Homeschoolers--what's up for the new year?

[Sashahomeschoolmama]

We've been slogging through homeschooling without much focus this year. I kept telling myself that it would get better, that everything was just disrupted with the birth of Seryozha, but it just didn't.

So I spent much of December re-evaluating what I want out of homeschooling, what works for us, and what doesn't. I decided to move back to a much more organic, literature-based approach. I even wrote schedule for next week (an activity that I used to love dearly but haven't done in a long time since every week was finish x workbooks pages and read y pages)!

Here's what I've come up with:

London

History
An Island Story ch 62--"The Story of the Field of the Cloth of Gold"
The Discovery of New Worlds ch 31 "Vasco da Gama's Great Voyage"
a chapter from Story of the World 2, although I can't tell you which one because it's at home and I'm not
Leonardo Da Vinci by Emily Hahn, chapter 1

Geography
Marco Polo

Science
one of the Young Scientist Club kits, not sure which one
Story of Inventions chapter 1 "James Watt and the Invention of the Steam Engine--Captured by Steam"

Poetry
William Blake's "The Echoing Green" and "The Shepherd"

Literature
Mary Pope Osborne's American Tall Tales "Paul Bunyan"
Pilgrim's Progress
Heroes by Kingsley "Perseus Part 1--How Perseus and his Mother Came to Seriphos"
The Princess and the Goblin ch 1-3

Plus daily penmanship (including cursive writing), math (I saw the Kumon math books at Borders and really liked the look of them but they didn't have her grade level. Instead I found the DK Math Made Easy workbooks and liked it as well so I got her one of those), Russian (Rosetta Stone), and Latin (Lively Latin's Big Book). Add to that weekly nature study, art (Leonardo Da Vinci), music (Sergei Prokofiev), and handicrafts (she's learning how to knit). For free reading she's reading Meet Kaya, an American Girls book.

For extracurriculars she's still playing violin and taking ballet. She's also joining a Dance Company, which is a musical theater/performing arts troupe, as well as figure skating.


Alexander

History
An Island Story ch 22 "Harold"
The Little Duke first half of ch. 1
a chapter in SOTW2

Geography
Tree in the Trail ch 1

Science
a Young Scientist Club kit
Burgess Animal Book "Jenny Wren Gives Peter Rabbit an Idea", "Peter and Jumper Go To School"

Poetry
Walter De La Mare

Literature
Lamb's Shakespeare "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"
Pilgrim's Progress
The Tale of Despereaux at night and during down time
Treasure Island ch 1 "The Old Sea Dog at the 'Admiral Benbow'"
In addition, he'll do daily penmanship, math (he got a new math book too), and Russian plus weekly nature study, art, music, and handicrafts (not sure what yet).

Sasha also takes tap dancing class. He wants to do the Dance Company as well but there is an age minimum so he'll have to wait on that.


I'm still writing Holden's. It will be far less academic (he's 5 and I'm not a fan of early academics) and more Waldorf-inspired.

It is so nice to be inspired again!

What are you planning for the new year? Are you keeping with what you're doing or changing it up?

[Sputterduck]

We've taken a break this month and will start again the 3rd. We have some very exciting stuff to do!

We are going to take a road trip to Montana in September! I thought we could do a food preservation unit before that and learn to make stuff like jerky and hardtack to eat along the way! You know, eat like the travelers of old. :D

Also we live right under Yosemite. With the year pass we will buy on the 7th, we will be making at least 2 or 3 morning/day trips there. What an amazing place to get your schooling done!

I thought this would be a great time to learn more survival skills. We will be camping throughout the summer. It will be great fun.

Other than that, we are still doing Bob Books and Singapore Math and The Story of the World. Although, I'm not sure how much I like Story of the World anymore. We've started Spanish, and my son listens better to Spanish commands than English. Go figure.

[rockmom]

Both kids will continue working in their Singapore math books. Ds will be starting the next level and dd will finish up the level she is on. I'm also going to find some new math games since we're getting bored with the ones currently on hand.

Dd should probably work on proper capitalization, but her punctuation is surprisingly good. She's got her own thing going on for literature. A group of her friends are reading books from which movies have been made. Then they get together and watch the movie. They discuss the books, the movie, and how well they think the movie portrayed the books.

Ds has all the basics he needs to read. But it is still work to put them all together so he is a reluctant reader. He is an avid writer however. He really likes putting his thoughts down on paper. I'm going to have to come up with something to get him working toward fluency in reading.

We hit history/geography fairly hard this past fall so we will likely just do whatever strikes our fancy for a few months. And if nothing does, we won't worry about it.

Earth Science is on our plate for the new year. I think we shall tackle plate tectonics first.

[Tiffers]

I've decided to wait until fall to put Deven back in public school, so we're continuing on with our curriculum.

5 of our Jamestown Education reading books have magically disappeared, so now we've switched gears to reading literature. I bought him some really cool fantasy books for Christmas that he has already dug into.

He's still plugging away at his Saxon 5/6 math book. We've gotten a little behind with it though, so we're playing a catch up over break.

He's working on his Story of The World for social studies.
We still use www.spellingcity.com for spelling
I printed out a ton of language arts and grammar units from www.edhelper.com
We also have a couple supplemental grammar and LA books.
We're currently working out of an Earth Science textbook as well.

[Sashahomeschoolmama]

Holden's week--

Our stories for the week:

Animals in Winter, Strangers in the Forest (if you haven't read this book check it out. It's so wonderful!) and The Mitten by Jan Brett.

Our letter this week is the letter K. We'll read the poem from The Flower Fairy's Alphabet and look at the K pictures in Living Alphabet.

We'll continue working on memorizing the Preamble to the Constitution, "The Star Spangled Banner", our address, days of the week, and so on. Also I'm going to introduce the poem "Three Little Kittens". As you'll see, there's a bit of a mitten theme this week.

For handwork we're going to work on finger knitting. Luckily we have an unlimited supply of handspun yarn to play with, lol. We'll also sew mittens out of felt.

For modeling, painting, and coloring we're going to make snow dough (salt dough with silver glitter in it), we'll paint winter berries using only red, color pictures of mittens using beeswax crayons.

For cooking were going to make honey cinnamon muffins. That afternoon we'll have tea time and eat the muffins.

For nature study we need to hang up the bird house that I bought back in the fall and keep forgetting about. We'll spend the week studying the birds and make treats to put out for them (a string of treats using o-shaped cereal, pine cone feeders, et cetera).

I'd also like for us to begin sewing a felt ball for Seryozha.

[Sashahomeschoolmama]

Does anybody have any suggestions for a good cursive writing program? I hate cursive writing. I'm left-handed and was always the best in my class *except* at cursive. I slanted my words wrong. :rolleyes: It, like, scarred me and I never write in cursive.

Alas, it's something the kids must know. Any tips?

[SingingMom]

I just had the kids practice cursive writing with the practice books we found at Barnes and Noble and Target.

When they are bad at it, we put it away for a few months. Then we pick it up again.

I bought a calligraphy pen for DD1 so she could practice making beautiful letters, which put her focus on the smooth, sweeping motions of the cursive. That helped her understand the POINT of cursive writing. Then I plan to get her glitter pens and colored pens to play with.

DS1 doesn't quite have the fine motor control to be good at it yet, so he's in a put-it-away phase.

We've been taking a break this week, too. It's the first long break we've taken in three years.

When we start up again, I plan to hit the languages more consistently and give the kids all more music opportunities. I bought them recorders, so I'm preparing myself to hear a lot of whistling.

Also, I started DD1 on copying. She had been struggling with using grammar and punctuation correctly in her own writing, although she reads well. So I had her start copying sections of well-written fairy tales. She enjoys it, and it seems to be helping her understand how to use the grammar she's been learning, as well as improving her spelling. She does well on practice worksheets, but her writing has been a little too free-form. It seems to be helping, so we'll continue this.

DS2 will be continuing his program of playing a lot, with occasional breaks for writing a letter.

[zanie]

Does anybody have any suggestions for a good cursive writing program? I hate cursive writing. I'm left-handed and was always the best in my class *except* at cursive. I slanted my words wrong. :rolleyes: It, like, scarred me and I never write in cursive.

Alas, it's something the kids must know. Any tips?Have you ever heard of the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum?

http://www.hwtears.com/

I've not used it myself, but often hear it talked about in homeschooling circles. I am a lefty too.

1 out of 4 of my kids are lefties... how about you?

[Sashahomeschoolmama]

Thanks, I'll check that out.

The older three are all right handed (although Holden doesn't write much yet, he seems to favor his right hand). The baby is, of course, too young to tell. I'm holding out hope, though. After all, he's the only blue-eyed one of the bunch (I have blue eyes, dh brown).

[Sputterduck]

I'm left handed and worried about teaching my son how to write. My teachers would stop at every child and correct them each and skip over me and Devon, who was also left handed. lol I don't think they knew what to do with left handed kids.

[JudyJudyJudy]

We'll continue with Singapore Math and Brain Maths as well as Spelling Workout, The Complete Book of Maps & Geography, and Handwriting Without Tears. We've been using a variety of resources for language arts, history/social studies, and science, and we'll continue to do that.

Among other things, for social studies we'll be visiting the black history museum in our area. It is housed in the first school in Northwest Georgia that was constructed with Rosenwald funds, funds which were dedicated specifically to the education of black children.

One of our science activities will involve dissecting owl pellets. I think I'm more excited about doing this than Jacob is! We're also looking forward to the opening of the Tellus Northwest Georgia Science Museum (http://www.tellusmuseum.org/); it's supposed to open on January 12th.

[JudyJudyJudy]

Sasha, I second HWT. It is written straight up and down rather than slanted.