I also added board games to the plans. I don't view that as "school work," but we have been unsuccessful in getting into a routine of playing board games. We have played them more often this year, but it typically happens after Oliver goes to bed. I scheduled it about three times a week on average and rotated through our four names (including myself) as to who gets to pick the game we play on that particular day. Hopefully this will help get us in the habit of playing board games more regularly while Oliver is awake. Similarly, I have done really well with reading chapter books the last few years, but I have been sporadic in terms of reading picture books we own (that aren't related to what we're studying in science or history). I put those in the schedule four days per week and poetry on the fifth. Here's to hoping this means we'll do better with reading poetry and picture books (that are purely read for enjoyment). Nadia and Ian certainly have heard me read far more picture books than Oliver, which I feel badly about. Better late than never!
Keyboarding - Nadia and Ian worked on typing on an almost daily basis during the second half of the last school year. They made a lot of progress so I'm not planning to require them to do it as often this year. I think I've scheduled them to work on typing.com or actually type something they've written during Language Arts about 40 times over the course of the school year. Oliver isn't doing keyboarding yet.
Photography - Nadia has selected this as one of her "electives" this year as a middle schooler. I am planning to work with her on this once a week so that she can learn to use a DSLR camera in manual mode. I will let her watch some videos and such on the online photography class I purchased several years ago.
Music - Nadia would like to join the chorus at the Christian school, but I'm not inclined to do that this year. I will continue teaching Nadia and Ian how to play the piano, and I also plan to start Oliver sometime this school year on the piano. I have scheduled them to practice the piano 4-5 times a week. Nadia and Ian are also joining the Susquehanna Valley Youth Chorale the end of August. Their rehearsals are in a different town (farther away) in the winter. I'm only planning on having them do the fall semester (end of August through the middle of November). Ian and Oliver will continue to sing in the children's choir at church on Sundays. We are about half way through the Hymn devotional book. I'm planning to finish that with them this year, which introduces them to some hymns they might not have heard before. Each year we listen to stories and music about different composers in social studies. The five I have selected thus far for this year include Wagner, Verdi, Foster, Sousa, and Gershwin.
Spelling - Oliver will finish Level 2 of All About Spelling and do part of level 3. Ian will do level five, and Nadia will complete Level seven. This will be her final year of spelling. Today I worked on assembling the writing station that she will utilize the last day of each lesson. I think it's very creative; kudos to the authors of this curriculum! I also will have Nadia and Ian complete the sixth grade portion of the homophone book.
Handwriting - Ian will complete the fourth grade cursive textbook (HWT), and Oliver will complete the second grade manuscript textbook. At least once a week I will have Nadia copy something in cursive to retain what she has learned (such as the Bible verses in science). Handwriting lasts about half of the year.
Art - TBD All I have so far are a few drawing activities related to what we are studying in history.
Cooking - Nadia will cook one dinner per week.
PE - I haven't decided yet if/when we will take a homeschool gym class this school year. All three kids will play on a basketball team in the winter, and hopefully they can also take ice skating lessons in the winter. Oliver will be taking gymnastics in the fall when his siblings are in choir.
Bible - Three years ago we read the entire Old Testament, two years ago we read the New Testament, last year Bible was one of the things that got short changed since I had a FT job. We did BSF lessons for the first couple of months and sporadically did some sword drills throughout the year, but for Bible we just worked on memorizing verses for AWANA. We have family devotions before putting Oliver to bed, but I want to do more than that. I haven't finished planning out the whole year yet, but for the first two months we are going to work through the Young Peacemaker by Corlette Sande. This is one of those resources I've intended to use for years and am finally getting around to doing so. Yay! If Nadia chooses to join the youth group on Wednesday nights instead of AWANA, then I will need to decide what chapters (or book) of the Bible she will memorize this year.
Math - Oliver will complete a second grade textbook, Nadia will work through Teaching Textbook's 6th grade curriculum online, we will work through Life of Fred (Edgewood through Liver) together, and Ian will work through Beast Academy 4A through 4D. Once Oliver has completed his handwriting textbook, I am going to have him do an educational game or puzzle every day (games related to fractions, telling time, money, fractions, addition/subtraction, etc.). We've owned these games for year but rarely used them. If all goes as planned, Oliver will use those games more than his siblings did.
Science - All three kids will do science together this year. We'll be studying chemistry and physics in the fall semester and botany in the spring semester. Nadia and Ian will compete in the science fair at the Bloomsburg Children's Museum. I purchased a periodic table coloring book that has information about each of the elements. We will be completing one page of that almost every day of the first semester. I haven't planned out what experiments we will do this year. Hopefully we will be more successful in completing them than we have in the past. I did recently purchase slides for our microscope so hopefully we will utilize that this year. Possible botany field trips might include the Philadelphia Flower show, Hershey Gardens, and/or Longwood Gardens.
Language Arts - For grammar Nadia and Ian will complete the Robin Hood book. That will only take a few minutes each day. Their writing activities will correlate to American history. Vocabulary words will be introduced each week through the grammar and writing lessons. I *should* add writing activities for Oliver such as writing in his journal. I haven't done that yet. Last year the main thing I worked on with Oliver was reading, and spelling came easily for him. This year my initial focus with him will be math as he really struggled with that last year.
Sign Language - Nadia has asked to work on sign language this year instead of Spanish. I'm thinking we will do it twice a week. Oliver doesn't do a second language yet. I am giving Ian the choice of working on Rosetta Stone (Spanish) or sign language with Nadia.
Social Studies - I have definitely put the most time into the lesson plans for this subject. Reading and writing are correlated with what we are studying in history. As for geography, Nadia and Ian will be reviewing the location of each of the 50 states on a map as well as being able to name the capitol of each state. We will be studying economics some this year for the first time as we'll be reading ten Tuttle Twins books, which are from a libertarian viewpoint. As for history, we will be studying from the 1860's to the present using volume four of The Story of the World plus a plethora (more than 400) of other nonfiction books, picture books, and chapter books. I have selected 51 chapter books for Ian to pick from for reading (at least 50% of what he reads must be from the list), and I have a list of more than 50 books for Nadia to choose between (a few books are on both of their lists but for the most part the lists are not duplicates). I have included a few videos as well, and I'm planning on having the kids earn more Junior Ranger Badges - some we can do from home! The chapter books we listen to (or I read aloud) are also related to the time period we are studying this year. Here are some highlights of some of the topics/people we will be studying this year (we will study them in chronological order but this list below is not in order):
- Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale
- Clara Barton and Sojourner Truth
- All of the presidents from Abraham Lincoln through Donald Trump
- Twenty five of the states plus DC (we read books about the other twenty five last year)
- Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korean Conflict, and Vietnam War (far more attention will be given to the Civil War and WWII than the others) Also, the history camp the kids are attending next week will be about WWI and WWII.
- Underground railroad, Harriet Tubman, reconstruction
- George Washington Carver, Vincent van Gogh, Alexander Graham Bell, Wright Brothers, and Wilson Bentley
- Suffrage movement
- Amelia Earhart, Ruby Bridges, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks
- Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Levi Strauss, Milton Hershey
- Babe Ruth, Hoover Dam, Panama Canal
- Titanic, Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison
Hopefully all three will have an excellent year in grades 2, 4, and 6! I'm very thankful that I am able to be their teacher.
1 comment:
We are also studying the civil war so I will be very interested to see what field trips you do :-)
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