Planning for 2013

WOW!  The past year has zipped by at a VERY rapid rate of knots! It's time to plan and purchase for 2013 already!

Flossy will be year 4, Bugsy year 2, Chicky Pre-Primary (US K equivalent) and Possum will be 2yo.

So here is what we have planned for a super fun year -

Flossy age 8, year 4 -
Galore Park Junior Maths book 2* & 3
Kumon Word Problems Grade 3* & 4
Khan Academy
Logic workbooks & games
IEW SWI-A*
Galore Park Junior English Book 2*
Classical House of Learning History & Literature (SOTW4)

Bugsy age 7, year 2 -
Rightstart C
Kumon Word Problems 2
Khan Academy
Logic workbooks & games
All About Speling 2* & 3
Explode the Code 6, 7 & 8
I See Sam Readers*
Writing With Ease 2

Chicky age 5, Pre-primary -
Rightstart B
Kumon Word Problems 1
Logic games
All About Spelling 1 & 2
Explode the Code 1, 2 & 3
Handwriting Without Tears My Printing Book
I See Sam Readers*

Possum age 2 -
Speech Therapy
Occupational Therapy

Together -
Auslan using various resources from Bilby Publishing

Engineering is Elementary which i will flesh out to include cultural study for Bugsy & Chicky as their 'program' for the year.  We will spend 2 weeks on each book, which will include the engineering project and geography/culture for the country.

Lego Mindstorms, Snap Circuits 750 & other STEM programming activities as listed here.

Come & Look with me (art appreciation)

Various art and crafts as instigated by the children

Nature study

Music appreciation (classical)

Swimming, surf club & Scouts

NOTES -
Bugsy & Chicky will not 'tag along' with Flossy for SOTW4 this year.  I think it is too heavy for them at their ages/maturity and Flossy will follow her own course of study mostly independently for the year.  Bugsy & Chicky will instead have a STEM focus for the year and Flossy will join in as her science.

Yes, we are changing up our maths.  Flossy completed the entire Miquon line up as per our maths scope and sequence posted here.  You learn a lot about a program when you complete it from start to finish that you wouldn't know without using it in it's entirety.  Whilst i love Miquon and what it has to offer i have learned that it isn't going to be the right fit for Chicky and i think Bugsy is far enough into it that it's time for a change for him.  He's set off on the right foot as Miquon is such a solid foundation that it's the right time to change him.

We are also dropping Latin.  This has been a really tough decision for me.  I can see and completely understand the benefits that Latin has however it is taking up a significant portion of my time working with Flossy and understanding it all.  Possum needs to learn more Auslan as he doesn't talk.  So we will be switching Latin for Auslan for the time being.  I already have Latin Prep from Galore Park which is what we were going to do after Getting Started with Latin.  I will now shelve this and hand it on to Flossy to complete independently maybe in year 5 or 6.

Items marked * are programs that we have been working on this year which need completion.  As we school year round we start new books as and when required, not necessarily at the beginning of the year which means that some books hang over to the following year :)

Tentative plan for 2014 is an Australian History year for everyone before beginning the 4 year history cycle again in 2015.

Olympic Lapbooks

We've just completed our Olympic Lapbooks, they were so much fun!  I pulled various pages from the resources I listed here and we also read the books listed too.  The children were all so engaged in this format of school.  They were eager to get to this part of their day and create something they could treasure.

The lapbooks are a concertina fold so the cover page saying 'My Olympic Lapbook' ends up being the front :-)  I removed their names from the bottom of the cover for the photo's.

Here are their final creations.

Flossy

Bugsy

Chicky

I did almost all of the writing for Chicky, but I did write what she told me too.  Bugsy did about half of his writing and Flossy did all of hers complete with her own research.

It was unanimous that their favourite athlete is Lauren Mitchell.  During our discussions it was revealed that anyone can bike, run or swim but not everyone can do all those cool tricks!

Favourite sports were split Flossy chose diving, Bugsy fencing (although he is most disappointed not to have seen any) and Chicky chose gymnastics.

We still have a few things to fill in this week including the medal tally and the weather in London but everything is stuck in its place and just needs a quick note each day until the Olympics are over.

We've had such a fun time doing 'Olympic School'.  Have you done something special for the Olympics in your homeschool?  We would love to take a look.

Amber xx

Planning

I've just come across two excellent posts on planning out your own history/literature program so that you can make it exactly what you want it to be.  I'm putting the links here so they don't get lost in my bookmarks because i want to be able to come back to them later in the year and use their words of wisdom.

We do our own thing now, but it's not nearly as a complete or cohesive as i would like moving forward.  Especially with Flossy heading for the logic stage and wanting to keep everyone in the same history period but cater to each child.

http://missmoe-thesearethedaysofmylife.blogspot.com.au/2011/03/planning-your-own-curriculum.html

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=358108
The second post in this thread is a real winner in my opinion.

Hope this might help some of my homeschooling friends :)

Guy Fawkes - Fun in History

Some people love to plan.  I like to have a plan, but i never stick to it.  So, i've given up having a proper plan and instead work to our natural rhythm and remind myself that homeschooling is a marathon, not a sprint.  Today I knew we would cover history but i didn't have any idea exactly how it would unfold...

We started off reading from Story of the World 3.  Today's section covered King James VI of Scotland and Guy Fawkes.  The kids thought it was great but when it came time to see what was in the activity book they were very disappointed to find there was no colouring in page for this section :(  I set up Bugsy and Chicky to draw pictures of a bon fire and fireworks whilst I did a narration with Flossy.  It was an awesome CM style narration.

While she was busy copying her narration into her history notebook i quickly looked at the activity suggestions feeling like the kids had been short changed with no colouring in page.  I came across Parkin, so off we went to the kitchen and made some Parkin.  It was in the oven by lunchtime and ready for afternoon tea.  Everyone LOVED it!

Whilst having lunch i thought, hmm, wonder if anyone's got some filming of their bon fire or fireworks on You Tube.  I just put in Guy Fawkes and was offered a plethora of clips along with one from BBC.  We watched it and the kids LOVED it!  In all honestly you'd want to pre-watch this one, it's definitely PGR.

Who knew that was how our day would unfold when we got started this morning.  What a great day!  I love homeschooling :-)