It's that time of year. Winter doldrums have hit. And although things are going pretty well this year (A is burning through math books like there's no tomorrow, isn't fighting me much on LA, and we just finished a 3 month engineering study using the PBS series, Building Big), it's awfully fun to plan.
Next year, I'll likely have:
W, 10 year old, working on a 7th grade level and A, 7-8 year old, working on a 3rd grade level. If we move (likely, but not definite), then T (9 years old, 5th grade) will be home until I get an appropriate school situation (magnet, charter, or private) set up where we're going. And of course there's E (3-4 years old, preschool-K).
We'll be studying American History, and hopefully relocating to somewhere truly ideal for lots of field trips (top of the possibilities list at the moment is between Washington DC and Baltimore).
The boys will be using The Story of US by Joy Hakim. Our library has these on tape (which A and T prefer -- T is almost through listening to the first book already). I'm kind of writing my own study guide to go along with it. So far, it's coming out nicely, and I might be willing to try to market it. If anyone else wants to try it before I get to that point, it would probably work better if I had some guinea pigs in addition to my own children. Email me if you're interested. As supplements, we have How Our Nation Began (a Catholic elementary US history text) and This Country of Ours by H.E. Marshall. Readers and Read-Alouds will be taken from Ambleside, Mater Amabilis, Sonlight, etc. ... I'll try to line them up with the history as much as I can, but I'm not too worried about it.
W finished Singapore Primary Math last year and has been playing with CIMT 7 some, but most of his math has been Everyday Math in the ps, so he needs lots of review. Meanwhile, A has decided to turn the 3 year Miquon program into a one-year course. So we'll be combining the boys in Life of Fred next year. I don't know whether or not they'll work at the same pace, but there's no rush, especially for little A, who will be doing prealgebra as a chronological second grader. If T is home, she'll either use the SRA 5th grade textbook I have or CIMT 4 or 5.
I think I'm going to use Analytical Grammar's Research paper guide with W, and the only other LA will be Reader's Digest Word Power and some copywork (things like George Washington's Rules for Civility, the Preamble to The Constitution, famous poems like The New Colossus). I'm undecided on what to do with A. My friend Molly has had good luck with Jessie Wise's grammar workbooks for her similarly workbooky ds who is 7 mo older than A and working at about the same pace about that far ahead. I also have Winston Grammar, which W liked in second grade. I definitely need to start working on the writing process for him, and am a little nervous about it. It might be a few years until he gets a chance to try brick and mortar school. The others went in third grade and have had teachers who have done wonderfully in teaching them how to write. I feel much more comfortable picking up where they've left off than starting from scratch.
For science, we'll use Real Science 4 Kids Biology 1 and Physics 1. I'm hoping A will have grown into it, if not, he'd certainly be willing to check out science books from the library. We might also use Joy Hakim's Story of Science.
The big kids will all be on Montessori-styled work plans and logs with weekly meetings to determine the work for the week. I know that W will love this style. We'll see if A is ready yet, or whether I'll need to work more with him.
As far as little E goes, I've been in Karen Tyler's Montessori training course for almost 2 years now. I really need to pull out my Practical Life and Sensorial albums and start making that work available to her.
Planning season is so much fun!