Sep. 16, 2006 - Our school year thus far...
When the Lord called us to homeschool Jackson this year with the girls, my first thoughts were of fear, worry and stress. The thought of trying to jump into teaching 9th grade with a boy who is still adjusting to life with a new family in the US, has numerous learning disabilities and reading on a 5th grade level, really did a number on my stress level. Then God gently reminded me of the advice I had given other moms...if the Lord calls you to do this, He will give you the resources, wisdom and grace to do the task at hand. How true this is, as He has done just that. As I reflect back on the last several weeks, things are going remarkable well and we are already seeing some improvements in Jackson. He even told Guy, "I really like homeschool...just don't tell mom". LOL
I wanted to share with you our schedule and activities...
On Monday, Wednesday and Friday Tiana goes to preschool for most of the day. She really loves it and this gives me time to really focus on helping the older 3.
Tiana's first day of school
On Tuesday, Shelby goes to a homeschool enrichment program in Fort Worth... http://www.scienceetc.com/index.html . This is a great program and she really enjoys it. She is taking Spanish, drawing, art, math (using Math U See) and science. Her cousin, Troy is in her drawing and science classes. At home she does spelling and writing.
Jackson and Logan also go to Science, Etc. but they go on Thursday. Jackson takes science using Apologia's Exploring Creation through General Science and Pre-Algebra using Bob Jones. At home I teach him spelling using AVKO Sequential Spelling and writing with Writing Strands.
Logan takes Creative Writing using Institute for Excellence in Writing, American History using Sonlight, Drawing, Literature and Science. She has the heaviest load, but she loves it. I teach her spelling (Sequential Spelling) and math (Math U See) at home.
The classes the children take at Science, Etc. are the bulk of the load. Patsy (grandma) is teaching my children and Gwen's children American History once a week using a timeline I made and pulling from resources from many books I have and some new ones we bought. We are using Beautiful Feet's American History as a base and also using the History Pockets books that go along with the time period we are working on. During the week, I also have the children read other American History books and we read aloud together a lot. I also assign vocabulary and copywork that goes along with our history.
We are basically using history as our main focus this year, doing a lot of our Language Arts based on our history readings.
We are also studying the 50 US States in notebooking style. Each child has their own notebook for this and they spent almost 2 hours the other day designing their covers. We are studying the states in order of when they became states. We did Delaware last week and will work on Pennsyvania next week. My favorite thing about doing the states is the copywork. We use the Preamble to each states constitution as copy work. It's amazing...all the preambles focus on God and worhsip as a basis for their constitution. It's really beautiful.
So, all in all this year is off to a great start...better than I could have planned myself. Praise the Lord for His resources, wisdom and grace to accomplish this huge task.
Blessings,
Comments
Sep. 18, 2006 - Wow!
Posted by cryskey
God bless,
Crystal
