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.

Home Grown Geography

Our focus for geography for this coming year and into the future (until we work through all the goodies i just purchased) is physical and political.  We will not be addressing cultures formally, apart from a tid bit from Material World, but i do have some other books on hand for the children to explore on their own if they choose.  We have the World Book series People & Places and they are a bit heavy when our aim is a world geography overview, not a country by country in depth study.

Here are the wonderful books we will be using.

DK Complete Flags of the World
Usborne Flags of the World Sticker Book (1 each)
Geography from A - Z
Maps & Globes
DK Geography of the World
A Child's Introduction to the World
Material World
Around the World in 80 Tales

We will begin the year learning a bit about maps.  We will read through Maps & Globes and also look at the first half of A Child's Introduction to the World.  Once we have completed the foundation material we will move on.

From there I plan to use Around the World in 80 Tales as our spine.  We will read a story at the beginning of each Geography session.  It's a beautiful book with stories from all over the globe.  They are segregated by continent.  Here you can see the cover and a sample story.

Once we have read the story we will locate the country on our world map which hangs on the wall.  Then we will colour a map of the country which i will find here.  We will take time to look at the countries topography and see if there is anything special or interesting we can look up in Geography A-Z.  Then we will again locate the country in DK Geography of the World and read what they have to offer.  We will pay particular attention to where the country is located, which countries it boarders and features it shares with it's neighbours such as rivers and mountain ranges.

Next we will look in DK Complete Flags of the World to find out about the countries flag and what it means.  Here is what it looks like.

This book offers excellent information on the meaning behind each part of the flag and other historical and/or political information about how the flag came to be.  Where relevant there are also state, territory, provence etc flags illustrated.  Then we will find the flag in our Usborne Flags of the World Sticker Books and stick it in the right place.  To conclude our session we will have a look at Material World and chat about what we have found out.  We will be narrating and note taking along the way.