New School Year, New Plans

Every homeschooler in southeast Tennessee is probably a combination of electrified and exhausted this weekend as the Chattanooga Homeschool Curriculum Fair is on!  Dwayne and I went together this year-- a rare treat, indeed!  We had a wonderful time and had the chance to look over some really great school materials.
This year, we have Marian in 8th grade, Andrew in 6th, Ellie in 3rd, and Reagan, age 4.  So what's in store?
For starters, we're going to continue with last's year's strategy:  forego co-op classes in favor of field trips in the fall, then rejoin co-op for the spring semester.  We had such a great time last fall going places and seeing things together!  A definite do-again!

Our core curriculum continues to be My Father's World.  We have made it to year 5 in the MFW Family Learning Cycle!  It has been so cool to go through all this history chronologically with my kids.  There's so much history that I just did not catch the first time through (back in my school years), and, truth be told, so much that I have yet to truly catch now!  This year we will be reading about events from 1850 to the present.

Bible study will include a unit on the names of Jesus that we started over the summer, our weekly hymn study, and readings from the MFW materials.

Math will be RightStart for everyone; Life of Fred once a week for Drew; and Marian continuing the transition from RS Level G to VideoText.  I love teaching math to my kids!

For science, Ellie and Andrew will use materials from the My Father's World package, which is a combination of chemistry and physics this year.  Marian will be venturing off to more independent work with Apologia's General Science.

Some parts of our writing and grammar curriculum will look different this year.  Marian will continue with Writing Strands since she enjoys it and is doing well.  I may add in a grammar text per MFW recommendations since she is in 8th grade, though grammar is not a struggle for her.  Andrew is going to start Essentials in Writing, a new curriculum for us.  I am really excited about it.  As for Drew's excitement level--- I'll work on him!  Ellie's favorite subject is creative writing, but her basic capitalization and punctuation skills are somewhat lacking, so we are going to use a book from A Beka that will combine the writing she loves with the instruction she needs.  We actually started just the first unit of this book last year when she finished her writing text early and she really liked it, so I envision smooth sailing.
Spelling for everyone will be dictation sentences that I come up with using the word lists from Spelling Power.  Creating the sentences adds a level of difficulty for me, but I have found my kids really do a lot better at spelling if the words are in the context of a sentence.  (Anyone have insight as to why this is??)

In addition to these basics, this will be the first year that I have developed a reading list for each child.  (I'll share the specific lists in a later post.)  The intent is to make sure they are reading more quality literature, and taking time to think about the content.  After finishing each book, they will write a short summary of the story and complete a creative project to go along with the theme, main character, or important event in the book.  A bit of a twist on your standard book report.  I'm really excited about this plan!  I think each of the kids will enjoy the selected books, and I can't wait to see how their creativity shows itself!


As for Reagan, he has come the stage that he asks to "do school" whenever the other kids are busy with their subjects, so I am developing a plan for him, too.  It is my goal to have more one-on-one time with him this year (as opposed to only including him in the older kids' studies), specifically some Before Five In A Row stories .  Also, at the curriculum fair, I bought a Kumon book of mazes, which he really likes to do, and a super cute Richard Scarry book for preschool.  I also have preschool books (C-F) from Rod and Staff, which I don't think he's ready for yet, but this could change as the year progresses.  All written work will be done only as he has the interest.

So that's my plan for the 2014-2015 school year.  Happy planning to all you other homeschoolers out there!

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