• Jun. 30, 2008
Planning a New Year
Planning and organizing for the new school year, Ah, now here is a topic I know and love. This part is a joy to me. It’s the actual teaching part that can sometimes get me down. The Big Picture I already have a general idea of what I want her to learn when all the way up through her middle school years. I use the What Your Child Needs to Know When book by Robin Scarlata for deciding what to teach in language arts and math, but for science and history we do our own thing. We do history chronologically, but not necessarily following a purely Classical approach. For instance, Taylor is in 3rd grade now and we are still finishing up Ancient History. We didn’t do any history in kindergarten and in 1st grade Taylor wanted to learn about Indians so we did a little early American history. So that put us starting Ancient history in 2nd grade. We camped out for a long time in Ancient Egypt because it was so very cool- which is why we are still not into the Middle Ages. I’m not worried about it though because we’re having a great time. History is our very favorite subject! So the first thing I do when planning our year is to have a general plan of what we want to learn. Math is easy because it’s pretty much following the book for the level you need. Although we do have some Taylor specific goals such as memorizing her math facts that she should have already learned! We’ve been using Bob Jones math with some success, but we are going to try Moving with Math level B this year on the suggestion of the lady who tested Taylor last year. Major LA goals for Taylor this year include learning about and using paragraphs and proper sentence construction. We will learn a little bit of cursive as it comes up just because Taylor wants to, but I am most concerned that her print be neat, quick, and legible. Spelling also needs work. I also want her to expand her reading level with all sorts of genres. She’s got the fiction books down pat, but I want her to see what else is out there. I don’t really need a curriculum for this- just a plan. Science this year will be chemistry and history will be the middle ages. So that covers the four main subjects! The Right Tools I love curriculum. I could sit and pore through catalogs for days and weeks and not get tired of it. BUT, curriculum is just a tool. It is a means to an end, not the end itself. I believe it was Cathy Duffy who said that you don’t teach the curriculum, you teach the child. I have no problem tweaking whatever curriculum we buy in order for it to work for us. Sometimes you buy something that you think will be perfect, but it doesn’t work out at all. Please don’t use it all year because ‘you paid good money for it’. The money is not worth a miserable year. Sell it on www.homeschoolclassifieds.com so you buy something else that will work for you. I choose curriculum based on what I have learned through the years about myself and about Taylor. For instance, I know that I like order and routine, I learn visually, and I enjoy projects. But I also have a 3 year old and will (hopefully) be fostering soon, so I need for Taylor to be able to work on her own some too. Taylor really enjoys projects also. She is a kinesthetic learner and is very RANDOM. So in order to teach her the way she needs to be taught I have to come up with a slew of ideas over the summer so that I can change things up for her fairly frequently throughout the year. For math this year we are going to use Calculadder (to continue working on her math facts) and Moving with Math Level B (which is VERY hands-on). From a very rough K and 1st grade year, I have learned that Taylor needs a mastery approach to math instead of the spiral approach that Saxon and Horizons use. Planning for math is simple. Just do the next thing! In LA, I bought one Progeny Press guide to see what it is like and if it will work for us. I also bought Growing with Grammar. This is not at all Taylor’s learning style, but it will be useful for days when I am occupied elsewhere and I need her to work alone. The amount of writing it requires is very reasonable in my opinion. Taylor really struggles with writing so that was a big concern for me. Other than those 2 things, I’m really planning on winging it in LA this year. Taylor and I made a journal jar that I found writing prompts for. She will do 2 or 3 of these a week. My only guidelines for this are that she write in complete sentences and that it is neat enough for me to read. The purpose of the journal jar is to practice putting her thoughts down on paper. I am also going to use her writing to come up with spelling words. My spelling plan is very individualized this year. She will have 5-7 words a day that I will get from her journal writing, the Dolch words, and her history/science. I will get next week’s words from this week’s writing. I’m doing it this way because if I correct her words on the spot she feels like she failed and doesn’t want to try anymore. The daily spelling system is as follows- Copy today’s words. Look for tricky parts Spell each syllable out loud. Do a task card or spelling idea. (This is where there is a lot of variety.) Take a verbal test when ready. Use all words in 1 or 2 sentences without peeking. Taylor will keep her own problem words dictionary and I will keep a list of all previously learned words so that I can have a review week about every 5th week with an incentive for a job well done. My plan for reading is to assign her a book from these main genres-.Realistic fiction, adventure, biography, historical fiction, fantasy, nonfiction, folk tales, poetry, and mystery. I will have her do oral narrations of what she’s reading with an occasional written one. If I can find some online comprehension questions, I will make use of those also. We also do read-alouds. I still have some left from Sonlight Core 1 so we will use those. For history we will use the Story of the World with the activity book for projects and such. We also have The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History and Time Travelers Omnibus. I will get books from the library on topic as we need them. I also bought some medieval paper dolls and we hope to learn chess. Science will be a chemistry lapbook from www.handsofachild.com and the book Super Science Concoctions that I found for $.50 at Goodwill. The book has lots of experiments and we will use the lapbook to record what we learn. The Nitty Gritty Once I have an overall plan and the tools to accomplish that plan, I can sit down and come up with a schedule, teacher book, and student notebook. This is what we will run our school off of on a daily basis. I figure out how many days a week I want to do each subject and how long I want a day to be. I know that I want math and spelling to be 5 days a week, ect. I also want to be able to go to story time for Isaac on Wednesday’s. This step is where I will find out if I have too much planned for the year or too little. I don’t want our “schoolwork” to last longer than 3 hours a day and I don‘t want to put subjects with a lot of writing back to back. I had too much planned originally for the year so I had to prioritize and be creative in my scheduling. For instance, I had to leave off Thinking Skills this year in favor of more time spent on spelling. I wanted to do writing and grammar so I decided to do them in units alternately. I decided that since we really love history, we would spend about 40 min on it 4 days a week and science we would do for an hour to an hour and a half on Fridays. Here is what I ended up with. School Schedule 2008-2009 Monday- Tuesday- Wednesday- Thursday- Friday- As you can see, I have more of a flow from one thing to another instead of a rigid time schedule. Taylor’s student notebook is very simple. I used a zippered 2 inch binder and put in tabs for each subject. I put some page protectors in the back for things she worked especially hard on, and her student planner sheets are in the very front. She will file her work behind the correct tab each day as she completes it. My teacher notebook is a little more involved. Here is a link to my notebook from last year until I can make a post about my current one. So that’s it- how I plan for Taylor’s school year! If you want to read about the plan for Isaac follow this link.
Journal Jar (Independent)
Reading (Teacher Choice) (Independent)
Spelling
Math
Break
Read-Aloud (Teacher Choice)
Growing with Grammar or Writing Unit
History
Wordly Wise (Independent)
Reading (Teacher Choice) (Independent)
Spelling
Math
Break
Read-Aloud (Teacher Choice)
Growing with Grammar or Writing Unit
History
Math
Library
Spelling
History
Journal Jar (Independent)
Reading (Teacher Choice) (Independent)
Spelling
Math
Break
Read-Aloud (Teacher Choice)
Growing with Grammar or Writing Unit
History
Wordly Wise (Independent)
Reading (teacher choice)
Spelling
Math
Break
Science
Comments
• Jul. 7, 2008
Untitled Comment
Posted by kristenph
Great plan! I got a chuckle out of your comment about liking to plan more than teach. I've often said the same thing.
