SimplySonita, Thank you so much for the livemocha. My girls and I decided to learn turkish.the site seems helpful.
Here's my list. My children are 5,6 and 10. MFW's ECC MUS ETC ACE Language Arts for oldest FLL Apologia (Human Anatomy) Real Science 4 Kids (chemistry) Prima Lantina A Reason For Handwriting (my oldest enjoys this and she writes so nice in it and enjoys sending the verses to family) I also have Draw Write Now books and Draw Write Thru History, science series in DVD and will buy some more music/art stuff.
ok looks like we have some good planners here! We have 180 lessons by easy grammar Litterature reading and notebooking to go with them. Just picked up a compliation book of Sherlock Holmes I am adding to his list of studies, we have such things as treasure ISland, Huck Finn, Red Fern grows, White Fang ( which we have seen part of on Ion but have several copies of the book as well) and several other classics that I feel a boy needs to read. Math U See Algebra after we finish our SOS8th grade ( missing disc at the moment so we went to the Life Pak Ihad sitting here with the same lessons) SoS8 Science plus Physics ( tba via co op) Geography Around the World using Trail Guides as a spine but with cooking, topography, mapmaking, habitat and surroundings, and toursim and trade studies of each place we will study around the world. SOs Secondary Spanish Continuing with Art ( by Design our own plan) Band -- If I Get the Coronet from my sister What else ? OH! PE via Fall Baseball league pretty excited about this one! that should be it!
I love reading everyone's plans! Here is ours. Kids are 7 and soon to be 9 and both will be doing 4th grade work. We're going year round starting last month. My plan is just to survive! hehe, j/k.. well not really, that's always my goal! Language Arts (includes spelling), Math, Bible -4th grade Christian Light Education....((although for the summer for math, at least for now, we're focusing on learning mult./division with games, flash cards and songs)). Handwriting/cursive- (although cle has it in the LA, we're not using that). Pentime Reading- I got the CLE but the kids HATE IT...so I'm debating getting rid of it. There's nothing wrong with it, but the kids are used to quiet reading using whatever they'd like and we read aloud for other subjects (such as the Bible). If I do get rid of the reading program, I may have them read an illustrated classic about 1x a month and write a little report (nothing big). Creative writing- journals (ungraded/ write what you want), and 1x a week using a creative writing textbook. History- finishing up our video series of Liberty's Kids over the summer, then we're going to go back to Story of the World (we didn't really get into it the first time around 2 years ago, we just didn't have time and so much was going on). I'm wanting to do 1 day of story and 2 days of activities and books for a week. Science- We're going to be using the Harcourt textbook for 4th grade. I would like to do that once a week, then have 1 day of working on something related to animals (maybe have an ongoing lapbook type thing or journal thing where we can read/write/describe animals-- still working on details on that because I'm sure there's not something already put together like what I'm envisioning). And then 1 day of experiment related to the textbook. We only did the text last year and the kids kept saying "When do we get to do an experiment!" lol...so this time around maybe it'll work out better. P.E. - wii fit and our p.e. group Typing-- Typing for kids--typer island. This was on the schedule for last year and we did SOME...but I would like to try to throw it in at least a few days a week...maybe 3. But if our days run long, this will be the first thing to go! I would LOVE to teach Latin or at least get into Spanish, but the way the kids spread the day out, I doubt we'd have time so I've not even planned for that yet. Maybe next year! After about 3 or 4 weeks of this schedule, I'd like to break it up with a fun unit study or lapbook. ***oh, I forgot music and art. Hopefully the kids will have music and art through the co-op BUT I have a music text for fun that I would like to do if not. And art we will be using Draw-Write-Now (we don't do the write part, just drawing) in addition to just free art!
Autumn, I would have hoped that the kids had not hated the CLE reading so much - is it the stories, or just doing the workbooks that the kids hate so much? Maybe if you just put it aside until next year, then do the 4th in the 5th? I love Pentime, and the style is the same pretty much as the one in CLE, so I consider that a bonus! If you want to "sneak in" some Latin, you could try Rummy Roots, which is a card game you can play several different ways!
I am still trying to get everything figured out and still feeling very unsure since this will be our first year. DS went to ps K this past year. So for my first grader so far here is what we have. Math- Mcruffy Phonics/grammar/spelling- Mcruffy Social Studies/history/Geography- We will be using several different books to learn about US history, geography, and people. Science- We will be doing a nature journal. Art- We will do various art projects based on holidays, seasons, and what we are doing in Science and history. The planning part of this has me stressed. Music- Violin PE- lots of outside play and meeting with hs group for pe once a week. Also thinking of teaching Spanish. Still trying to figure out what to use that would keep him interested. Suggestions? My little one will have plenty of stuff to do that I will incorporate with what his big brother is doing. Lots of art for him too. He already knows where most of the states are just from listening and watching. Anyway, I still feel stressed about getting it all put together and making it work.
dont stress it is sounding fine Maria! Welcome to Homeschooling@! At your first grade level take it easy and enjoy it dont stress about getting everything in just work for main things like Math and spelling/grammar and reading. Those are the most important ones, the rest is icing on the cake!
Ds is finishing up Year 2 of Ambleside Online and will go right into Year 3 in the fall. About 1/3 of the Year 3 books carry over from Year 2, 1/3 of the books I dowloaded for free onto my Nook, and I'll buy the remaining 1/3 over the summer. So here's our breakdown for 4th grade: Copywork & Composition * Transcribe favorite passages from the Shakespeare play we are reading. Two perfectly written lines every week. * Do the same for scheduled Poetry * Written narrration chosen from literature (1-2 per week) * Draw a narration chosen from literature * Start Dictation, work up to one paragraph by the end of the year * Writing Strands 3: 2pgs weekly * Typing practice online Spelling & Vocabulary * Spelling Skills Grade 4 & Grade 5 * Daily reading aloud Grammar * Simply Grammar - together, 20 mins 1x/week Poetry (1 or 2 poems per day, discussed and may be used as copywork) * William Blake * Sara Teasdale * Hilda Conklin * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow World & American History (All history readings will be narrated. We will aso correspond history reading with a timeline or century book and map) * Our Island Story (Marshall) * This Country of Ours (Marshall) * A Child's History of the World (Hillyer) Biographies * DaVinci (Landmark) * Bard of Avon: The Story of William Shakespeare (Vennema & Stanley) * Squanto (Ziner) or Landing of the Pilgrims (Daugherty) Geography * A study of Marco Polo using various literature Natural History & Science (We will also do various science experiments and go on weekly nature walks, keeping a nature notebook. The naure study schedule is as follows: Term 1 - reptiles, Term 2 - flowerless plants/crops, Term 3 - fish & amphibians) * Handbook of Nature Study (Comstock) * Secrets of the Woods (Long) * Science Lab in a Supermarket (Friedhoffer) * The Story of Inventions (McHugh) , All About Famous Inventors & Their Inventions (Pratt), or War Inventions (Gibson) Math * Teaching Textbooks 5 into Life of Fred Fractions (or TT7) Foreign Language * Greek alphabet * American Sign Language Art * Picture study focusing on 1 artist per 12 wk term and read his life story from biographies found at the library. We will be studying: Term 1 - Albrecht Durer (Italian Renaissance), Term 2 - Caravaggio (Italian Baroque), and Term 3 - not sure yet. * Drawing from ature and narrating tales with drawings * Drawing With Children (Mona Brooks) Music Appreciation * Listen to 1 composer per term and read his life story from biographies found at the library. We will be studying: Term 1 - Beethoven (Classical/Romantic), Term 2 - Vivaldi (Baroque), and Term 3 - Chopin (Romantic) Literature Read Alouds, Historical Fiction, & Independent Reads * Tales From Shakespeare (Lamb) * American Tall Tales (Stoutenburg) * The Heroes (Kingsley) * The Princess & the Goblin (MacDonald) * Children of the new Forest (Marryat) * The Jungle Book (Kipling) * A Little Princess (Burnett) * The Water Babies (Kingsley) * At the Back fo the North Wind (MacDonald) * Men of Iron (Pyle) * Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll) # Through the Looking Glass (Carroll) # The Bears of Blue River (Major) # Swallows and Amazons (Ransome) # Unknown to History: Captivity of Mary of Scotland (Yonge) # Caddie Woodlawn (Brink) # On the Banks of Plum Creek (Wilder) # The Little White Horse (Goudge) # The Saturdays (Enright) # English Fairy Tales (Jacobs) # More English Fairy Tales (Jacobs) # King of the Wind (Henry) # The Four Story Mistake (Enright) # Then There Were Five (Enright) # The Wheel on the School (De Jong)
Lindina, ds was somewhat behind in reading anyway....you know how it is trying to get an active little boy to sit still and read ANYTHING. So they're just now getting to where they can read decently. (for example, they take turns reading the 3rd grade CLE Bible lessons aloud and do pretty good with it.) But I don't think I'm going to get rid of it. I like the idea of having a reading comprehension program. So maybe I'll just shelf it for now...who knows maybe mid-year we'll be ready for it! If we can get back in the swing of doing the basics then I'd like to throw in the Latin. I'll definitely have to check that out! Thanks so much!
Maria, I definitely agree. I wish I could rewind (we started mid k) and re-do things but instead of jumping straight into the workbooks and structured curricula, work on fun stuff. I was much too worried and much too rigid and structured for those grades!
That's okay, Autumn, because CLE is somewhat advanced anyway. The stories in the text are pretty much "on level" for the number on the spine, but the comprehension involves lots of thinking and can be pretty challenging, for some kids more than others. It's no problem at all to be "a level (or two) behind" in reading, so if you wanted to you could back up to the 3rd for this year, and do 4th in 5th, and so on and not be "behind". The literary analysis stuff (by the time you get through the upper elementary completely) includes stuff I didn't see until high school.... You MAY even want to do some of the workbook questions as oral discussion, and write only some of it, but discussing all of it. (KWIM?)
Thanks Autumn. Do you think I'm planning too much? It looks like a lot typed out I think. I want it to be fun and so far he says I am way more fun than his ps school teacher. Right now we are just doing lots of reading and writing for fun and a little math. A lot of stuff we do is just through talking while we are swimming or taking walks. I've just been worried about doing everything "right" when "real" school starts.
Here is what we are looking at for 9th grade: Saxon Algebra 1 Apologia Biology Exploring World History (only focusing on the history part) English 1 - Easy Grammar, 50 Great Short stories study, Progeny Press Poetry, Progeny Press studies on To Kill a Mockingbird, The Yearling, Call of the Wild, and Old Man and the Sea, 4 different writings on their readings plus other writing thrown in from History. Lots of writing from Progeny studies also. Keyboarding/Computer skills -Mavis Beacon/Word, Excel,Powerpoint studies Spanish 1- Lifepacs Health/Pe- Lifepacs/daily exercise program by me and Wii, etc.
Rainbow Resource and you can go to Progeny Press website. We used some this year and loved them. Good Luck!
You can also look at http://shekinahcc.com/ -- They still have some of the older lower-priced print Progeny guides. The content is exactly the same.
I often think the same thing about mine LOL But really I don't think it is too much. I am required to teach reading, LA, Science, SS and math. But then there is stuff I want him to learn and stuff he wants to learn. Ok-so for reading like we'll be using clicknkids for phonics/spelling. It's online. It's fun. He asks to do it. He doesn't consider it school work. And read alouds, that's not too much I don't think. For LA-we'll use a unit study on farming with copywork/dictation. I picked the farming unit cause he's into that. So it should keep him a bit more interested than other options I could use for copy work. For math-well math is math. It's got to be done. He likes math pretty well though, never complains when I hand him a math worksheet. He does well at it and likes it. Then for science he'll do zoology. again, he just loves animals and learning about them, plus incests. Plus it's at co-op so I think he'll enjoy the 'classroom' experience once a week since he's used to PS. I'm sure he'll have fun interacting with the other kids. Social Studies is the last required subject. Signed him up for co-op class for that too LOL Then PE/health Nothing too formal just life-play outside, go swimming, play team sports with the cub scouts, ect Spanish-HE asked to learn Bible-of the utmost importance. I do try to make it fun. Life skills- well, they'd learn these anyway. It's just living life. Arts and crafts-more fun stuff When you type it out it looks like a lot but how much would you be teaching them anyway even if you we're homeschooling and counting it as a formal subject? How much of this stuff are they going to learn just from living life and reading or read alouds (which most good parents do even if they don't homeschool) There's a lot of fun stuff in there, but just because it's fun doesn't mean they aren't learning, learning doesn't have to be boring, forced, textbook/workbook stuff. A lot of it is just living life, doing what the kid wants to do but putting it down on paper to count as homeschool, for us anyway.
