Posted in School Year Planning Ideas

We have decided what we are going to be using next school year in every subject. I have gotten all but math and spanish for Chantelle. This is what we have decided to use:

Both Kids:

Mystery of History Volume 1

Story of the World Volume 1 (Chantelle needs a little more than what MOH offers)

Postcard kids yahoo group

Handbook of Nature Study (We have not decided what we are going to study in it yet)

Chantelle:

Switched on Schoolhouse Math 7

Exploring Creation With General Science

Writing and Grammar 7 from BJU

Vocabulary A from BJU

English From the Roots Up Volume 1 (we never finished it this past year)

El Espanol Facil (The Easy Spanish)

Matthew:

Saxon Math 1 (we started it late in the year so we will finish it this year)

Scholastic Phonics Reading Program (received it late in the year so we will start it over the summer)

Handwriting pages from http://www.Learningpage.com

Math worksheets from http://www.enchantedlearning.com

Science will be a variety of topics including animals, 5 senses, human body, easy physics, earth science using the internet as a base.

Over the summer, I plan on making up the lesson plans (yes I am a planner) but will make it much more flexible. Instead of giving certain dates to do each subject, I have made up a check list of sorts with 180 days on it (we have to teach at least 180 days here in MA). Once we finish a topic on each subjects list we check it off, If we miss one day, then we can just do what was next on the list instead of falling behind. Next year we are also only going to be doing a 4 day week due to the Co-Op I have the kids in. Because of this, we will be doing year round homeschooling, which my husband likes and Chantelle doesn't seem to mind. Infact she has asked me if we are going to start year round homeschooling this summer. Not this year because her grandmother wants to take her for a couple of weeks (she is there now in fact) and she also has Art camp on Cape Cod for a week.

I also have a ton of lapbooks planned for each child to go along with what we are studying. Mostly history for Chantelle and mostly science for Matt. Matt doesn't like to work on them much, but loves the finished product. The past lapbooks I have done for him, I did myself and then we used it to study the topics he had picked out to learn. He still looks at them on his own and plays the games and puzzles by himself. His favorite was the penguin one. He can name most of the peguin species by just looking at their marks now. Emperior, Rockhopper and Little Blue are his favorites. We have Rockhopper and the Little Blues in our Aquarium here in Boston so he spends a ton of time checking them out.

I am also working on a book list for additional books to use for history to give Chantelle a little more. I have a few picture book types for Matt for history read alouds as well. Lots of nonfiction books as well as some fiction. Matt will be using a ton of fiction and nonfiction books for his Science topics. He seems to grasp the topics more, buy listening to me read alot.