Posts Tagged ‘curriculum’

Planning for the New Year

{ August 30, 2009 @ 1:46 am } · { Uncategorized }
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The new school year that is!

Public school starts here on September 1st and, after a trip to Borders Thursday to attend a Educators event and pick up a few last minute items, we are all set to start our fall term here at The School Down the Lane. 

Things are going to be a little different here at SDTL this year.  First of all B will no longer be attending his small group reading and math program at the local public school, nor will he recieve speech therapy or OT.  This necessitated that we find some new resources.  We are still working on the speech and OT angle, but I was succesful in finding some products for the reading and math.  I feel like we have a real handle on his stuff for this year!

Curriculum for a fabulous 4th grade are as follows:

-Hooked on Phonics
-Kumon Math Workbooks; 3rd grade Word Problems, 3rd grade Geometry and Measurement and 4th grade Decimals and Fractions
-Sonlight Science 4
-Readers and read alouds from Sonlight Core 4

The next thing that is different is that K will be taking a formal class outside the home.  Actually, she has done this before, but it was a writing class and didn’t involve the whole classroom with a teacher in the front, text book and test vibe that this one will have.  There’s even a class field trip!  She’s excited, I’m excited, it’s all good.  I’m kind of bummed that the class will be in the subject I like to teach the most but I’ll survive ;)   We’ve almost got all of her stuff down as well.

Behold our tenth grade curriculum!

-Sonlight Survey of British Lit and then their reading list for the lit portion of core 430
-Parts of AOP Lifepacs Grade 9 History (civics), along with reading from Lies My Teacher Told Me, US History for Dummies and Sonlight core 100
-Marine Biology Class
-Teaching Textbooks 7 (finish) followed by Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra
-Rosetta Stone Italian

For PE both kids will continue with dance; modern lyrical and Jazz for K, Breakdancing for B.  K will also be helping me coach cheer this year as well as coaching her own team of 3-5 yos. 

I figured I’d cover what we did during summer term here as well.

-Both kids took part in the library’s summer reading program (literature)
-Both took dance classes (PE)
-I read shakespeare stories to B (more lit)
-K helped coach cheer (child development, PE)
-B taught himself to swim well (PE)
-B tended his garden (science)
-K finished her Biology (science)
-B finished the math workbook he didn’t finish at school (math)
-K helped W study for his apprenticeship test and in the process learned some algebra and geometry (math)
-K had W read her three different historical fiction books about Abraham Lincoln (history)
-B had W read him several picture books about Antarctica as well as several Magic Tree House books (history and geography)

We’ve had several weeks off to enjoy the sun and the water and now we are all ready to get back in the grove!

Back from the conference

{ March 9, 2008 @ 1:51 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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W and I had a great time! It was so nice to have basically the whole day to ourselves (my mom arrived at 9AM and we didn’t get home until nearly 7PM) and we got a lot hashed out on the ride up which made shopping a lot easier. Of course we had plenty of time since it was a 2.5 hour drive!!

The weather was wonderful and the venue for the conference was right on the ocean, I mean you could have thrown a stone into the sea from the lobby! Of course we spent most of our time inside shopping but it was nice to be able to go outside and take a walk and eat a snack if we needed to talk or think.

We visited many vendors and I was able to try out Teaching Textbooks, which I was very impressed with, and talk to the Sonlight lady (she’s been doing this conference for years-I was stunned to see how big her son was!) and see the IG’s I was interested in. Of course we went to the Usborne table (founds lots) and the used materials table (nothing this time :( ) and I even went to the hotel’s gift shop and found some cool post cards for Postcrossing use.

In the end we bought the following:

For K

Teaching Textbooks-Math 7
Sonlight-Survey of British Literature IG, several books from Brit Lit, Word Power Made Easy
Apologia-High School Biology
Excellence in Writing-Fables, Myths and Fairy Tales-Writing Lessons in Structure and Style

For B

Horizons-Math 2
Sonlight-Science 3 (IG and selected titles-we have a lot already)
A set of little plastic Revolutionary War soldiers

For both/general use

Usborne-Timelines of World History, The Usborne Book of Art, an abridged version of A Tale of Two Cities
Hands of a Child-lapbook kits on Europe and Animal Classification
The Battle of Bunker Hill board game

Along with what I already have, and a few things I will need to pick up as we go along (historical novels and some British literature we don’t already have-probably most will come from the library) I have enough stuff for the following classes.

K

Biology
Math
British Lit
Italian
US and World History-early modern
Writing 101
PE
Art

B

Math
Science
History
Geography
PE
Art

I am feeling really prepared and really excited to get going with the new stuff!

I am going to the homeschool conference!!!!

{ March 5, 2008 @ 7:43 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Can you tell I am excited!?  I haven’t been in two years, either because of money issues or logistics (like W was working or K had a cheer competition).  We had planned on making a family weekend of it at first, but then I had a misunderstanding with my employer and our taxes didn’t get done until last week so we didn’t have the money to do that. Then I thought W and I could make a day trip on Saturday, but that fell through due to lack of child care and the fact that the kids vehemently protested taking the 2.5hr drive twice in one day LOL!  At this point I basically gave up.

Well…..turns out both my mom and W were able to get Friday off and I get to go after all!!  Yay!

I won’t be able to see the two seminars about homeschooling high school and making transcripts I really wanted to see :( but I will get to look at some homeschooling materials up close.  There are a lot of materials I would like to get a IRL look at before I buy them.  Plus W and I will have a day to eat lunch out and talk without little ears listening in.  We really need that right now!

I always love the homeschooling conference, it’s just so cool to be surrounded by homeschoolers! And of course there is the shopping, I’m a serious curriculum and book junkie ;)   I can spend hours at the Usborne table alone!

I can’t wait!