Princess L - 1st Grade - LG
We're still doing lots of reading. We're reading one lesson from Christian Liberty Press's Nature Reader each day. Then she is reading either a chapter in a chapter book, or two library picture books each day. Today we started my very most favorite series from my childhood - the Carolyn Haywood Betsy series. We began "B is for Betsy." I always enjoy reading these as some of their first chapter books. She is halfway through lesson ten in Explode the Code book four. We will be finishing this book soon, and I will be deciding what to do next. I have a few options, but since I don't have the money in my budget for book 5, we won't be including that one for now. In math, she is finishing up the +8/8+ facts. I've been having her do the online drill at the Math-U-See site and incorporating all of the facts she has learned so far. When she gets them all correct, she has done so with her fastest time being 100 seconds. It's a little bit longer than their suggested time. However, there is always some hunt and peck time with an online drill, so I'd really like to see her at around 80 seconds.
Princess S - 5th Grade - UG
The first two weeks of doing the D level history reading have gone okay I guess. However, she is several days behind at this point. I'm not sure what is going on with her, but I have made a big decision that should affect the older two princesses - hopefully for the better. More on that in a minute. History these two weeks has been dealing with the route to a divided kingdom. We saw how the people demanded a king and got Saul, and then everything that Samuel warned them about came to fruition through David and Solomon. After these two kings, the line of kings followed the LORD less and less, until the kingdoms became divided into two separate kingdoms. In math, Princess S has made it to lesson 24. She is beginning week 22 in her Tom Sawyer Fix-It book, and week 13 in her Caesar's English vocabulary. She has begun lesson 13 in Latin, and will be taking a break once she hits lesson 17. I had planned for her to do about half of the book this year. She will continue to play the games at HeadventureLand once a week until she starts up on the second half.
Princess E - 7th Grade - D
Princess E is finding a groove with her math review and is doing very well in Latin now that I have backed her up and given her a new schedule for each lesson. I also made up some forms that I am having her fill out for each new word that forces her to write each possible ending - in both Latin and English - so that she can remember the endings better. She is completing about a lesson every three days or so, so she is all the way up to lesson ten again. She is taking a break from Magic Lens as she is up to the loop lessons. We will be focusing on her vocabulary, Word Within the Word, until she reaches lesson twenty.
The big decision that I have made is that we are switching to a year round school schedule. The two older princesses are just struggling to stay afloat. They are very stressed out because they "think" they have so much more school work than everyone else. Really, they have the same amount that all the other kids have - they just are not able to focus on their work and become discouraged when they don't see any "me" time in sight. But, we aren't homeschooling just to do "school at home" - so we are going to do what is necessary for all of our sanities. I have been working on a staggered schedule for all of our subjects. This will mean that they have fewer assignments on any given day, hopefully allowing them to focus more on each subject rather than rushing to get everything done. It will still require diligence to get their work done, but it will hopefully allow those who need more sleep to get it and those who need more "me" time to get that as well. We will still be taking eight weeks of vacation from school; but they will be staggered throughout the year, rather than coming all together in the summer. This new schedule will begin on February 6.
Showing posts with label planning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label planning. Show all posts
1/27/12
1/14/12
TOG Year 1 Week 17-18
Christmas break was way to short! I think that coming back after Christmas break is much more difficult than coming back after summer break. Usually, they get bored over the summer and having something to do, and a normal schedule, is a welcomed idea when we start back up. However, two weeks off at Christmas is only enough to make everyone - me included - want just a little bit more time off. In the past, I might have accommodated more time off. But since Princess E is doing an online TOG class, we need to stick with that schedule.
Princess M - Pre-TOGGLER
We finished up F for fish, and we have started G for gumball. This little one, unlike the others, was antsy to get back to school. She spent much of her Christmas break dancing in her new ballerina clothes - her first that are new rather than very used. I am still trying to decide what to use with her for next year. I have IEW's PAL - but I've also been very intrigued with All About Reading. However, I'm not sure whether I'd need to start her with Pre-Reading or with Level 1. I'm hoping that they will be at our homeschool convention in April so I can get a comparative look at them. I know it's still a ways away, but April is really just around the corner.
Princess L - 1st Grade - LG
We have been doing lots of reading. Sometimes, it's more fun to read to someone other than Mom. So she spent some of her break reading to Nanny. We have started the Hopscotch Hill Series. These are great beginning chapter books that are written by one of the American Girl stories authors. Both Princess E & S enjoyed these books, so we are giving Princess L a chance. She really wants to be able to read the book that goes along with her Kirsten American Girl doll. But she just isn't ready for that yet. The other book we started is Animal Antics, a compilation of chapters from the Little House series that deals with animal encounters. This book is a bit more challenging, but because it doesn't have pictures on every page, it forces her to rely only on the words and not on the pictures. We also started back up on the next MUS chapter. So she is learning the +8 and 8+ facts. They are a bit more challenging than the nines were. I sometimes feel like we're dragging in math, but I made the mistake of allowing Princess E to go too fast in her math. I think she really doesn't know them well to this day, but there is no way she is going to go backwards that far. It just means that she has to take more time with each problem and lesson.
Princess S - 5th Grade - UG
We are beginning the move to D work. I have decided that from week 19 on, I am going to shift her to the D history books. But, I am going to make it a slow progression as to what I expect of her. The first couple of weeks I will just have her read the D books and continue doing KWOs on them like she has been doing. The next couple of weeks, I will sit with her while she reads and help her go through the accountability questions. I'm hoping that by the last unit, she will have the idea down and we will be able to add the thinking questions. Then for the last few weeks - probably weeks 32-36, I hope to have a discussion time with her. I may also have her listen in on a few of her sister's online classes. In math, Princess S is up to lesson 23. This has been a bit more difficult lesson as it is double digit long division. I know she can do it - she just needs to be able to keep her concentration. That is always the challenge with my SPD/ADD girl. I do think that she will be catching up to Princess E sometime next year. Also, in Latin she is up to chapter 12. In science, she is just not doing very well at all. I think she is bored. She loves to read about scientific topics, but she doesn't like being told what to read. So I am going to have her join Princess E in my newly designed science endeavor.
Princess E - 7th Grade - D
After spending much time before break, and during break, contemplating what to do with Princess E, I think I've come up with a plan. For math, we put a small halt on MUS, and I purchased a math fractions drill book through Currclick. She is going to complete ten questions each day until she learns to slow down and look carefully before turning in assignments. She will not be allowed to go back to MUS until she is scoring a 9 or 10 each day. She is going to be required to continue on in math through the summer until she has reached Zeta lesson 10. In Latin, I purchased the official test packet from Classical Academic Press. I told her she would take the unit tests until she was not able to achieve an 85% or higher. Well, she passed the first, and that was all. So we moved back to lesson 6. I told her she would have to continue through the summer until she completed the book. I changed up the order of her assignments and created my own practice worksheets that will force her to think through each word and all it's possible spellings and translations. I told her she would not move on from each lesson until each test is passed with an 85% or higher. In science, I am combining several different programs and one method. I am going to use this method with both Princess E & S, This task card approach will hopefully help them learn how to research the information they need to learn about a topic. They will be going through the Life Science task cards. I also purchased Lyrical Life Science because they both seem to learn really well with music. I cross referenced the LLS lessons with the Task Cards to match them up. I also wanted to add in some lab opportunities as 7th grade science is big using labs. So I found this completely free life science program and once again cross referenced it with the Task Cards. So in a nutshell, they will be taking a task card and will have to research the topic on each card on their own. For every card that there is a corresponding LLS song or Mr Q lab, they will be doing those as well. I purchased several books to keep in a basket so that they have most of the books that can help them to research the topics. To show what they have learned, the task cards have a few different output options. Of course, the expectations of quality output will be higher for Princess E than for Princess S. I am praying that the opportunity to discover information on their own, rather than being told "this is what you must read and what you must do" will click with my two extremely strong-willed princesses. If they enjoy it and take off with it, and if I see that they are really learning with this method, then I am thinking through how I can combine that method with our TOG studies. I do believe it is quite possible, although it might not be possible for me to pull it all together by the fall. It might be something that I look at implementing with the R level of TOG and hold off with it until we do Year 3 starting in the 2013/2014 school year. Anyway, that is what has kept me busy over our Christmas break.
Princess M - Pre-TOGGLER
We finished up F for fish, and we have started G for gumball. This little one, unlike the others, was antsy to get back to school. She spent much of her Christmas break dancing in her new ballerina clothes - her first that are new rather than very used. I am still trying to decide what to use with her for next year. I have IEW's PAL - but I've also been very intrigued with All About Reading. However, I'm not sure whether I'd need to start her with Pre-Reading or with Level 1. I'm hoping that they will be at our homeschool convention in April so I can get a comparative look at them. I know it's still a ways away, but April is really just around the corner.
Princess L - 1st Grade - LG
We have been doing lots of reading. Sometimes, it's more fun to read to someone other than Mom. So she spent some of her break reading to Nanny. We have started the Hopscotch Hill Series. These are great beginning chapter books that are written by one of the American Girl stories authors. Both Princess E & S enjoyed these books, so we are giving Princess L a chance. She really wants to be able to read the book that goes along with her Kirsten American Girl doll. But she just isn't ready for that yet. The other book we started is Animal Antics, a compilation of chapters from the Little House series that deals with animal encounters. This book is a bit more challenging, but because it doesn't have pictures on every page, it forces her to rely only on the words and not on the pictures. We also started back up on the next MUS chapter. So she is learning the +8 and 8+ facts. They are a bit more challenging than the nines were. I sometimes feel like we're dragging in math, but I made the mistake of allowing Princess E to go too fast in her math. I think she really doesn't know them well to this day, but there is no way she is going to go backwards that far. It just means that she has to take more time with each problem and lesson.
Princess S - 5th Grade - UG
We are beginning the move to D work. I have decided that from week 19 on, I am going to shift her to the D history books. But, I am going to make it a slow progression as to what I expect of her. The first couple of weeks I will just have her read the D books and continue doing KWOs on them like she has been doing. The next couple of weeks, I will sit with her while she reads and help her go through the accountability questions. I'm hoping that by the last unit, she will have the idea down and we will be able to add the thinking questions. Then for the last few weeks - probably weeks 32-36, I hope to have a discussion time with her. I may also have her listen in on a few of her sister's online classes. In math, Princess S is up to lesson 23. This has been a bit more difficult lesson as it is double digit long division. I know she can do it - she just needs to be able to keep her concentration. That is always the challenge with my SPD/ADD girl. I do think that she will be catching up to Princess E sometime next year. Also, in Latin she is up to chapter 12. In science, she is just not doing very well at all. I think she is bored. She loves to read about scientific topics, but she doesn't like being told what to read. So I am going to have her join Princess E in my newly designed science endeavor.
Princess E - 7th Grade - D
After spending much time before break, and during break, contemplating what to do with Princess E, I think I've come up with a plan. For math, we put a small halt on MUS, and I purchased a math fractions drill book through Currclick. She is going to complete ten questions each day until she learns to slow down and look carefully before turning in assignments. She will not be allowed to go back to MUS until she is scoring a 9 or 10 each day. She is going to be required to continue on in math through the summer until she has reached Zeta lesson 10. In Latin, I purchased the official test packet from Classical Academic Press. I told her she would take the unit tests until she was not able to achieve an 85% or higher. Well, she passed the first, and that was all. So we moved back to lesson 6. I told her she would have to continue through the summer until she completed the book. I changed up the order of her assignments and created my own practice worksheets that will force her to think through each word and all it's possible spellings and translations. I told her she would not move on from each lesson until each test is passed with an 85% or higher. In science, I am combining several different programs and one method. I am going to use this method with both Princess E & S, This task card approach will hopefully help them learn how to research the information they need to learn about a topic. They will be going through the Life Science task cards. I also purchased Lyrical Life Science because they both seem to learn really well with music. I cross referenced the LLS lessons with the Task Cards to match them up. I also wanted to add in some lab opportunities as 7th grade science is big using labs. So I found this completely free life science program and once again cross referenced it with the Task Cards. So in a nutshell, they will be taking a task card and will have to research the topic on each card on their own. For every card that there is a corresponding LLS song or Mr Q lab, they will be doing those as well. I purchased several books to keep in a basket so that they have most of the books that can help them to research the topics. To show what they have learned, the task cards have a few different output options. Of course, the expectations of quality output will be higher for Princess E than for Princess S. I am praying that the opportunity to discover information on their own, rather than being told "this is what you must read and what you must do" will click with my two extremely strong-willed princesses. If they enjoy it and take off with it, and if I see that they are really learning with this method, then I am thinking through how I can combine that method with our TOG studies. I do believe it is quite possible, although it might not be possible for me to pull it all together by the fall. It might be something that I look at implementing with the R level of TOG and hold off with it until we do Year 3 starting in the 2013/2014 school year. Anyway, that is what has kept me busy over our Christmas break.
8/1/11
Homemade Student Planner
I searched and searched for the perfect planner. Or at least, for the planner that I had in my head. And I just couldn't find it. So I decided to create my own student planner for my eldest two princesses. Here's what I did:
The first page lists her computer information for sites she needs for school. It lists the daily meeting agenda we will follow. I found some neat plastic dividers with folders on each side.
The first section is an annual calendar and monthly calendars that are specific to our schedule. I got these from The Old Schoolhouse Planner. I bought the e-book version that is editable. Yet even with all the choices, I still had to create my own pages!
The next section has our individual lesson plans to schedule from. I still use HST+ to schedule from. But because my goal, which is described in the Tapestry of Grace curriculum, is that they will be able to schedule their own work, I am trying something new this first quarter. I printed out the list of assignments that they have for the first quarter. They can decide how much of each subject to schedule each week. They can follow my suggestion which will give them an even amount of work each week, or they can go hog wild with one subject and finish the quarter's assignments in four weeks and have five weeks off if they so desire! As I said, it's an experiment - so I'll let you know how that goes.
The next section has the pages they will use to fill in their schedule. Each page is individualized to what they will be using this year. Our week begins on Friday, and I included a column for the weekend in case they decide to schedule some work on the weekend. (I know, I know - a homeschool mom can dream, can't she?)
The next section is for their Grammar program to check off the sentences as they complete them and correct them.
The last section is an informational section that I thought might be helpful to them. It is again from The Old Schoolhouse Planner.
They are actually quite excited to begin using these. This will be a second year for Princess E in having her own planner and scheduling her own work. Princess S will be learning this skill this year. My prayer is that it will help them both to be a bit more organized, and that I will be able to focus more time on my younger students as a result.
Had to stick with a patriotic theme. It's one of my favorites.
The next section has the pages they will use to fill in their schedule. Each page is individualized to what they will be using this year. Our week begins on Friday, and I included a column for the weekend in case they decide to schedule some work on the weekend. (I know, I know - a homeschool mom can dream, can't she?)
They are actually quite excited to begin using these. This will be a second year for Princess E in having her own planner and scheduling her own work. Princess S will be learning this skill this year. My prayer is that it will help them both to be a bit more organized, and that I will be able to focus more time on my younger students as a result.
7/23/11
Plans for 2011/2012 - Princess E
Tonight, Princess S said that she wished school started on Monday! I wish I'd been recording her, because I can guarantee you that by September 1 she will be quoting the opposite.
Here is the curriculum Princess E will use this year:
Tapestry of Grace DE Year 1: We are using this for history, literature, church history, and some geography. I plan to incorporate more narration this year. Also, she will be doing her history and church history discussions through the Lampstand Learning Center. I will be having Princess S do some of the D level literature books this year, so she will join us for discussion for those books. I also am going to attempt to read all the literature books myself before they are assigned. I've got the first one read already.
Math-U-See Epsilon: She will continue where she left off, and then move on to Zeta.
Latin for Children Primer B: I debated whether to move her on to Latin Alive. But since I have all the other girls behind her, I decided to stick with this series for now. She will still have time to complete Primer C and all three Latin Alive books.
Apologia General Science: I have the entire curriculum on a computer CD. If this doesn't work to do on the computer, then I will be borrowing the book from a friend. I'm quite nervous about this. I think it's going to be a lot of work for my non-science minded or interested princess. But it is important for her to have it.
Globalmania: As mentioned in my post about Princess S's curriculum, I'm hoping for a better global mind in respect to where things are located in the world.
As I said before, I'm a language arts fiend. So we have a lot of overlapping, multi-textured stuff going on. With the MCT, I'm using his level 4 materials over two years, so what's listed may seem a lot, but we're going slow and only doing half the book this year. As listed in Princess S's curriculum, she will be using Practice Town, McCall-Crabbs Book B, and Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons from IEW, and Fix-It Grammar - though she will be doing The Frog Prince instead of Tom Sawyer.
The Magic Lens Volume One: This is intense but fun grammar. We'll do the first half of the book this year.
The Word Within the Word Volume One: This vocabulary program should put her in good form for the eventual college required standardized tests.
Essay Voyage: Instead of going with the level four writing (especially since we're doing the IEW writing besides) I am having her do level three. This is such a rich program that we are going to take it slow and easy.
That's it for our curriculum tour for the year. Wouldn't you know it, I've already had to change our daily schedule that I posted earlier as I realized I forgot about piano lesson day. So I had to make some minor changes. I put together milk crates for each princess today with their school stuff all nicely squeezed into a crate. Each has a different color, and they should be able to move the crates around to wherever they end up doing their schoolwork. I'm also working on cleaning out the school room and when I have it all spruced up I'll post some photos.
Here is the curriculum Princess E will use this year:
Tapestry of Grace DE Year 1: We are using this for history, literature, church history, and some geography. I plan to incorporate more narration this year. Also, she will be doing her history and church history discussions through the Lampstand Learning Center. I will be having Princess S do some of the D level literature books this year, so she will join us for discussion for those books. I also am going to attempt to read all the literature books myself before they are assigned. I've got the first one read already.
Math-U-See Epsilon: She will continue where she left off, and then move on to Zeta.
Latin for Children Primer B: I debated whether to move her on to Latin Alive. But since I have all the other girls behind her, I decided to stick with this series for now. She will still have time to complete Primer C and all three Latin Alive books.
Apologia General Science: I have the entire curriculum on a computer CD. If this doesn't work to do on the computer, then I will be borrowing the book from a friend. I'm quite nervous about this. I think it's going to be a lot of work for my non-science minded or interested princess. But it is important for her to have it.
Globalmania: As mentioned in my post about Princess S's curriculum, I'm hoping for a better global mind in respect to where things are located in the world.
As I said before, I'm a language arts fiend. So we have a lot of overlapping, multi-textured stuff going on. With the MCT, I'm using his level 4 materials over two years, so what's listed may seem a lot, but we're going slow and only doing half the book this year. As listed in Princess S's curriculum, she will be using Practice Town, McCall-Crabbs Book B, and Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons from IEW, and Fix-It Grammar - though she will be doing The Frog Prince instead of Tom Sawyer.
The Magic Lens Volume One: This is intense but fun grammar. We'll do the first half of the book this year.
The Word Within the Word Volume One: This vocabulary program should put her in good form for the eventual college required standardized tests.
Essay Voyage: Instead of going with the level four writing (especially since we're doing the IEW writing besides) I am having her do level three. This is such a rich program that we are going to take it slow and easy.
That's it for our curriculum tour for the year. Wouldn't you know it, I've already had to change our daily schedule that I posted earlier as I realized I forgot about piano lesson day. So I had to make some minor changes. I put together milk crates for each princess today with their school stuff all nicely squeezed into a crate. Each has a different color, and they should be able to move the crates around to wherever they end up doing their schoolwork. I'm also working on cleaning out the school room and when I have it all spruced up I'll post some photos.
7/20/11
Plans for 2011/2012 - Princess S
It's only eleven days until we begin our school year. I need to finish my curriculum posts so I can get ready for the new year. Here is what Princess S will be using for next year.
Tapestry of Grace DE Year 1: We are using this for history, literature, church history, and some geography. I plan to incorporate more narration and copywork for her this year. She will be completing the UG level for most of the year, but I plan to begin the transition to D level part way through. I will have her reading a few of the D level literature books this year and including her in our discussion times for it.
Math-U-See Delta: She will continue on from where she ended the year. I anticipate she will be moving on to Epsilon about halfway through the year.
Latin for Children Primer A: This will be her first year with Latin. I'm hoping we get through this in one year, but I am going to be flexible. I'd rather go for mastery than finishing a book in a year. In fact, I really think we will only get about 2/3 of the way through. Last year, I had all the pages in page protectors for Princess E and she wrote on them with an ultra-fine permanent marker. I used an Expo board doctor to get that off. However, because I had waited until the end of the year it took a long time and lots of elbow grease. I finally gave up and threw away about 40 page protectors. This year we will use wet erase markers. I also purchased the activity book used, so that will give some more variety in the assignments.
God's Marvelous Works Book One: The last two years we have done science together. This year we are trying science separately. So Princess S will be working on this book. I plan to incorporate narration and notebooking with this subject. She will do the reading and answer the questions. I entered the vocabulary words on Quizlet so she can study them there. I also bought the test booklet.
Globalmania: We are going to add in this program for our geography studies. My hope with this is that they will be able to have a better grasp of where things are in the world. We will be setting aside a little bit of time each week to work on this adventure.
Language Arts - I am a language arts fiend! I was an English major and this is my love and comfort zone. But finding something that works for all my princesses is difficult. These choices below may seem like a lot, but Princess S really needs repetition as well as variety in order for concepts to sink in. She also needs lots of hands on practice. So I am blending a variety of programs together. We won't be doing all these each day, but we will be working with each thing at least twice a week. Most of these I purchased used.
Caesar's English 1: This will be our first year using MCT for vocabulary. This is an intense program. We are going to take it slow, but hopefully finish in one year.
Grammar Town: This is the next book that follows Grammar Island, which we did this past year. They enjoyed the story aspect of learning grammar, so I'm hoping this will be the same. As per MCT recommendations, we will be "front loading" this program. She will complete the book in five weeks.
Paragraph Town: She will use this after she completes Grammar Town. There are so many different activities to choose from with this one. We will be choosing those that look the most fun and the most helpful. (Yes - this might overlap some with IEW - but the approaches are different and like I said, she needs the constant review.)
Practice Town: Last year I purchased the student books for each princess. This year, I am going to be including this exercise during our meeting times. I only purchased the teacher's manual and will be dictating the sentence to them. Then they will be working through the four level analysis.
Fix It! Grammar - Tom Sawyer: This will be an additional grammar exercise. Princess S is a very good writer as far as creativity - but her mechanics and usage need some real work. I am hoping that this will help her become more conscious these aspects in her own writing.
McCall Crabbs Book B: We will be continuing this exercise this year. They will complete it during our half hour meeting time. They will be alternating between this and Practice Town. We may need to double up for about three weeks spread out through the year in order to finish.
Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons (IEW): This will be done with a friend's sixth grader. I will be teaching my oldest two princesses along with her third DD, and she will take my youngest two princesses with her youngest DD to do the Tapestry LG literature book and a craft. I really like the looks of this program and am hoping that Princess D will spur my two princesses to excellence. Princess D really enjoys writing and it's one of her favorite subjects I'm told.
Well, there you have it. Princess S's school year in a nutshell. I'm actually getting quite excited for it.
Tapestry of Grace DE Year 1: We are using this for history, literature, church history, and some geography. I plan to incorporate more narration and copywork for her this year. She will be completing the UG level for most of the year, but I plan to begin the transition to D level part way through. I will have her reading a few of the D level literature books this year and including her in our discussion times for it.
Math-U-See Delta: She will continue on from where she ended the year. I anticipate she will be moving on to Epsilon about halfway through the year.
Latin for Children Primer A: This will be her first year with Latin. I'm hoping we get through this in one year, but I am going to be flexible. I'd rather go for mastery than finishing a book in a year. In fact, I really think we will only get about 2/3 of the way through. Last year, I had all the pages in page protectors for Princess E and she wrote on them with an ultra-fine permanent marker. I used an Expo board doctor to get that off. However, because I had waited until the end of the year it took a long time and lots of elbow grease. I finally gave up and threw away about 40 page protectors. This year we will use wet erase markers. I also purchased the activity book used, so that will give some more variety in the assignments.
God's Marvelous Works Book One: The last two years we have done science together. This year we are trying science separately. So Princess S will be working on this book. I plan to incorporate narration and notebooking with this subject. She will do the reading and answer the questions. I entered the vocabulary words on Quizlet so she can study them there. I also bought the test booklet.
Globalmania: We are going to add in this program for our geography studies. My hope with this is that they will be able to have a better grasp of where things are in the world. We will be setting aside a little bit of time each week to work on this adventure.
Language Arts - I am a language arts fiend! I was an English major and this is my love and comfort zone. But finding something that works for all my princesses is difficult. These choices below may seem like a lot, but Princess S really needs repetition as well as variety in order for concepts to sink in. She also needs lots of hands on practice. So I am blending a variety of programs together. We won't be doing all these each day, but we will be working with each thing at least twice a week. Most of these I purchased used.
Caesar's English 1: This will be our first year using MCT for vocabulary. This is an intense program. We are going to take it slow, but hopefully finish in one year.
Grammar Town: This is the next book that follows Grammar Island, which we did this past year. They enjoyed the story aspect of learning grammar, so I'm hoping this will be the same. As per MCT recommendations, we will be "front loading" this program. She will complete the book in five weeks.
Paragraph Town: She will use this after she completes Grammar Town. There are so many different activities to choose from with this one. We will be choosing those that look the most fun and the most helpful. (Yes - this might overlap some with IEW - but the approaches are different and like I said, she needs the constant review.)
Practice Town: Last year I purchased the student books for each princess. This year, I am going to be including this exercise during our meeting times. I only purchased the teacher's manual and will be dictating the sentence to them. Then they will be working through the four level analysis.
Fix It! Grammar - Tom Sawyer: This will be an additional grammar exercise. Princess S is a very good writer as far as creativity - but her mechanics and usage need some real work. I am hoping that this will help her become more conscious these aspects in her own writing.
McCall Crabbs Book B: We will be continuing this exercise this year. They will complete it during our half hour meeting time. They will be alternating between this and Practice Town. We may need to double up for about three weeks spread out through the year in order to finish.
Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons (IEW): This will be done with a friend's sixth grader. I will be teaching my oldest two princesses along with her third DD, and she will take my youngest two princesses with her youngest DD to do the Tapestry LG literature book and a craft. I really like the looks of this program and am hoping that Princess D will spur my two princesses to excellence. Princess D really enjoys writing and it's one of her favorite subjects I'm told.
Well, there you have it. Princess S's school year in a nutshell. I'm actually getting quite excited for it.
7/6/11
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.
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.
6/23/11
Planning for 2011/2012
While most of my planning for next year has been done, there are still a few things remaining. One of those has been a daily schedule. Schedules have been the bane of my homeschool existence. My princesses just don't function well with schedules. But I remain convinced that if we can stick to one, the rest of life will flow a lot better. So I have spent much time over the last week thinking about how to make things work for us. I will be adding Princess M in to our homeschool next year as a preschooler. Princess L will be a first grader. But she will still require me to work with her for almost the entire time. Princess S will be a fifth grader. I need to begin to mover her toward the dialectic level. However, I'm not sure yet how to get her there. Princess E will be a seventh grader. She will be a second year dialectic student, but last year was very difficult as she fought the work load tooth and nail. Despite the training I did to help her, she is my strong willed child who has to do everything her way - even if she can see without a shadow of doubt that her way will take longer, be more difficult and result in inaccurate results. So, I still have much work to do with her. Needless to say, it is going to require a strict schedule in order for everyone to get the piece of my time that they will need.
I decided that Princess S needs a very strict schedule. I filled in for her when she is to do each subject. I haven't done that before. There were certain times for group work, but I generally let her decide what order to do her assignments in. She can make school last a lifetime, with both ADD and SPD playing their parts to keep her distracted as well as being a distraction. I decided to give her a finite amount of time for each subject, and to list in what order she will do each subject. I'm going to set my alarm on my wrist watch to make sure that all transitions happen as scheduled. My prayer is that by mid-year, she would be beginning to finish subjects early and either use the time as quiet free time (reading a book or drawing) or else working ahead. Any assignments for the day that are not finished will be considered "homework" and she will have to complete them before being allowed free time. For Princess E, I took all her blocks of time that she wasn't doing something with the rest of us and called them "independent work" times. She will continue to schedule out her week as she did last year, and will be able to decide what order to do things in each day. However, I told her that I reserved the right to make changes to her schedule if it is causing problems. One problem she had last year is that she scheduled her reading assignments very light the first day, and then didn't do her outlines the way she was instructed, and therefore would have to re-read everything the day she tried to do her AQ/TQ's. She would get behind and not have them done, and everything would get pushed back. This year I told her that she will be assigning all of her TOG reading assignments the first two days and will be doing KWO's a la IEW with her History Core and History In-Depth reading. She will be working each day until 3:15pm, and if she finished what she had assigned for herself early, she is to work ahead on the next day's work. If she didn't finish all the work assigned for the day by then, she too will have "homework".
Another thing I did was to schedule in two 15 minute quick clean sessions - one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The morning one will hopefully allow them to catch up on any morning chores that weren't completed or do some other cleaning that they can potentially earn commission for. The morning cleaning will be followed by a 15 minute snack time. The afternoon snack will be at 3:15 with a fifteen minute cleaning following it.
For Princess L, I have assigned her a play time with Princess M, as well as a time for her to read to Princess M. She will have some scheduled free times. I have decided to break up her time with me into three half hour slots. We will spend 45 minutes on language arts, 30 minutes on math, and 15 minutes on TOG related activities. Princess L and Princess M will also be assigned to help with lunch prep. Yep - I'm crazy!
Princess M will have a one hour preschool time with me broken up into a 45 minute time slot and a 15 minute time slot. These will be early in the morning. One of the seminars I attended at our homeschool convention years ago was by David Hazell of My Father's World. He talked about the importance of giving the youngest students the first time. Once they get their time with mom, they are usually more willing and able to play by themselves for a while. So, after her preschool time she will have a half hour learning video (one of many I have on hand) and then after our snack time she will have a 45 minute room time. This will be challenging to begin with, but I plan to keep her Leapster away at other times and let her have it during her room time. For now, I am scheduling a nap time in the afternoon. It is a shorter time than she usually takes right now. But generally when they turn 4, I am less concerned that the nap happens. It will probably turn into an extended afternoon room time by the end of the year - but who knows. Princess S would have continued taking naps at 4 if she wasn't sharing a room with Princess E at the time. Finally, the youngest two princesses will have a half hour TV time at the end of our scheduled time so that I can work on dinner.
I have schedule myself a half hour meeting time with both of the older princesses each day. This time will be to go over the previous day's work, doing some narrations (which will be new to us,) and going over any new questions that come up. I also have some assigned some "office hours" for myself. These will be specific times that the older two princesses can count on me to be willing and able to interrupt what I'm doing to answer questions or help. This has been one of their complaints - that I'm not available when they need help. (I would counter that by saying that neither of them generally asks for help - just do the work and cross it off and worry about corrections later - and when they do it is after having wasted a lot of time and right before I need to be doing something important.)
So without further ado, here is our daily schedule goal for next year:
2011_2012 Daily Schedule
I decided that Princess S needs a very strict schedule. I filled in for her when she is to do each subject. I haven't done that before. There were certain times for group work, but I generally let her decide what order to do her assignments in. She can make school last a lifetime, with both ADD and SPD playing their parts to keep her distracted as well as being a distraction. I decided to give her a finite amount of time for each subject, and to list in what order she will do each subject. I'm going to set my alarm on my wrist watch to make sure that all transitions happen as scheduled. My prayer is that by mid-year, she would be beginning to finish subjects early and either use the time as quiet free time (reading a book or drawing) or else working ahead. Any assignments for the day that are not finished will be considered "homework" and she will have to complete them before being allowed free time. For Princess E, I took all her blocks of time that she wasn't doing something with the rest of us and called them "independent work" times. She will continue to schedule out her week as she did last year, and will be able to decide what order to do things in each day. However, I told her that I reserved the right to make changes to her schedule if it is causing problems. One problem she had last year is that she scheduled her reading assignments very light the first day, and then didn't do her outlines the way she was instructed, and therefore would have to re-read everything the day she tried to do her AQ/TQ's. She would get behind and not have them done, and everything would get pushed back. This year I told her that she will be assigning all of her TOG reading assignments the first two days and will be doing KWO's a la IEW with her History Core and History In-Depth reading. She will be working each day until 3:15pm, and if she finished what she had assigned for herself early, she is to work ahead on the next day's work. If she didn't finish all the work assigned for the day by then, she too will have "homework".
Another thing I did was to schedule in two 15 minute quick clean sessions - one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The morning one will hopefully allow them to catch up on any morning chores that weren't completed or do some other cleaning that they can potentially earn commission for. The morning cleaning will be followed by a 15 minute snack time. The afternoon snack will be at 3:15 with a fifteen minute cleaning following it.
For Princess L, I have assigned her a play time with Princess M, as well as a time for her to read to Princess M. She will have some scheduled free times. I have decided to break up her time with me into three half hour slots. We will spend 45 minutes on language arts, 30 minutes on math, and 15 minutes on TOG related activities. Princess L and Princess M will also be assigned to help with lunch prep. Yep - I'm crazy!
Princess M will have a one hour preschool time with me broken up into a 45 minute time slot and a 15 minute time slot. These will be early in the morning. One of the seminars I attended at our homeschool convention years ago was by David Hazell of My Father's World. He talked about the importance of giving the youngest students the first time. Once they get their time with mom, they are usually more willing and able to play by themselves for a while. So, after her preschool time she will have a half hour learning video (one of many I have on hand) and then after our snack time she will have a 45 minute room time. This will be challenging to begin with, but I plan to keep her Leapster away at other times and let her have it during her room time. For now, I am scheduling a nap time in the afternoon. It is a shorter time than she usually takes right now. But generally when they turn 4, I am less concerned that the nap happens. It will probably turn into an extended afternoon room time by the end of the year - but who knows. Princess S would have continued taking naps at 4 if she wasn't sharing a room with Princess E at the time. Finally, the youngest two princesses will have a half hour TV time at the end of our scheduled time so that I can work on dinner.
I have schedule myself a half hour meeting time with both of the older princesses each day. This time will be to go over the previous day's work, doing some narrations (which will be new to us,) and going over any new questions that come up. I also have some assigned some "office hours" for myself. These will be specific times that the older two princesses can count on me to be willing and able to interrupt what I'm doing to answer questions or help. This has been one of their complaints - that I'm not available when they need help. (I would counter that by saying that neither of them generally asks for help - just do the work and cross it off and worry about corrections later - and when they do it is after having wasted a lot of time and right before I need to be doing something important.)
So without further ado, here is our daily schedule goal for next year:
2011_2012 Daily Schedule
4/24/11
TOG Year 4 Week 32
Ahh, the memories. This week we studied the presidency of George H. W. Bush. I remember much from his presidency. I was a junior in high school when he took office. I was not yet paying attention to the world going on around me at that age. But, my senior year the Berlin Wall came down, and I do remember that. I was a freshman in college when Operation Desert Storm was launched, but was visiting home when I heard about it on the radio. And my sophomore year of college, the president came to a nearby town on a whistle stop train tour of Wisconsin. A bunch of friends and I piled into cars and drove to the depot. We all went through metal detectors and climbed up the temporary bleachers that had been moved in for the event. As the train passed by, we could see the president and first lady on the end of the caboose waving to the crowd. We were so far away they looked tiny, but the loudspeakers were great. That is the closest I have come to a president. This was the first election that I was able to vote in, so it was definitely a memorable event. These were memories I was able to share this week with my princesses.
Princess E - 6th Grade - Dialectic
Latin for Children Primer A: working on lesson 32
Math-U-See Epsilon: working on lesson 7
IEW: We are going to take a break from this to finish our TOG studies, then take the last two weeks of May to finish our IEW, MCT and science.
Foundations 1: Finish suffix -LESS, begin prefix IN-
MCT Language Arts: See IEW above
Practice Island: Sentence 77-80
McCrabbs: 76-78 - We have now finished book A. We will not start book B until next fall.
Science: See IEW above
TOG Yr4 Wk32: Timeline; SAPs; AQ/TQs; Reading - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; Homeland: The Illustrated History of Israel; Idiot's Guide; Joni: An Unforgettable Story; Tensions in the Gulf; Understanding Jewish Holidays and Customs. Read Aloud - The Story of the World, Volume 4, and Red Scarf Girl (which we finally finished).
Princess S - 4th Grade - UG
Growing With Grammar 4: Chapter 7.8-7.10
Math-U-See Delta: Finish lesson 6
IEW, MCT Language Arts, McCrabbs and Science: same as above
TOG Yr4 Wk32: Quizlet vocab; important people; SAPs; Reading - All the People, Countries of the Middle East; The Cold War, The Indian in the Cupboard. Read Aloud - same as above.
Princess L - K - LG
MFW First Grade: Lessons 90-97.
Math-U-See Alpha: Begin lesson 7 +2 She went all through the workbook pages, but she is still counting out the answers. She is nodding her head twice as she counts in her mind. So we're going to do some flashcards and a few extra worksheets before giving her the test
Explode the Code Book Two: Lesson 67
Princess M - PreTOGger
I'm going to be planning out what to do with this little one as soon as we finish our TOG studies. We will have a bit lighter of a load for the last two weeks of May, so I'm going to look at what I have on hand and what I'd like to accomplish with her next year. Since she has a November birthday, it is a little bit iffy as to whether we can do a K4 curriculum, or keep with a preschool type curriculum. If I go with a K4, I will be slowing it down - more for myself than for her.
Princess E - 6th Grade - Dialectic
Latin for Children Primer A: working on lesson 32
Math-U-See Epsilon: working on lesson 7
IEW: We are going to take a break from this to finish our TOG studies, then take the last two weeks of May to finish our IEW, MCT and science.
Foundations 1: Finish suffix -LESS, begin prefix IN-
MCT Language Arts: See IEW above
Practice Island: Sentence 77-80
McCrabbs: 76-78 - We have now finished book A. We will not start book B until next fall.
Science: See IEW above
TOG Yr4 Wk32: Timeline; SAPs; AQ/TQs; Reading - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; Homeland: The Illustrated History of Israel; Idiot's Guide; Joni: An Unforgettable Story; Tensions in the Gulf; Understanding Jewish Holidays and Customs. Read Aloud - The Story of the World, Volume 4, and Red Scarf Girl (which we finally finished).
Princess S - 4th Grade - UG
Growing With Grammar 4: Chapter 7.8-7.10
Math-U-See Delta: Finish lesson 6
IEW, MCT Language Arts, McCrabbs and Science: same as above
TOG Yr4 Wk32: Quizlet vocab; important people; SAPs; Reading - All the People, Countries of the Middle East; The Cold War, The Indian in the Cupboard. Read Aloud - same as above.
Princess L - K - LG
MFW First Grade: Lessons 90-97.
Math-U-See Alpha: Begin lesson 7 +2 She went all through the workbook pages, but she is still counting out the answers. She is nodding her head twice as she counts in her mind. So we're going to do some flashcards and a few extra worksheets before giving her the test
Explode the Code Book Two: Lesson 67
Princess M - PreTOGger
I'm going to be planning out what to do with this little one as soon as we finish our TOG studies. We will have a bit lighter of a load for the last two weeks of May, so I'm going to look at what I have on hand and what I'd like to accomplish with her next year. Since she has a November birthday, it is a little bit iffy as to whether we can do a K4 curriculum, or keep with a preschool type curriculum. If I go with a K4, I will be slowing it down - more for myself than for her.
3/23/11
Planning for Next Year
I'm a great planner! I can plan with the best of them. It's the implementing my plans that I always have the issues with. So, that's why I know that all the work I've done so far on next year can only be termed "preliminary". These are my preliminary plans for next year. I decided that it would do me some good to have an at a glance schedule for just in case the computer goes down. I use HST+ and I love it. But I've had issues with the computer in the past and had to bring it in. Then we were stuck without the lesson plans. All of my TOG stuff is printed where I can get to it. But everything else is always scheduled in HST+ waiting for me to print out. This way, I have everything scheduled at a glance. Now, printed out, this is quite small to read. But, if something happens, I don't need to panic because I have it all in writing. I don't have math on here, as that is always just - do the next page. I also don't have Princess L's work on here. That's mostly because I don't know exactly how far we'll get this year to be able to plan for next year.
2011_2012 School 4 Princesses Calendar
2011_2012 School 4 Princesses Calendar
9/10/10
New Schedule
My goodness, we're already done with five weeks of school! This was a shake-up week. After our fourth week, I did an assessment of sorts - a shift in our morning itinerary meant a bunch of changes. I came up with a two stage implementation plan. The first stage was this week, the second will occur after we return from a weekend jaunt to ND to visit my Grandmother and Aunt & Uncle. Because of various times we have to be out of the house (co-op for everyone, piano lessons for the older two princesses, ballet for Princess L, speech therapy for Princess L, Awana, etc.) I have had a hard time figuring out a schedule. I finally came upon the revelation that we have one of three different types of days. So I figured out a schedule for each type of day and gave each one a color. We now have either a red day, a blue day or a green day. Each day's schedule is posted and that gives us a ballpark to work with. Also, I've really felt the need to move science back into our regular school year. My plans for the last two years have had us doing science during school breaks. But the reality is that stuff comes up over breaks, and only about one third of my plans get completed. Therefore, we didn't finish our curriculum for either of the last two years. Well, God used this blog entry to help me figure out what to do. Since DH decided he wanted to be a part of our Bible time and we moved it to the evenings after he gets home and eats, I have an extra half hour in the mornings to work with. So here is what came of it.
2010_2011 School Daily Schedule 2
The oldest two princesses and I have a two hour group time three times a week. We have a looping schedule with IEW (writing), science, spelling, MCT (language arts), and a memory work section. For science we are continuing where we left off in God's Design For Heaven & Earth: Our Universe. Our memory work will include the longer passages that our co-op is doing this year, learning all the states and capitols, and learning the presidents in order. I have a list of the assignments we need to accomplish in each area and we work at one until we finish that assignment. Then we move to the next subject in the loop. I figure most weeks we should get through the loop about one and a half times. Sometimes it will be more, and sometimes less, but I won't sweat it. Since we will be finishing our non-looped subjects the second week of May, I figure we can use the other four weeks until the public schools are done to work on the looped subjects and finish them up.
The other thing that I switched pertains to our TOG schedule. Up to now, our first day has been Monday and our finish up day on Friday. Princess E and I have tried to do our discussion times on Fridays. But last year she never finished her AQ/TQ questions by Friday afternoons and discussion would get pushed off to Saturdays or even Sundays. And then we were in a time crunch, and neither of us really wanted to do it then so we had bad attitudes. It was getting to be too much. Once again, God showed me what to do through another TOG blog. Our week will now begin on Fridays. I will sit with Princess E and go through the AQ/TQ questions and underline the key words. We have started going through some of her reading assignments together and leaving post it notes with which questions are answered where. (Thanks, Pam, for that advice.) I also have her trying to summarize verbally what the page or section is talking about. She will have to do some reading over the weekends. She will have to write out her AQ/TQs by Tuesday so that we can do discussion on Wednesdays. Princess M will be sleeping, Princess S will be at piano, and Princess L can have her Jump Start Computer time - that way they are all occupied and not able to interrupt. Then Thursday will be evaluation day, when we decide to use them. Sometimes I just give them out as assignments to find the answers and turn in. It depends how busy we are any given week. We are starting the switch after our ND trip, however. Too much at one time is overload.
2010_2011 School Daily Schedule 2
The oldest two princesses and I have a two hour group time three times a week. We have a looping schedule with IEW (writing), science, spelling, MCT (language arts), and a memory work section. For science we are continuing where we left off in God's Design For Heaven & Earth: Our Universe. Our memory work will include the longer passages that our co-op is doing this year, learning all the states and capitols, and learning the presidents in order. I have a list of the assignments we need to accomplish in each area and we work at one until we finish that assignment. Then we move to the next subject in the loop. I figure most weeks we should get through the loop about one and a half times. Sometimes it will be more, and sometimes less, but I won't sweat it. Since we will be finishing our non-looped subjects the second week of May, I figure we can use the other four weeks until the public schools are done to work on the looped subjects and finish them up.
The other thing that I switched pertains to our TOG schedule. Up to now, our first day has been Monday and our finish up day on Friday. Princess E and I have tried to do our discussion times on Fridays. But last year she never finished her AQ/TQ questions by Friday afternoons and discussion would get pushed off to Saturdays or even Sundays. And then we were in a time crunch, and neither of us really wanted to do it then so we had bad attitudes. It was getting to be too much. Once again, God showed me what to do through another TOG blog. Our week will now begin on Fridays. I will sit with Princess E and go through the AQ/TQ questions and underline the key words. We have started going through some of her reading assignments together and leaving post it notes with which questions are answered where. (Thanks, Pam, for that advice.) I also have her trying to summarize verbally what the page or section is talking about. She will have to do some reading over the weekends. She will have to write out her AQ/TQs by Tuesday so that we can do discussion on Wednesdays. Princess M will be sleeping, Princess S will be at piano, and Princess L can have her Jump Start Computer time - that way they are all occupied and not able to interrupt. Then Thursday will be evaluation day, when we decide to use them. Sometimes I just give them out as assignments to find the answers and turn in. It depends how busy we are any given week. We are starting the switch after our ND trip, however. Too much at one time is overload.
6/18/10
Plans for 2010/2011 School Year
I decided that it would be helpful to do an entry on what we are going to be doing for next year. I'll break it down by subject.
Math
We will continue with Math-U-See. Princess L will finish lessons 19-30 of Primer and continue on to Alpha. Princess S will finish lessons 21-30 of Gamma and continue on to Delta. Princess E will finish lessons 21-30 of Delta and continue on to Epsilon.
Science
We were given three books in the God's Design For Heaven and Earth series by Answers in Genesis. (This series has been reworked and we have the old version without a CD-ROM.) We started working through the first book during our spring break this year, and will work through the summer to finish it up by the time we begin in the fall. We will then do the second book during our regular school break times.
Humanities (History, Literature, Church/Bible History, Fine Arts)
We will continue to use Tapestry of Grace. Princess E will be D level (dialectic level for you non-TOGers), Princess S will be UG (upper grammar) and I will read a select few LG (lower grammar) books with Princess L, based on what is available at our library. We will be skipping year three in order to line up with a co-op near us that will be doing year four. Both of the older princesses will do a brief unit study this summer on the civil war and reconstruction, as these ideas will be central to much of year four. I am excited to meet with some awesome women who love TOG as much as I do. It will be a bit time consuming to pack everyone up, eat lunch in the van, and travel to co-op every other week. But is is an experience I think we desperately need. The co-op is small, but there is room to grow. If you are interested in TOG, please click the link on the right to check it out.
Music
Both princesses will continue with their piano lessons. Princess E is hoping to qualify for a scholarship to take vocal training lessons at a local music school. Princess L really wants to start piano this year but she has to wait one more year like her sisters.
Writing
I am planning to have the oldest two princesses begin IEW this year. I purchased TWSS and SWI-A for them. I haven't figured out yet how we will work these into the schedule, as we really need a block of time without interruptions from the little two. Perhaps we'll just have to set aside nap time for Princess M and find something for Princess L to do.
Spelling
We didn't do spelling this year. (Blush!) This is mostly because Princess E and Princess S seem to have DH's and my natural spelling ability. But I was very intrigued by the Pioneer Woman's description of how she does spelling with her kids, and am planning to adapt it to fit our schedule. I will dig out my copy of Spelling Power and use those lists to do a spelling bee three times a week (with the option to par down to twice a week if it becomes necessary) and let them earn small things like M&Ms, Skittles or Pretzels.
Grammar
Princess S will be doing Grade 4 of Growing With Grammar. I love the simplicity of this series. Princess S has attention issues and tends to get distracted by colors and pictures. This lovely book has no color and no pictures. And it is so simple, most of the time she can read the handbook and do the workbook without any help from me at all.
Latin
Princess E will continue with Latin, but she will be switching over to Latin For Children. We had some issues with our computer speakers not working and I was not able to get the files downloaded to a CD. So while she can read the first year Latin words, she can not pronounce nor understand spoken Latin. So this series will be a blessing. There is both a CD and a DVD.
Handwriting/Copywork
For Princesses L and S, I used my StartWrite software to make copybooks out of their Awana verses for next year. This way they are getting double practice every day. I haven't decided if I will do one for Princess E, but I am leaning towards having her work on keyboarding skills, as she will be using the computer a bit more this year. I also made a Presidents book for the older two princesses. For each president and first lady there is a facts page for them to fill in and two pages of practice with a famous quote from each president and some of the first ladies.
Phonics
For Princess L, I will be using Winter Promise Advanced K. I'm a little concerned because she has only really worked with the short sounds of the letters. She does know, thanks to the Leap Frog videos and toys, that many of the letters have other sounds and what those sounds are. She just hasn't learned any of the rules for their usage. I may need to take a little longer than the three scheduled weeks of sounds review before we dive into this. But it is a lot of hands on and really great simple readers, so I know she'll have fun with it.
Language Arts
Though I've already listed curriculum considered LA, I was dismayed at some bad habits, bad attitudes and "uncreative thinking" that was rearing its ugly head by the end of the year. To that end, I researched some things to add to address some of these specifics. Therefore, both of the older princesses will be doing one of the exercises from McCall-Crabbs Standard Test Lessons in Reading each day. The goal is to practice reading for meaning rather than to simply finish the assignment as fast as possible. I will also be having Princess E begin with Dynamic Literacy's Foundations 1 book. She will do one exercise per day. Finally, I purchased the teacher's books for the first level of Michael Clay Thomas's Language Arts program. This program has a unique way of presenting grammar, writing, and vocabulary using challenging passages from classical works. I believe that the first level will pretty much be review for both of them. But I think it will help to pull together the various areas of LA which they are pretty good at individually, but struggle when they must put them together in, say, a writing assignment. The methodology is similar to TOG in that you read the beautifully and creatively done stories together, then lead them in a dialectic discussion about the various elements taught in the story.
Princess M
To be honest, I do not know where I will find the energy, with all of the above, to do very much with this little one. I'm leaning towards the "better late than early" idea with her. I purchased the Letter of the Week activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I plan to print out a few activities for each letter and put them in either a ziplock or a file folder, depending on the activity, and pulling out one or two a day when I need her occupied. I also plan to schedule each of the older princesses to do "school" with her for twenty minutes a day each.
Scheduling my crew is always a challenge. Whenever we have tried to implement a schedule a-la-Managers of Their Homes, we all end up frustrated and in tears. We tend to do better by listing the order of our activities, but not expecting to do anything at a particular time, with the exception of a few things like piano, lunch and co-op. Princess S cannot work when given a time frame to work in. She does better if I challenge her to try to finish something in x amount of time and give her a food reward if she accomplishes it. Princess E can finish most everything in a time frame, but her accuracy and creativity suffer greatly as a trade off. Princess L still needs me with her at all times. Princess M will tear a room apart in seconds if not adequately monitored. So I struggle with how to get everything in from day to day. Last year, I printed out a daily task schedule from HST+ for Princess E. She had no say in what assignments she had each day, but she was allowed to complete them in whatever order she pleased. Princess S was using the workbox method. I changed how I did them halfway through the year. She really disliked this method and wants to go back to a paper schedule. Therefore, I will attempt to do with her what I did with Princess E last year. For Princess E, I purchased this planner. One of the things that TOG stresses is teaching your children to take responsibility for their own learning by having them schedule their work themselves. We started this in the last unit to some extent this past year. My plan is to give her a laminated card with the target days for certain subjects. This is necessary because I have to be able to plan out times for correcting their work. For her reading assignments, I will print a list on Thurdays for the following week. She needs to plan on doing some reading on the weekends. (I know she will be devastated by this, but she's beginning middle school and this would be expected in a public school setting.) She can decide how to complete the reading assignments and put them in her planner, and will be expected to have everything read by Tuesday evening. She will have to work on her AQ/TQ questions on Wednesday and Thursday for our discussion on Friday. I will be having a daily meeting with the older two princesess to go through their assignment goals, give them their checked assignments needing corrections, and the McCalls reading test. My goal is to have these meetings last 10 to 15 minutes tops. While I am meeting with the one, the other will have their time with Princess M.
So that is how I've spent all my thinking energy and time for the last two months. I'll post another time on how we have been doing our Bible time, as I plan to continue with that method for now. When I finish going through our school room and get some badly needed bookshelves, I'll also post some pictures.
Math
We will continue with Math-U-See. Princess L will finish lessons 19-30 of Primer and continue on to Alpha. Princess S will finish lessons 21-30 of Gamma and continue on to Delta. Princess E will finish lessons 21-30 of Delta and continue on to Epsilon.
Science
We were given three books in the God's Design For Heaven and Earth series by Answers in Genesis. (This series has been reworked and we have the old version without a CD-ROM.) We started working through the first book during our spring break this year, and will work through the summer to finish it up by the time we begin in the fall. We will then do the second book during our regular school break times.
Humanities (History, Literature, Church/Bible History, Fine Arts)
We will continue to use Tapestry of Grace. Princess E will be D level (dialectic level for you non-TOGers), Princess S will be UG (upper grammar) and I will read a select few LG (lower grammar) books with Princess L, based on what is available at our library. We will be skipping year three in order to line up with a co-op near us that will be doing year four. Both of the older princesses will do a brief unit study this summer on the civil war and reconstruction, as these ideas will be central to much of year four. I am excited to meet with some awesome women who love TOG as much as I do. It will be a bit time consuming to pack everyone up, eat lunch in the van, and travel to co-op every other week. But is is an experience I think we desperately need. The co-op is small, but there is room to grow. If you are interested in TOG, please click the link on the right to check it out.
Music
Both princesses will continue with their piano lessons. Princess E is hoping to qualify for a scholarship to take vocal training lessons at a local music school. Princess L really wants to start piano this year but she has to wait one more year like her sisters.
Writing
I am planning to have the oldest two princesses begin IEW this year. I purchased TWSS and SWI-A for them. I haven't figured out yet how we will work these into the schedule, as we really need a block of time without interruptions from the little two. Perhaps we'll just have to set aside nap time for Princess M and find something for Princess L to do.
Spelling
We didn't do spelling this year. (Blush!) This is mostly because Princess E and Princess S seem to have DH's and my natural spelling ability. But I was very intrigued by the Pioneer Woman's description of how she does spelling with her kids, and am planning to adapt it to fit our schedule. I will dig out my copy of Spelling Power and use those lists to do a spelling bee three times a week (with the option to par down to twice a week if it becomes necessary) and let them earn small things like M&Ms, Skittles or Pretzels.
Grammar
Princess S will be doing Grade 4 of Growing With Grammar. I love the simplicity of this series. Princess S has attention issues and tends to get distracted by colors and pictures. This lovely book has no color and no pictures. And it is so simple, most of the time she can read the handbook and do the workbook without any help from me at all.
Latin
Princess E will continue with Latin, but she will be switching over to Latin For Children. We had some issues with our computer speakers not working and I was not able to get the files downloaded to a CD. So while she can read the first year Latin words, she can not pronounce nor understand spoken Latin. So this series will be a blessing. There is both a CD and a DVD.
Handwriting/Copywork
For Princesses L and S, I used my StartWrite software to make copybooks out of their Awana verses for next year. This way they are getting double practice every day. I haven't decided if I will do one for Princess E, but I am leaning towards having her work on keyboarding skills, as she will be using the computer a bit more this year. I also made a Presidents book for the older two princesses. For each president and first lady there is a facts page for them to fill in and two pages of practice with a famous quote from each president and some of the first ladies.
Phonics
For Princess L, I will be using Winter Promise Advanced K. I'm a little concerned because she has only really worked with the short sounds of the letters. She does know, thanks to the Leap Frog videos and toys, that many of the letters have other sounds and what those sounds are. She just hasn't learned any of the rules for their usage. I may need to take a little longer than the three scheduled weeks of sounds review before we dive into this. But it is a lot of hands on and really great simple readers, so I know she'll have fun with it.
Language Arts
Though I've already listed curriculum considered LA, I was dismayed at some bad habits, bad attitudes and "uncreative thinking" that was rearing its ugly head by the end of the year. To that end, I researched some things to add to address some of these specifics. Therefore, both of the older princesses will be doing one of the exercises from McCall-Crabbs Standard Test Lessons in Reading each day. The goal is to practice reading for meaning rather than to simply finish the assignment as fast as possible. I will also be having Princess E begin with Dynamic Literacy's Foundations 1 book. She will do one exercise per day. Finally, I purchased the teacher's books for the first level of Michael Clay Thomas's Language Arts program. This program has a unique way of presenting grammar, writing, and vocabulary using challenging passages from classical works. I believe that the first level will pretty much be review for both of them. But I think it will help to pull together the various areas of LA which they are pretty good at individually, but struggle when they must put them together in, say, a writing assignment. The methodology is similar to TOG in that you read the beautifully and creatively done stories together, then lead them in a dialectic discussion about the various elements taught in the story.
Princess M
To be honest, I do not know where I will find the energy, with all of the above, to do very much with this little one. I'm leaning towards the "better late than early" idea with her. I purchased the Letter of the Week activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I plan to print out a few activities for each letter and put them in either a ziplock or a file folder, depending on the activity, and pulling out one or two a day when I need her occupied. I also plan to schedule each of the older princesses to do "school" with her for twenty minutes a day each.
Scheduling my crew is always a challenge. Whenever we have tried to implement a schedule a-la-Managers of Their Homes, we all end up frustrated and in tears. We tend to do better by listing the order of our activities, but not expecting to do anything at a particular time, with the exception of a few things like piano, lunch and co-op. Princess S cannot work when given a time frame to work in. She does better if I challenge her to try to finish something in x amount of time and give her a food reward if she accomplishes it. Princess E can finish most everything in a time frame, but her accuracy and creativity suffer greatly as a trade off. Princess L still needs me with her at all times. Princess M will tear a room apart in seconds if not adequately monitored. So I struggle with how to get everything in from day to day. Last year, I printed out a daily task schedule from HST+ for Princess E. She had no say in what assignments she had each day, but she was allowed to complete them in whatever order she pleased. Princess S was using the workbox method. I changed how I did them halfway through the year. She really disliked this method and wants to go back to a paper schedule. Therefore, I will attempt to do with her what I did with Princess E last year. For Princess E, I purchased this planner. One of the things that TOG stresses is teaching your children to take responsibility for their own learning by having them schedule their work themselves. We started this in the last unit to some extent this past year. My plan is to give her a laminated card with the target days for certain subjects. This is necessary because I have to be able to plan out times for correcting their work. For her reading assignments, I will print a list on Thurdays for the following week. She needs to plan on doing some reading on the weekends. (I know she will be devastated by this, but she's beginning middle school and this would be expected in a public school setting.) She can decide how to complete the reading assignments and put them in her planner, and will be expected to have everything read by Tuesday evening. She will have to work on her AQ/TQ questions on Wednesday and Thursday for our discussion on Friday. I will be having a daily meeting with the older two princesess to go through their assignment goals, give them their checked assignments needing corrections, and the McCalls reading test. My goal is to have these meetings last 10 to 15 minutes tops. While I am meeting with the one, the other will have their time with Princess M.
So that is how I've spent all my thinking energy and time for the last two months. I'll post another time on how we have been doing our Bible time, as I plan to continue with that method for now. When I finish going through our school room and get some badly needed bookshelves, I'll also post some pictures.
5/17/10
TOG Y2 W34
The end is near. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Summer is about to begin! We've got two weeks left, and to continue what has become our tradition, today I will give the princesses their last two weeks worth of assignments. When they are done with them, then they are done with school for this school year. (Except for our required CAT testing, that is.) I think one will be getting done a week early. The other one - let's just say she may take more time than two weeks! Here's what we did last week.
Princess E
Latin: Lesson 16.1 to 16.3, Exercise 15.8 to 15.10, Word Power I1 and I2
Math-U-See: Start Lesson 21
Literature: Johnny Tremain
TOG: vocab, important people copywork, geography study
Reading: Our Living Constitution (excerpts), George Washington's World (excerpts), The Struggle for Sea Power (excerpts)
Read Aloud: With Pipe, Paddle and Song
Princess S
Growing with Grammar: 5.12 to 5.14
Math-U-See: Start Lesson 20
Literature: Amos Fortune, Free Man
TOG: same as above
Reading: From Colonies to Country (excerpts), Shh, We're Writing the Constitution (excerpts)
Read Aloud: same as above
Princess L
MFW Kindy: Lesson 22 through Lesson 24
Math-U-See: Start Primer lesson 18
Princess M
This little princess has totally entered the "I Do It Self" stage. She is always saying that now. Of course, as is par for the course, she always wants to "do it self" when we need to be somewhere and never when I want her to "do it self". She also picked up one of my constant phrases whenever someone calls for me. "Jus a secon!" she is yelling. I guess maybe it's not the best thing to do, but I got in the habit because it lets the person know that I've heard them and will be giving them 100% attention as soon as I finish the task I am in the middle of. (This is opposed to the complete silence that the princesses give me, requiring me to continually call their name several times, which drives them nuts and they respond back, not so nicely, "I heard you the first time.") But Princess M says it back to me constantly.
I have been working hard at next year's plans. We will be skipping TOG Y3 in order to join a co-op a few towns away. Thus, we will be doing TOG Y4. I also have been looking at some other new things to fill in areas of weakness. I'm pretty excited about them, and think it will help us to jump a few hurdles. I'm working at getting all the lesson plans entered into HST+. Some I found already done and am tweaking to how I do things, others I have to do from scratch. My goal is to have everything for next year scheduled into HST+ by the end of June. Then I will have July to get all my copying done and rearrange our homeschool/living room.
Princess E
Latin: Lesson 16.1 to 16.3, Exercise 15.8 to 15.10, Word Power I1 and I2
Math-U-See: Start Lesson 21
Literature: Johnny Tremain
TOG: vocab, important people copywork, geography study
Reading: Our Living Constitution (excerpts), George Washington's World (excerpts), The Struggle for Sea Power (excerpts)
Read Aloud: With Pipe, Paddle and Song
Princess S
Growing with Grammar: 5.12 to 5.14
Math-U-See: Start Lesson 20
Literature: Amos Fortune, Free Man
TOG: same as above
Reading: From Colonies to Country (excerpts), Shh, We're Writing the Constitution (excerpts)
Read Aloud: same as above
Princess L
MFW Kindy: Lesson 22 through Lesson 24
Math-U-See: Start Primer lesson 18
Princess M
This little princess has totally entered the "I Do It Self" stage. She is always saying that now. Of course, as is par for the course, she always wants to "do it self" when we need to be somewhere and never when I want her to "do it self". She also picked up one of my constant phrases whenever someone calls for me. "Jus a secon!" she is yelling. I guess maybe it's not the best thing to do, but I got in the habit because it lets the person know that I've heard them and will be giving them 100% attention as soon as I finish the task I am in the middle of. (This is opposed to the complete silence that the princesses give me, requiring me to continually call their name several times, which drives them nuts and they respond back, not so nicely, "I heard you the first time.") But Princess M says it back to me constantly.
I have been working hard at next year's plans. We will be skipping TOG Y3 in order to join a co-op a few towns away. Thus, we will be doing TOG Y4. I also have been looking at some other new things to fill in areas of weakness. I'm pretty excited about them, and think it will help us to jump a few hurdles. I'm working at getting all the lesson plans entered into HST+. Some I found already done and am tweaking to how I do things, others I have to do from scratch. My goal is to have everything for next year scheduled into HST+ by the end of June. Then I will have July to get all my copying done and rearrange our homeschool/living room.
7/29/09
All Set to Start the '09/'10 School Year
Boy does that title seem surreal or what?! I cannot believe it is the school year 2009/2010. This means it is exactly twenty years since my senior year of high school. I feel so old - and yet at times it seems like it was just yesterday. I'm sure many of you know just what I mean by that.
The summer break is almost over. I don't know for sure who is more excited by that - me or my princesses. Oh - they won't tell you they are excited. But I can tell by the fact that they are bored with everything that they are more than ready to get back to having something constructive to do all day long. I, too, am excited. (But then again, I always enjoyed school - I was a bookworm geek who actually enjoyed school and learning new things. I cared about getting good grades, and studied hard to get them. Well, actually I studied hard in college. I was sidetracked with danceline when I was in high school, therefore I would gladly accept a B+ on a test in exchange for spending all my time on the sport I loved.)
While the princesses have spent their summer break having lemonade stands, reading books, watching way too much TV, and playing with their neighborhood friends (all two of them), I have had my own agenda.
I had three main goals for my time. First, I wanted to get all of our lesson plans into my HomeSchool Tracker Plus software. But, I didn't just want to enter the assignments; I wanted to enter things in as lesson plans so that next year I can simply reassign the activities that will remain the same and put in the specifics with a few keystrokes. This has been a long-suffering project, as I changed things many times in the entry process. But, I think that all the time and effort will really pay off next summer when the planning process will be much easier. Second, I had to decide how to deal with Princess L's MFW Kindergarten. I decided to create my own HST+ lesson plan, not so much for keeping up with grades, but to make sure I don't fall behind. We will only be doing kindergarten with her three days a week, as she is technically still only four. So, as this curriculum is based on a six day cycle, it will take us two weeks to finish a lesson. This has her taking a year and a half to get through kindergarten. We will still consider her pre-K, however, as we will keep her with her age peers for activities and church events. Finally, I spent time thinking through how to implement Sue Patrick's Workboxes with our princesses. Princess E said she wanted to keep things how she was doing last year, so she will not be doing them. She will, however, be assigned a few boxes to help Princesses L and M complete. Princess S has these set up on two shelves in her room. She currently has a desk next to them, but I am looking into moving that desk into Princess L's room and getting her a simple table desk with an excersize ball so she can move around to her heart's content. We are looking into getting her tested for SPD, and are implementing a few strategies to deal with it. I bought the shoe rack as suggested by Sue Patrick, along with shoe boxes, but will only have one for Princesses L and M to share. I will not be putting any of the kindergarten work in there, only various activities for them to do individually with their older sisters. Princess M will do two activities with each sister, and Princess L will do one with each sister. I am hoping that this gives me enough time to work one-on-one with Princess L, give them each dedicated time with each sister, and hopefully keep the house from getting as chaotic clutter wise as it has in the past.
Another goal was to once again re-evaluate how we do chores. It has been difficult to keep track of and make sure they are done. The chores themselves have not yet changed, just the system used for tracking them. We are trying to decide whether or not to utilize allowance.
Princess M has hurled herself into the terrible twos! It is not uncommon to hear her high-pitched shriek when you tell her "no" or "stop", or to see her throw herself backwards onto the ground if she doesn't get her way. I've been reminded that this is the time to nip it in the bud. However, seeing as how the past methods we've tried have not exactly worked, I'm not sure how to do that. Fun times!
The summer break is almost over. I don't know for sure who is more excited by that - me or my princesses. Oh - they won't tell you they are excited. But I can tell by the fact that they are bored with everything that they are more than ready to get back to having something constructive to do all day long. I, too, am excited. (But then again, I always enjoyed school - I was a bookworm geek who actually enjoyed school and learning new things. I cared about getting good grades, and studied hard to get them. Well, actually I studied hard in college. I was sidetracked with danceline when I was in high school, therefore I would gladly accept a B+ on a test in exchange for spending all my time on the sport I loved.)
While the princesses have spent their summer break having lemonade stands, reading books, watching way too much TV, and playing with their neighborhood friends (all two of them), I have had my own agenda.
I had three main goals for my time. First, I wanted to get all of our lesson plans into my HomeSchool Tracker Plus software. But, I didn't just want to enter the assignments; I wanted to enter things in as lesson plans so that next year I can simply reassign the activities that will remain the same and put in the specifics with a few keystrokes. This has been a long-suffering project, as I changed things many times in the entry process. But, I think that all the time and effort will really pay off next summer when the planning process will be much easier. Second, I had to decide how to deal with Princess L's MFW Kindergarten. I decided to create my own HST+ lesson plan, not so much for keeping up with grades, but to make sure I don't fall behind. We will only be doing kindergarten with her three days a week, as she is technically still only four. So, as this curriculum is based on a six day cycle, it will take us two weeks to finish a lesson. This has her taking a year and a half to get through kindergarten. We will still consider her pre-K, however, as we will keep her with her age peers for activities and church events. Finally, I spent time thinking through how to implement Sue Patrick's Workboxes with our princesses. Princess E said she wanted to keep things how she was doing last year, so she will not be doing them. She will, however, be assigned a few boxes to help Princesses L and M complete. Princess S has these set up on two shelves in her room. She currently has a desk next to them, but I am looking into moving that desk into Princess L's room and getting her a simple table desk with an excersize ball so she can move around to her heart's content. We are looking into getting her tested for SPD, and are implementing a few strategies to deal with it. I bought the shoe rack as suggested by Sue Patrick, along with shoe boxes, but will only have one for Princesses L and M to share. I will not be putting any of the kindergarten work in there, only various activities for them to do individually with their older sisters. Princess M will do two activities with each sister, and Princess L will do one with each sister. I am hoping that this gives me enough time to work one-on-one with Princess L, give them each dedicated time with each sister, and hopefully keep the house from getting as chaotic clutter wise as it has in the past.
Another goal was to once again re-evaluate how we do chores. It has been difficult to keep track of and make sure they are done. The chores themselves have not yet changed, just the system used for tracking them. We are trying to decide whether or not to utilize allowance.
Princess M has hurled herself into the terrible twos! It is not uncommon to hear her high-pitched shriek when you tell her "no" or "stop", or to see her throw herself backwards onto the ground if she doesn't get her way. I've been reminded that this is the time to nip it in the bud. However, seeing as how the past methods we've tried have not exactly worked, I'm not sure how to do that. Fun times!
7/11/08
Stormy Weather
Well, we're having our third storm in two days. There has been heavy winds each time that have toppled several trees and put power out. Thankfully, we have not had any damage. The flower pots fell off the deck, but they were salvageable.
I've made some progress on things for our school starting up. I've got a list made of which library book needs to be requested on what date in order to be here on time. I've left myself a two week window in case we have to wait. I've also earmarked the closest substitute should that book not be available. I have E's daily task chart done and plan to print up a few for her. I have listed certain days that she needs to work in each subject area, but it will be up to her to figure out which assignments to do on which day. The exception is her vocab words, important people and science. She is going to need the computer to do these assignments, so I have certain times she is going to have to do these. I have S's daily task chart designed but I am going to be scheduling all of her work for her, at least for the first half of the year. So I'm just entering all the info into an Excel file and then I'll print it out for her.
Math will not be listed but printed in after the fact. The way that I use Math-U-See is a little different. They will watch the DVD first. I will orally quiz them on what the lesson was about to determine if they understand what they need to do. If it is a completely new concept, then we will do a few practice problems on paper. If they seem to know what they are to do, then they do worksheet A. If they get them all correct then they move on to the first review worksheet D. If they get that one all correct then they may take the test. If they feel they need more practice they can opt to do any of the other worksheets. It was hard for me to see unused pages at first. But, it has allowed us to feel more like we are moving at their pace. If they seem to "forget" how to do something, then they can always go back and do the other pages. With my two extremely distractable scholars, this has helped to keep us from getting bored and goofing off. They prefer learning directly from the DVD first as opposed to listen to me teach so I let them. Mr. Demme is more fun to listen too :)
I still have to: get schedules laminated, get chore schedules put into Handipoints and a hard copy printed, decide on hands on activities for first four weeks and buy supplies needed, and put notebooks together. I've admired the spiral bound workbooks that other's have put together, but realize that I just don't have the time to do that yet. I also know how much I realize I have forgotten to do and we'd have several to many pages that weren't included. I would rather put everything in a 3 ring binder and then have them spiral bound together after we were done with the unit.
The rest of July is looking to be quite busy. I think the time will fly be. E has a birthday on Monday. She will be 9. That is hard to believe. She will be coming back from Big Sandy Camp tomorrow afternoon. S cannot wait to see her. She realizes now, I think, that her sister is her favorite playmate.
Blessings.
I've made some progress on things for our school starting up. I've got a list made of which library book needs to be requested on what date in order to be here on time. I've left myself a two week window in case we have to wait. I've also earmarked the closest substitute should that book not be available. I have E's daily task chart done and plan to print up a few for her. I have listed certain days that she needs to work in each subject area, but it will be up to her to figure out which assignments to do on which day. The exception is her vocab words, important people and science. She is going to need the computer to do these assignments, so I have certain times she is going to have to do these. I have S's daily task chart designed but I am going to be scheduling all of her work for her, at least for the first half of the year. So I'm just entering all the info into an Excel file and then I'll print it out for her.
Math will not be listed but printed in after the fact. The way that I use Math-U-See is a little different. They will watch the DVD first. I will orally quiz them on what the lesson was about to determine if they understand what they need to do. If it is a completely new concept, then we will do a few practice problems on paper. If they seem to know what they are to do, then they do worksheet A. If they get them all correct then they move on to the first review worksheet D. If they get that one all correct then they may take the test. If they feel they need more practice they can opt to do any of the other worksheets. It was hard for me to see unused pages at first. But, it has allowed us to feel more like we are moving at their pace. If they seem to "forget" how to do something, then they can always go back and do the other pages. With my two extremely distractable scholars, this has helped to keep us from getting bored and goofing off. They prefer learning directly from the DVD first as opposed to listen to me teach so I let them. Mr. Demme is more fun to listen too :)
I still have to: get schedules laminated, get chore schedules put into Handipoints and a hard copy printed, decide on hands on activities for first four weeks and buy supplies needed, and put notebooks together. I've admired the spiral bound workbooks that other's have put together, but realize that I just don't have the time to do that yet. I also know how much I realize I have forgotten to do and we'd have several to many pages that weren't included. I would rather put everything in a 3 ring binder and then have them spiral bound together after we were done with the unit.
The rest of July is looking to be quite busy. I think the time will fly be. E has a birthday on Monday. She will be 9. That is hard to believe. She will be coming back from Big Sandy Camp tomorrow afternoon. S cannot wait to see her. She realizes now, I think, that her sister is her favorite playmate.
Blessings.
7/5/08
Fourth of July and Listing Tasks
So our fourth of July was busy but fun. We handed out the Freeze Pops and watched the first half of the parade. M slept through most of it. We went home for an hour then went to a BBQ hosted by a family from church. The kids went through the sprinkler, even though we forgot to bring swimsuits, so they were completely soaked. But they had fun! Then we went to see fireworks. Our Pastor and his family live a block away from the park where they are let off. So they always let a bunch of people park in their driveway and walk over. We all pitch blankets and chairs on the grass. The kids get to run around and chase each other for a half hour until they finally start. M cried at first so I held her close to me and covered her ears. But then she got quiet and watched. She was asleep again after only about four minutes. We laughed at one of the young teens in our group who was more interested in texting her friends than watching the fireworks.
I made a list of all the things I want to accomplish this next week while E is at church camp. Here they are:
Jennifer
I made a list of all the things I want to accomplish this next week while E is at church camp. Here they are:
To Do’s While E is at Camp
· Get schedules laminated
· Get chore schedules put into Handipoints and a hard copy printed
· Type up list of TOG books to request out three weeks prior
· Type up list of books for LOTW
· Find and purchase used copies of What the Bible is All About for Young Explorers, Walk with Y'shua Through the Jewish Year and A Place in the Sun
· Decide on hands on activities for first four weeks and buy supplies needed
· Print out several copies of assignment checklists for E
· Type up first four assignment checklists for S
· Put notebooks together
Blessings.Jennifer
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