which led us to the great idea to set up a "Passport Office" as a kick-off to our traveling adventure.   

Curriculum Choices

Well, here it is: my curriculum choices for 2011-2012.  It feels so official to be posting it!  Although I had made most of my choices a while ago, it's still difficult to list them out - so permanent feeling.  But that's one of the wonderful things about homeschooling...if it's not working, you can always try something new!  I think part of the difficulty I have is that there are so many good choices out there.  Every time I chat with my homeschool friends I seem to come away with another great resource, curriculum, game, etc.  We are so blessed to be homeschooling at time when we have so much available to us.  Okay, here we go...