Wakato Academy

2009/2010 Overview

Preparing for a new school year is always interesting.  It takes a lot of careful thought and planning to figure out how to meet all the needs of the students and coordinate learning across several grades.  This year Big Brother is in 5th/6th grade, Billy and Princess are in Pre-K and Bunkie is baby school.  I'll start with my plans for Bunkie since he is the least involved and work my way up to big brother.

Bunkie (age 20 months)

Has an activity kit with paper, crayons and sidewalk chalk.  He also has blocks, a train set , shape sorter, puzzles and board books we'll be using.  In addition to creative use of other toys he has at his disposal.  I will occassionaly play some videos that I have called My Baby Can Read from Usborne books, all the little kids enjoy it.  He will also be sharing some of the pre-school supplies.

Billy and The Princess (age 3 1/2)

My Fathers World Pre-School Activities; http://www.mfwbooks.com/preschool.htm

Bright Minds Pre-School Buildingl Thinking Skills

Leap Frog Videos (letter factory and math circus)

Art supplies (crayons, construction paper, play-doh, sidewalk chalk, paint etc...)

Big Brother (age 11)

Reading;

Big brother is a very good reader he tested at a 12 grade reading level according to his last reading test in the Spring.  He also loves to read.  This year he will participate in boys book club once a month and read at least 4 other books per month.  (he actually has a goal of reading 30 books a month but 4 is the minimum he has to read.

Spelling:

Big Brother tested at 4th grade for spelling so we are working on that are this year in an attempt to encourage his understanding of spelling.  We will be using a program this year that emphasizes understanding of the structure and syntax of the english language as part of the writing curriculum in the hopes that it will improve his spelling ability.

Writing:

This is an area of weakness for Big Brother, he enjoys the mental process of writing but struggles with the physical act of writing.  So we are approaching writing from two directions.  One with the goal of improving the physical act of handwriting to make it easier for him.  I have researched and found some good information on how to do this and the same program that is supposed to improve spelling and grammar is also highly reccommended for students that are struggling in handwriting as well.  For the mental processes we are doing 2 parts.  The first is from his KONOS study that provides weekly writing assignments and latter we are planning to add in the One Year Adventure Novel.  

Math;

This is another area that Aaron has struggled with over the years.  I have tried a lot of different things but this last year we gave Living Math a try and boy was it successful.  He gets to see how you use math in real-life and learn his skills at the same time.  We read a lot of books, play games and do other fun stuff.  More than not he doesn't even realize he's learning math and a subject that was once the dread of his day is now one of the many highlights to his day.  So we are going to keep that up focusing on specific skill areas each month.  The first month we will be focusing on multiplication and division, the rest of the year will be divided up between fractions, percents, decimals, measurment and geometry concepts.

Science:

Big Brother loves science and becuase he has gotten so much of it in a variety of ways I haven't been able to find a program that really fits him well.  So this year we are going to try a Gifted Learning strategy for his science studies that involves what is called an indpendent learning contract.  He will sit down with his father (the science guy) and they will set out a learning contract based on a science topic that he is interested in.  He will have time during the week to work on his "project" and report back to his father on the weekends as to his progress and any questions he has. 

History;

Last year we did several lap-book unit studies and those worked really well for us.  So this year we decided to give Konos a try.  I really liked its multi-age focus and the unit study approach works really well for big brother.  We are starting with a study on Time Management, should be interesting :-).

Music/Art/Drama;

This year Big Brother is taking Cello Lessons at a private residence for music.  For Art hh will be doing Artistic Pursuits with Grandma. For Drama he will be preparing some dramatic presentation as part of his Konos unit studies and will also be going to some plays and other theatrical performances that are organized through a local homeschool group at school field-trip rates. 

So that wraps up our plans for the year.  Now fo the fun part, seeing how it all works out ;-)