Plans for 2011/2012 - Princess L

Princess L will be in first grade already.  (Insert sad sounding yiddish fiddle music.)  Where has the time gone?

I have had a difficult time figuring out what to do with this little one next year.  Some things were no brainers:  continue Math-U-See Alpha for math, begin Tapestry of Grace LG level for our humanities rotation, and Awana Sparks for Bible memory work.  But I've been flummoxed (I just had to get that word in there) about what to do for Language Arts.  (I will continue to have her work on the Explode the Code workbooks as they are a good seat work activity that she can do on her own.  I can hand it to her to do while I am correcting her work, or if I am unavoidably needed during her schooling by one of her sisters.)  Because of the speech issues that she has been working through this year, she is a little bit behind where her sisters were in reading ability.   At the same time, I have learned through experience that just because you can read a book (or a list of words) to get a graded reading level, it doesn't mean that you can comprehend or remember what you've read.  This has been an ongoing problem with my eldest two princesses.  I have come to embrace Charlotte Mason's ideas of narration and dictation as a method for training kids toward the stage of dialectic thinking.  I didn't really do much with that with my eldest two princesses, and as a result, moving up to the dialectic level in our Tapestry studies has been a bigger challenge than it should be.

So what to do?  When I first heard that IEW was going to be coming out with curriculum for the K-2nd grade set, I was excited.  As an English major, I really like their method for training kids to write well.  What held me back at the homeschool convention is that I didn't know where she'd be by the end of the year.  I decided to spring for it because even if the reading lessons will be a bit easy for her - it will be a good review of the things that she has learned.  And most importantly, I can use it the following year with Princess M.  The writing lessons, however, are going to be right up our alley.  This will allow us to work in the narration and dictation that I missed with my older girls at this stage.  And it will set her up for a wonderful transition to be able to complete SWI-A in her third grade year. 

When she is done with PAL-Reading, I am going to have Princess L begin Primary Language Lessons.  I like the outlay of this version of the book.  You can print it however you want - color, B&W, one sided, two sided, etc.  And it can be done either orally or written down.  The original version of the book would require separate paper to complete any written portions.  When my elder girls tried this, they would either lose their place in the book or on the paper making the assignment take forever, or things would get skipped as they moved back and forth.  This version allows them to write their answer immediately below the question.

I've already posted our master schedule, but here is a closer look at what Princess L's personal schedule will look like:

Princess L Schedule

This is what we will start with, anyway.  It seems like the more the plans seem set in stone, the more things come up that require changes.  I believe that's called "Murphy's Law"?  You'll notice our schedule will be different on Mondays.  That's because a friend and I will be kid swapping and team teaching on those days.  I will take her 6th grader with E & S to do IEW's Ancient History Writing Lessons, and she will take L & M with her 2nd grader to do the Tapestry LG literature book and a hands-on craft or experiment.  I'm really excited about it, though I enjoy the hands-on stuff myself, I think it will be good for L to have the opportunity to learn from someone other than me.  One other thing on the schedule that is new for her is piano.  She will begin her lessons in October.  She is so excited and cannot wait to be like her big sisters.  I have scheduled her a 15 minute practice session for this year.  Those beginning lessons can get a little bit too much for me to listen to for half an hour.  And it's also too much time for them to fill.  Until her lessons actually begin, I will have her review Awana verses, as much of the first part of each book is a review of the previous year anyway.