Homeschool Plans For This Year

Ok, I’ve been bombarded with questions like: What are you teaching this year? When are you starting? What extras are you planning on using? Are you doing anything different this year? When are you starting? My homeschool groups are talking about planning and curriculum. And it’s not like I don’t have any plan, I just don’t have a set plan. It is still summer. I don’t really want to sit down and think about it yet.

So, here’s what I’ve got so far: (subject to change at whim – mine or theirs)

• ACSI MATH grade 1 and grade 2. We hope to be done grade one math by Christmas and start grade two in January. Currently we are working at a level of 2 pages per day, five days a week.
• Letter of the Week. However, we always take longer than a week on each letter. When we stopped in the spring, the girls really missed it; we are picking up at the letter Gg. I’ve got the pages printed; we are waiting for a rainy day, or a day we have to be inside. This letter of the week is directed at age three, but we stretch it for the older ones; I like to use Enchanted Learning.
• Beestar.org. While doing a search for What Your Second Grader Needs To Know, I read in a couple of reviews the recommendation of using this site for math help. So, the two girls are signed up there and the fall semester starts on the 16th.
• BOB Books as well as other level appropriate books (from the library) for reading. CJ is reading so well. K seems to be struggling, but it could be that she’s just not ready yet to share what she knows. It might be a lack of confidence.
• board games and puzzles. We had started a Family Game Night on Monday nights. We’ll have to continue that again when summer settles into fall.
• Rosette Stone Spanish. I bought this program last fall to use up my homeschool funding. Yes, I had almost 700 dollars left at the end of last year.
• Dance. This will just be a short 2 week thing in August. I guess if they really really take a liking to it, we may continue it through the year, but I’m not ready for that.
• Piano. I’m teaching and learning at the same time. Even J wants to learn. I still need to buy the books. I’m leaning toward these ones here or these ones. I just have to get to a store to buy them.
• Baking and cooking. The girls have asked to learn to do this more; I’m not complaining.
• Various arts and crafts.
• Various copywork and notebooking and lapbooks.
• Canada, My Country. I had planned for this last year and we didn’t even look at it.
• How To Teach Science, the Periodic Table. Again, I’d planned for this in the past, but there was just no interest.
• Draw, Write, Now. K loves these and often pulls them out just for fun.
• The Human Body. I need to look at this book more as it does seem to be an interest that the kids have.
• Last year we started the year with an All About Me lapbook. I think I’m going to start with that again this year. (I was going to link to the pictures of the last one we did, but I couldn’t find it.) I am getting the the lapbook from Live & Learn Press. I think instead of a lapbook, we’ll put it into a duotang or a small binder with sheet protectors so that we can add to it as we go through the year. I’ll share links as I find ones I love.
• When I went looking for the ACSI Math books, I saw that ACSI has a character studies course available too. I wish I could have a hands-on copy to look at. However, I went on the word of my best friend with the math, and we are loving it. I just don’t know whether to get the teachers’ book or not. I guess I could order the student book and if I just can’t do it without the teachers’ manual I could get it at a later date. (Just thinking out loud here.)

I think that about covers it. Of course, one thing will lead to another and we will cover all sorts of topics and learning. And some of this may never come to be. I will be trying to report what we are doing in our homeschooling either Friday or Saturday each week.

Striving to learn and live God’s purposes,

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