The rest of the plans…
03 Aug 2011 5 Comments
in Academics, Critical Thinking, Curriculum, Handwriting, Math, Phonics Tags: academics, critical thinking, curriculum, kindergarten, letter of the week, manuscript, math, phonics, preschool
Well, we’ve covered my two subjects that took the most planning. Today, I’m sharing the rest of the year!
Bible
For Bible this year, I’m hoping to do a survey of sorts of the entire Bible. My goal is to give the kids an idea of its message as an entire book instead of a lot of individual stories. So, here’s how I’m trying to accomplish that with a four and a half year old kindergartner and a soon-to-be-three preschooler. One of the things I’ve picked up for Bible this year is 50 Great Bible Stories audio CD, which tells the story of the Bible in an audio book format. I’m wanting to foster a little more independence and the feel of their own quiet time with God.
Together, we’ll go through What the Bible is All About for Young Explorers. With this book, we’ll be learning the books of the Bible within each category: the books of the law, the books of history, the books of poetry, etc. I figured that broke down the task of memorizing the books of the Bible into bite-sized pieces. Also, What the Bible is All About provides great outlines, synopses of each book, and the purposes of each book within God’s greater message of the Bible. We’ll cover all of that, but probably focus on memorizing a short summary of what each book is about, or a key verse from the book. I’ll make adjustments as we go along.
Critical Thinking
This is a subject we don’t want to neglect, as part of their classical education. I have it positioned in our day right before math, and I have a few different ways I’m wanting to teach it.
We’ll start out the year in the Building Thinking Skills and add in Lollipop Logic as the year progresses. BTS starts very simple with grouping similar objects and tracing a path between objects without touching their sides. Lollipop Logic progresses to organizing a process into the right order (building a tower, picking apples from a tree) and finishing analogies. I have my son doing three pages a week from these books. On the other days, we are going to play with our teddy bears.
With the teddy bears, we’ll work on finishing patterns and get into a little bit of graphing this year. The little one will follow our routine, doing her teddy bears (working on grouping colors and sizes) on the days Brother is doing his pages. On her workbook days, she’ll have a few pages of her own from these fun books.
Phonics and Numbers
My son will be working through the A Beka Kindergarten books for this subject and reading through the A Beka little readers, as well. I’ll adjust the pace as needed, but so far he’s done great. I’ve started in the books this summer and skipped about 60 lessons of review work. He never missed a beat. My son is the child that stays motivated by a challenge. If I have him doing the same thing for too long, he gets very bored. With that said, I’ll probably cut some of the handwriting assignments. On some days he is assigned two manuscript pages and copywork! That’s okay to keep a classroom of kids busy, but I’ve got better busy-work planned than handwriting. And handwriting is one of those skills you can incorporate into so many other areas of study. So, all that to say, I make adjustments; I don’t follow A Beka “by the book.”
For the little one, she’ll be doing Erica’s Letter of the Week curriculum. I had her doing some of the activities last year: the coloring pages, puzzles, and motor skill activities. This year, I’ll have her doing it all. She is so excited! She has really been upset with me for not filling her pockets this summer. I’m thinking she’ll be very ready to do “school” with me this fall. I’ll also have lots of her “toddler” activities interspersed to keep her busy.
And that does it for curriculum this year! Our schedule, in summary, will be about 15 minutes per activity, or about two hours a day.
See what other’s are planning at the “not back to school” blog hop, and thanks for stopping by.
Studying the Arts: a K5 survey
02 Aug 2011 4 Comments
in Art Study, Curriculum Tags: art study, curriculum, harmony fine arts, music study
After completing this summer’s art and music study of Van Gogh and Handel with plans from Harmony Fine Arts, I decided to tackle a whole year of the subject. What I love about her plans is that, starting in the second grade, she has the artists and musicians arranged chronologically in a way that follows the format of classical education. For first grade, her plans include a survey of the greats, since the first year of the classical cycle is intended to study the ancients, and there’s not much ancient art (and even less music) to study.
What I decided was to take her first grade and break it up into two years, so instead of four weeks per artist, we’ll be taking 6 weeks. I loved how well we got to know Van Gogh this summer over a 12 week period, and I wanted to maintain that pace through the year.
So first up is Renoir and Vivaldi. I’m only planning six weeks at a time (with a week off in between), so that’s all I have currently in the works. But I’m thrilled with what we’re doing. My texts for the year are Usborne Art Treasury and Usborne First Book of Art. The artists rarely match up with her plans, but the concepts (faces, families, animals, etc.) will match up enough to provide us with alternative projects to complete. Also, I’ll be using Child Size Masterpieces and a variety of Dover coloring books. For music, I’ll be using Lives of the Musicians and a playlist of music from the different composers.
Coloring a Van Gogh replica
What Harmony provides: HFA plans provide a barebones structure of art pieces and music pieces, a few project recommendations, and a few helpful internet links for viewing art online—and not much else. What intimidates me is the extra research I have to do to fill in the holes. No artist/music bios or background information is provided and very little arts and crafts suggestions. But I’m a Google-fanatic and do pretty well at finding what I need. What I love about the barebones structure is the flexibility it provides, which allows me to curtail it to my kids’ ages and interests. I also love that it is affordable ($20, and I’ll be using it for 2 years—you just can’t beat that for art curriculum!) And I’ve found I’m much more motivated and involved in the material when it’s not scripted. So far, it’s been a match for us.
Painting Van Gogh Sunflowers
You can catch-up on our summer HFA study here, or stay tuned this fall for the next installment as we launch into Renoir, Cassatt, Manet, and more!
Planning Geography: Our trip Around the World
01 Aug 2011 10 Comments
in Curriculum, Geography Tags: Around the World, curriculum, geography, lesson plans
I’ve been so excited (and overwhelmed) about planning our geography study this year. I wanted to get the kids familiar with basic geography before we head into Tapestry of Grace curriculum next year, and I wanted to emphasize missionaries and the need for missions.
But I couldn’t make my mind up between Expedition Earth and the lessons from HomeschoolCreations.com. In the end, I decided to morph the two together. Yes, there were moments when I wondered what was wrong with me. I can’t ever take the easy way, it seems. Always have to customize. But now that it’s in the works, I’m really excited, and it was totally worth it.
First, I looked at both plans and chose the countries they had in common. That worked out to about 3 per continent (5 for Europe). Next, I looked at the books they recommended. The ones that they both used, Children Just Like Me, for instance, were easy to decide on. But then, I had to look at where they were different and choose my favorites. Around the World in 80 Tales, recommended by HC, looked like so much fun and right on my kid’s age level. But both of them recommended atlases that were rather expensive. So I found a cheaper alternative to that with Usborne’s Essential Atlas of the World ($10.99 and available as a giveaway right now). Geography A to Z was an EE recommendation that, again, looked very appropriate for my kids learning level.
So, after I pieced together my countries and my booklist, I had the mounting task of how to merge the plans. And here’s where I again complicated my life. EE does each country in one week; HC takes about 8 days; I wanted two weeks. So here’s what I decided on: one week of geography, and one week of culture and missions. Plus, EE comes with an animal study: six animals from each country that we study and their classifications. I love that we’ll be able to touch on some science on our trip around the world.
I hope you’ll join us in our journey this fall. I really am excited, not just about what we’ll learn, but about how the Lord will use this study in our lives.
Up next: tomorrow I’m blogging about our Art plans. Come see the fun!
Curriculum Wrap-up for 2011-2012
03 Jun 2011 2 Comments
in Curriculum
A brief update on my first book fair–it was awesome! And all my planning paid off. Several different situations came up that resulted in a very limited amount of time to attend the book fair. We arrived at around 11 a.m. and were out of there by 1:30 p.m. I was very surprised that we could do that on our first trip.
I got the greatest thrill from the look on my husband’s face when I handed him my list of booths, table numbers, and actions to take at each booth.
The price comparisons on my book list helped immensely as well. Most of what I wanted was either cheaper than the online price or very close to it (and I was including shipping costs). But there were a few books that were more expensive (one by nearly $10!) Another handy tip: I brought address labels to peel and stick on all of the mailing forms and drawing entries. That was another huge time-saver.
What We Decided On for K5–
Phonics/Math– I’m going with A Beka for my K5 materials. We did look at Saxon, Horizons, and Math-U-See for math; but in the end, I just wasn’t convinced that it would be worth the price difference at this point. I purchased the K5 and Grade 1 phonics/handwriting/math materials. Ideally, this should have me covered through the entire year, including summer school.
Bible–The Golden Children’s Bible, What is the Bible All About for Young Explorers, 50 Great Bible Stories audio CD
Art/Music Appreciation– We’ll be using the curriculum from Harmony Fine Arts when it becomes available in August. From her materials list, I’ve chosen the following resources: Usborne Art Treasury, Child Size Masterpieces, and Lives of the Musicians.
Critical Thinking– Building Thinking Skills Beginning and Lollipop Logic
I looked at the Building Thinking Skills Primary, but concluded that it relied too much on reading skills to work for us right now. I also looked at the Building Thinking Skills Hands-On, but the manipulatives required for the text put the price beyond our budget for that subject. I’m really happy with these two texts, though. I think it provides me with a lot of variety with this subject and progresses through the skills very reasonably.
Geography– This subject as well as Phonics/Math took up the majority of my budget. I was thrilled to see that, though, since these were my subjects of emphasis this year. I am gearing up for Tapestry of Grace during my son’s first grade year (a year from this fall). In prep for that, I’m wanting to really emphasize his reading skills and basic geography knowledge.
I’m using the curriculum from Expedition Earth and Homeschool Creation’s Geography posts. You can peak at my list of supplemental texts here.
Our fun extras--passports, a geo card game, and a blow-up globe
One of the products I was thrilled to find at the book fair was Missionary Stories with Millers. I had seen it in a couple of different geography curriculums but could not find anywhere online where I could preview it to see if it would be on a read-aloud level for my kids. I really liked the book when I saw it. Not only are the stories intriguing, but each missionary story is introduced with a world map that has the missionary’s country darkened. Even the table of contents includes the name of the country beside the title of the story. I think it will be perfect for our global study.
Missionary Stories with the Millers
Well, that does it for the fall/spring school year. I’m planning on highlighting our summer materials separately. We begin on Monday, and all of us are very excited! I can’t wait to share it all with you.
