Our Upcoming School Year

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)

The extra books are in case A7 doesn't like one of the books we are rowing. There is a good chance we will still row these books at some point during the summer.

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

Math
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!

Home from Camp

A7 will be coming home today from camp. I've been able to see pics from camp at their website and it looks like she is having the time of her life! We'll be there around 6 since they have a parents program at 6:30.
X4 really misses his sister, he's being playing with the neighbor girl all week!
They have picture cds available for purchase, I may be able to post some of them here...

Here is a pic from the first day of camp, they are making funny faces! I bought A7 a disposable camera so she could take her own pics, that should be interesting. Hopefully she didn't take them all the first day!

Off to Camp!

A7 is on her way to Camp today, by the time you read this post we'll probably be in the car on the way to Camp Hebron! I've heard a lot of great things about this place.

She has been looking forward to this day for a whole year! She'll be there for four days, Sunday to Wednesday, which I feel is a perfect amount of time for a 7 year old to be away from home.
She'll get to do lots of activities, meet new friends and probably get to go to the pool every day if the weather is nice!

While she's away at Camp the boy and I will have our own adventure!!! Hopefully lots of pool time!

Father's Day

Since A7 and I are not going to be around much on Sunday we are celebrating Father's Day today!!
We are taking Daddy to his favorite place to eat for father's day...Hoss'!!

To all you fathers out there Happy Father's Day!!

What is a Unit Study

What is a unit study?
It is defined as an in-depth study of a topic (space, trees, cars, etc.) that takes into account many areas of the topic, such as geography, science, history, art, etc. It is a complete immersion into the topic so that the student will see things as a "whole" instead of bits and pieces learned throughout their education. Instead of learning about whales in the third grade, the oceans in the fourth grade, explorers in the fifth grade, and sea life in the sixth grade, for example, the student learns about all of these during a unit study of the ocean. He/She is exposed to the geography, spelling and vocabulary, and plant and animal life of the ocean. In learning these things, the student will develop and sharpen skills like reading, writing, researching, and so on. by Amanda Bennett

This is what we do for school every week, we select a book, we read it or "row it" five days in a row, or in our case four days in a row, we skip Wednesdays. We learn about geography, language arts, science, math, arts, history etc, from that one book.

If we read a book that takes place in Japan or China, then we learn about that country. First we look the country up in the world map then we look at the flag, as the child gets older then you can do a lot more.

Language arts can be done by doing copywork, looking up new words and their meanings, things like similes, compound words, metaphors, you get the idea.

For science, a book like Madeline talks about how Madeline needed to get her appendix out. So we study the human body and look at a persons appendix. For other books its an animal or land types like plains, mountains etc. Things like the seasons or the senses.

We learn about every day math and of course art, either how the illustrator chooses how to draw a story or different uses of colors, drawing techniques etc.

Books like They Were Strong and Good talks about the Civil War, Who Owns the Sun talks about slavery, Paul Reverse's Ride talks about the American Revolution and All the Secrets of the World talks about World War I or II (not sure which).

I just purchased How to make a Cherry Pie and see the USA, this book will be used as a mini USA geography unit study. All of that from a children s book.

This is what's working for us right now, I can't see us using workbooks or textbooks to learn this stuff. I'm so grateful that we found Five in a Row!!

Lesson Plans Update

I'm pretty close to being done with next years school lesson plans. Having everything in its own folder really helps, I am able to see everything we are doing at a glance. There are so many cool resources online and every time I find something that can go along with one of our lessons all I have to do is pretty much just print it and drop it in the folder.


I recently purchased Science experiments in a bag, e-books 1 & 2. There are 25 experiments in each e-book. I'm looking through each book to see which experiments I can do along with what lesson. So far I've found 4 e-bags that will go with our lessons. The experiments are safe for elementary age kids. They are very easy to assemble since it uses things most people already have in their homes.

These are great go alongs that really make our mini unit studies fun!

The Giraffe that walked to Paris

The giraffe that walked to Paris is a Five in a Row book. It is one of the most difficult books to find because it's out of print and if you want to buy it used you have to pay over a hundred $ for it. Today, as I was browsing the internet for this book I found a different book that came out last week. The tittle of this book is; Zarafa: The Giraffe Who Walked to the King.

It is the same story as giraffe that walked to Paris.

Synopsis:

Zarafa is a beautiful and gentle giraffe . . . so wonderful, in fact, that the ruler of Egypt offers her as a gift to the king of France But how to get her there? Why, she sails up the Nile by felucca, crosses the sea by brigantine, and, yes, walks the last five hundred miles to Paris. People love it. And they love her, meeting and greeting her along the way, cheering her on. Afterward, the grateful French king places Zarafa in his own royal garden, where all of Paris comes to visit and love her. Judith St. George brings this amazing but true journey to life with help from the whimsical art of Britt Spencer.

This book is The Giraffe that walked to Paris.

What is the perfect gift for the king who has everything? In this fact-based picture book, the unusual present is a giraffe. In 1826 the pasha of Egypt offers to ship a giraffe to France as a gesture of peace and friendship. Travel arrangements are made and passage secured for the animal, her attendants and the three cows necessary to provide her with milk during the journey. The logistics become a bit sticky when the long-necked creature arrives in Marseilles. The only conceivable way to transport her to see the king in Paris is to walk--which she does. A zoo becomes the giraffe's eventual home and all of France enjoys seeing her there for many years.

You see!! It is the same story! So, since I don't have over a hundred $ to spend on the first book I went ahead and spent $12 on the new book.
Which means come next school year we are finally going to be rowing The Giraffe that walked to Paris, we'll just be using a different book, but the same story!!

Learn About China Kit

Next fall we are going to be rowing the book The Story about Ping, which is set in China. I found this kit ($13) that comes from China to your door. It looks fun and like something my kids will love.
What a great resource! These are the kinds of things that make learning beyond fun!
Here is the link!

What Your Packet Will Contain

• Chinese papercut
• Chinese knot
• Red packet with currency
• Chinese flag
• Postcards
• Bookmark
• Red scarf worn by young Communist students
• An informational brochure about the things in your packet
• Honeycomb lantern
• Stickers

It's June!

So here we are are in June already, school is done for most of the homeschooled kids around us and the public school kids will be done next week. My niece is already with us, she was done with school June 1st.
It's so nice to see all the kids in our backyard in the evening, running around, playing. it is a true sign of summer! The pool will be open full time next Tuesday, last day of school. We haven't gotten our pool pass yet. I think this year we'll just get one for A7 since X4 still going in for free.
Last year we just didn't go as much and it was money wasted. This summer looks just as busy with Camp and day camps and friends over.

Monday we started our review month. A7 has been working for about an hour a day on her handwriting, reading and unknown number!
She's reading for about 15 minutes a day. She also started her journal. There is a question for everyday of the year that she has to answer in a complete sentence, with no help from me. She has to figure out how to spell the words she wants to use, then when we go over it together I show her the proper spelling and she rewrites the word or words she misspelled.

It doesn't take long at all for her to do all this and she is becoming familiar with getting her own work from her workbox folder system.

X4 on the other hand wants nothing to do with it. I have lots of fun stuff for him to do in his boxes but he will not go near them. He's done a few of the name practice and number practice ones, but will not even look at any others. Maybe I have to change it around or make it look simpler..who knows. No worries, we have plenty of time with him.

I 've been getting stuff ready for A7 for the Fall. I'm assembling, if you will, what she'll need for her lapbooks and for language arts. Everything else is already taken care of!
I already have most of his lapbooks set up... and lots of games in between! Iam really trying to start with a clean slate with X4. After teaching A7 for two years I don't want to assume that all of the things that worked with her will work with him. A lot of people tell me just how different teaching their boys was from the girls.

That is all for now!!