Now that I'm done with all the planning I can go ahead and post what our school year is going to look like come Fall.
I have 36 weeks of school scheduled, that is 180 days, not counting what we do during the summer.
This year I decided to start school later than we did last year. We'll be starting the last week of August and we'll be done by the third week in May.
That way the kids will get to enjoy playing with their friends all summer and instead of being done with school a whole month before the other kids are done, they'll be done only two weeks before them.
Will there be days we don't do much? Sure, but since we do school year round I don't feel guilty if we have a day here and there were not much gets done.
Here's the planned lineup for our upcoming year(A7):
Five in a Row
As I said before, FIAR includes Reading, Social Studies, Language Arts, Art & Science.
Here is our FIAR book list for next year:
- Madeline in London(not a FIAR book)
- Gramma's Walk
- Night of the Moonjellies
- How to make a Cherry Pie and see the USA(not a FIAR book)
- The Story about Ping
- Babar: To Duet or not to Duet
- Finest Horse in Town
- Ox Cart Man(not a FIAR book)
- Zarafa: The Giraffe that Walked to the King(instead of TGTWTP)
- The Thanksgiving Door(FAIR recommended)
- Tree of Cranes(FAIR recommended)
- Christmas in the Big Woods(not a FIAR book)
- Owl Moon
- Make Way for Ducklings
- The Duchess Bakes a Cake
- Madeline and the Cats of Rome(not a FIAR book)
- Follow the Drinking Gourd/Who Owns the Sun/Slavery Unit Study
- Little Ninos Pizzeria
- They Were Strong and Good
- Mrs. Katz and Tush
- The Tale of Peter Rabbit
- Down, Down the Mountain
- Wee Gillis(extra book)
- All Those Secrets of the World(extra book)
Unit Studies
We have a few unit studies to break the year up.
- Reptiles and Amphibians
- Autumn
- Christopher Columbus
- Winter
- Martin Luther King Jr
- Wake Up Groundhog(Groundhog Day)
- President's Day
- Puerto Rico
- Dinosaurs
We'll continue using Math U See (Alpha & Beta).
Language Arts
Since we are done with Reading Made Easy we are moving on to:
Language Lessons for the Very Young Vol 1- I love this workbook, it uses such a gentle approach to lang arts, it only takes about 5 mins a lesson. It has 180 lessons, one for every school day. We'll be doing two lessons a day, three days a week for 30 weeks, that equals 180!!
Handwriting
We'll be using Handwriting without Tears' Printing Power.
Science
Science Experiments in a Bag 1 & 2- I'll pick a few to go along with our FIAR lessons.
Art (1/week)
How to Teach Art to Children, Grades 1-6 & Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters
Bible
We'll be doing lapbooks of different bible stories.
Music
piano, piano, piano & 1 composer per semester(Beethoven & Tchaikovsky)
We are also doing Home Economics for Home Schoolers 1 and
Health, Hygiene & Nutrition 1-2(1/week)
I know it looks like a lot but we won't be doing all of this every day, plus using the workbox system will help get all of this under control.
Next post, X4's upcoming school year!
