Yearly Planning 2015-2016

I can’t believe Elliot is starting First Grade!  Here is our curriculum plan:

Math:  Math Mammoth Grade 1, plus lots of manipulative play.  I also have an addiction to looking for math ideas online, so we will be doing lots of fun extra workstations and games to build number fluency.  A favorite resource is the Math Coach’s Corner blog.  She is a coach for math teachers and posts lots of great ideas and freebies.  Math has always been my favorite subject, and it is so much fun for me to see those lightbulbs come on when Elliot really understands the concepts.  I’m always asking him how he knew an answer so he has to explain his reasoning to me.  It is super fun to see that he knows 9 + 8 is 17 because 10 + 8 would be 18 and he took one away.  Or that 7 + 3 + 5 is 15, not because he counted it up on his fingers, but because he immediately recognized 7 and 3 are 10 and 5 more would be 15.  Actually understanding numbers seems to be the focus of common core, and even though it has a bad reputation with homeschoolers and many other parents, I believe this is a better approach to math.  One fun game for anyone interested is called “Some went hiding”.  We start with a set number of items (anything: bear counters, jelly beans, legos…) then the child looks away while I hide a few.  Based on the number left they tell me how many went hiding.  They love this game and are essentially solving equations with missing addends.  It helps them gain fluency in addition and subtraction, and will help them understand when they later see 3 + ___ = 7.  This past year we played with up to 10 items, for first grade we will increase the starting number, hopefully working up to 20.

So my main goal for first grade math will be to continue to shoot for understanding, while also mastering fluency in numbers up to 20 through games and fun activities, not through timed worksheets.

Language Arts:

Phonics/Reading:  Final book of American Language Series K (we loved this series!), Pathway Readers starting with the final grade 1 books and probably going into grade 2, and maybe some of the Christian Liberty Nature Reader Grade 1 that I picked up used.  

Spelling:  All About Spelling level 1

Handwriting:  Handwriting Without Tears Printing Power grade 2, and a stack of HWT lined paper to use for random copywork.  I also got this Handwriting Practice Jokes & Riddles book just to add some fun to an otherwise boring subject. 

Literature:  this really needs its own blog post :)  I have a 5 page list of books that would be appropriate for this year.  If we make it through half the list I will be happy.  I scoured book lists from Sonlight, My Father’s World, Memoria Press, Honey for a Child’s Heart, Justin Taylor’s Classical Christian Education Must Reads, and other homeschooling mom recommendations.  We will read anywhere from 15-60 minutes per day and just see how far we get.  One area I need to improve this year is with asking appropriate reading comprehension and life application questions.  I found these awesome looking literature study guides by Progeny Press, but they are expensive.  I might get one just to help me learn what kind of questions I should be asking.

Grammar & Writing:  We are not planning to do anything formal, though I did grab the inexpensive Climbing to Good English workbook that includes some grammar, and two of these HWT notebooks where I’ll have him occasionally summarize and illustrate Bible stories we read, journal about fun outings, nature sightings, science experiments, etc. 

History, Science, Geography, Fine Arts, Latin, Public Speaking and more:  Classical Conversations!  I don’t plan to supplement much this year, other than reading the backs of the Acts and Facts history cards or picking up a few library books about artists we study, science topics, etc.  

Bible - In addition to reading from The Jesus Storybook Bible and some other books we have accumulated over the years, there are a few devotionals I have picked up online that we will work through this year: My Brother’s Keeper and one on the Fruit of the Spirit.  When those finish we will probably read through the Little Visits with God books from my childhood that my mom recently gave me.  I am also looking forward to reading I Heard Good News Today, and memorizing some verses from our Seeds Family Worship CDs and Steve Green’s Hide Em In Your Heart CDs.  There are free cute printable memory verse cards online to go with the songs on the CDs.  

Other- These are all items I have on hand just for fun.  They will not be scheduled into our regular school routine, just done whenever we feel like adding something a little extra.  

Critical Thinking Co.:  I wish I could purchase everything in their catalog :)  We found Can You Find Me K-1 and Dr. DooRiddles PreK-2 used, and purchased the Math Analogies Beginning App.  I tease Ben that we should start doing popcorn tin fundraisers just so I can buy more awesome stuff from this company :)  I'm seriously considering getting either Building Thinking Skills Primary or the First Grade Thinking Skills & Key Concepts book.  I wish I could look through them first to see which I think would be a better fit.  Their Mind Benders and Thinker Doodle books look great too, and they have several computer games for solving riddles and building memory.  So many great products, hard to choose what to pass up!

Art for kids hub videos - the boys LOVE these and Elliot has become quite the artist just by watching these videos.  It is not uncommon for Elliot to draw for several hours a day!  To start the school year we got Elliot a new set of Pentel Oil Pastels and he inherited Ben’s Prismacolor pencils that he had in college.  I’m so glad we hung onto those pencils all these years- they are ridiculously expensive, there is no way we would have bought them for him.

Magic School Bus science experiments - We now have 12 that I got using a groupon.  If any corresponds with our Classical Conversations memory work we will do them at that time, if not, just on a rainy day or whenever the kids ask for them.

Minecraft? - so many kids love this and moms say that it is educational, so I will probably get the app or whatever it is and allow Elliot to start playing this year.

Primary Lentil Science - we used this some last year, but I never got around to copying, laminating, gathering supplies and doing all the set up for more than the first two chapters.  I believe it will be worth it, but boy it is a lot of preliminary work to get this program set up!

Planning/Lesson Log - I do not understand the point of spending hours and hours writing out lesson plans that will change almost daily.  I am not structured enough to plan out and stick to a lesson plan, so I am only going to log what we actually do each day using this simple form I found on teachers pay teachers for $1.50.  It fits an entire week on one page and has room to log eight different subjects per day.  I’ll print out 36 of them, keep them in a notebook and fill them out at the end of each school day.  I looked and looked and looked at all the fancy planners available, but really think this is going to be the best fit for me.  

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And Cole will be starting K4!  We will keep this super low-key.  If he seems to enjoy it and be able to make progress great, if not, we will try again in a few months.  I’m not going to push anything, but he does regularly ask when he can do school, so I figure it might be time to try these basics:

Phonics:  Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons - we used this with Elliot and it was great.

Handwriting:  Handwriting without Tears My First School Book

Classical Conversations - this will be Cole’s first year as an official CC student, though he has done lots of the memory work with us the past two years.  

He will also be a part of any Bible and Literature time we have each day.  

Fun stuff:  While Elliot loves art, Cole seems to love cooking.  I got him this knife set and some kid size oven mitts as a special beginning of the school year gift.  My mom got him his own baking pans, spatulas, etc. for his birthday, and I thought these two items would be a good addition, allowing him to safely help out more in the kitchen.  He has his own drawer in the kitchen with all his supplies in it, which he is super proud of.  So fun to see how his interests are so different than Elliot’s!  


That's it!  Super simple, just the basics this year.  The theme for the year will be surviving, especially if I end up with severe breast-feeding-induced insomnia again the entire year.  

Unschooling

The more I read about education, the more convinced I am that the amount of formal academic instruction I am providing is more than enough.  I often wonder, as probably many homeschoolers do, if our two hours or so of formal school time per day is adequate.  Recently I have come across two articles that greatly put my mind at ease.  I can't bring myself to not have any formal academic instruction, but I do see a great benefit in keeping it to a minimum and allowing kids to have plenty of time to learn about their specific interests and just explore the world through play.  So, if you have littles and are concerned that you may not be doing enough formal academic instruction, let these two articles encourage you:

How Early Academic Training Retards Intellectual Development

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201506/how-early-academic-training-retards-intellectual-development

Playing with Legos is More Valuable Than Learning Algebra
http://isaacmorehouse.com/2015/06/10/playing-with-legos-is-more-valuable-than-learning-algebra/

Choosing Curriculum

Does anyone else feel immense pressure to find and use only the BEST curriculum?  I think a lot of mothering is that way, and homeschool choices have proven to be no different.  We want to feed our kids the best food, give them the best education, make the best choices regarding vaccines and countless other issues.  Like many other areas, these desires to do our best are good but can easily slip into fear and a desire to over-control every aspect of our kids lives.  Ultimately, the fear I feel is because I'm trusting my parenting methods over God's sovereignty.

I really struggled with what to do for phonics this year.  We loved "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" and then the "American Language Series K" books.  I wish the American Language Series books continued, but they do not.  So I needed to figure out what to do next for my rising first grader who is reading on approximately a second grade level.  I pretty quickly narrowed it down to two choices, All About Reading and the Pathway Readers.   Two completely different choices, I know!  I was originally content to just use the Pathway Readers, but the more I learned about AAR the more convinced I became that it would continue our phonics progress at a steady rate and keep Elliot at an above normal reading level.  I love how methodical and comprehensive it is!  But it is expensive, and seems to require a good bit more teacher prep and organization, something that will be difficult for me this year with a new baby.  I felt the easier and more doable curriculum for this year would be the Pathway Readers, but out of fear and guilt I was leaning toward AAR, which I believed to be the better choice academically.   I had about convinced both myself and my husband that we should go with AAR, but I wasn't at peace with it and inwardly dreaded the extra time and work it would require.  It finally occurred to me that maybe I should pray about it, and ask God for wisdom.  (I should have done this FIRST, I know!)  After doing so, I had the idea to make a pros & cons list for each choice.  It is amazing how something so simple can bring so much clarity.  It became apparent to me that my academic fears about choosing Pathway Readers were complete over-reactions.  I remembered my purpose for homeschooling is not primarily academic (although I do think I can do a better job than public schools), but rather spiritual.  I immediately felt peace about choosing Pathway.  I presented the list of pros and cons to my husband without telling him which way I was now leaning, and asked for his feedback.  He read through them and without hesitation said he thinks we should use Pathway.  We both felt that the less teacher prep and the stories supporting biblical character were more important than having the very best academic program.  The lower cost was an added bonus :)  The decision was made, and I am completely at peace about it.  No more fear and guilt over not choosing the "best".  

Kindergarten review

We still have a couple months left, but since I am starting to plan next year I wanted to go ahead and write up our kindergarten review.  This was my first official year of homeschooling, so I expected that some of what I planned at the beginning would change, and it did.  Here is our year in review summary.

Language Arts:  

1.  Literature: We read lots of library books together!  Many were books that I found listed in various kindergarten curriculum reading lists such as Sonlight, My Father's World, or the Honey for a Child's Heart list.  Some were online "favorite lists" from other homeschooling parents.  A few were books that went along with what we were learning in history, science, or fine arts in Classical Conversations.  Some were just whatever seemed interesting to the boys... we read lots about knights.

2.  Phonics:  This was an area that we did pretty differently than I had planned.  We finished Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy lessons in K4, so I purchased the My Fathers World Grade 1 Reader and Workbook as well as the Pathway readers and workbooks to use for K5.  I also grabbed two of the American Language Series K books on a whim at a conference.  We started with those and ended up loving them so much we bought the rest of the series and just read those the entire year.  Elliot read 5-7 stories per day.  He read through each book twice to really make sure he was mastering those sound combinations before moving on.  We have about half of the final book left, which we will finish this summer before trying the first grade MFW and Pathway Readers books and workbooks I had bought.  I'm a bit worried that at this point they are below his level, in which case I have no idea what we will do next.  Suggestions??  For those that used Pathway Readers, about what level did you stop using them and what did you do next??

3.  Handwriting:  Elliot finished the kindergarten and first grade Handwriting Without Tears book very quickly, as he loved it and did multiple pages each day.  I looked for other handwriting "curriculum" but didn't find anything I thought was worth the price.  So we bought a stack of Level 1 HWT notebook paper and just had him copy something each day.  He enjoys writing letters to friends and family, so often his handwriting was a letter he would dictate, I would write down, then he would copy.  Sometimes it was a memory verse we were working on or something from the CC memory work.  Occasionally it was a random short paragraph out of his Ninjago Lego book just for fun.  We plan to get HWT 2nd grade book and another stack of notebook paper to use for first grade handwriting.  I also found a fun handwriting joke book online that he can use to make his very own hand written joke book.  Nothing fancy, but it seemed like a fun way to get in some daily handwriting practice.

4.  Grammar and Spelling:  We talked about when to use capital letters, ending punctuation, and commas or colons as we came to them, but didn't do any formal grammar this year.  We also didn't do any formal spelling, we will start that in first grade with the All About Spelling curriculum.

Math:  Most of my homeschooling friends use Saxon Math, and I can totally see that for later levels, maybe starting in 4th or 5th grade.  But I just didn't like the lower levels. I looked at the K book, and even the first grade one, and just felt that so much of it was common sense that it would be almost wasting 30+ minutes a day doing the lessons.  I'd rather him spend 10 minutes learning something than 30 minutes doing busywork just for the purpose of saying we did some math.  It just didn't seem very efficient, and one of my goals for these first few years of school is to try to keep actual school time to a minimum and let them have plenty of free time to play outside, pretend to be knights, play with legos or draw hundreds of ninjas... time just to be little boys.  So, we started by using a little calendar workbook I made.  It took a couple months but he became good at writing the date, learning the basics of place value, and using base ten blocks to symbolize numbers.  After I felt he had mastered the calendar notebook we used the Skill Sharpeners Math workbook, which is recommended by the Math Mammoth curriculum writer as a good preparation for Math Mammoth.  It isn't really a curriculum, but it kept us doing some math each day.  We supplemented with some dollar tree workbooks, I printed mazes and connect the dot worksheets online, we have a set of play money that we used to learn money, pattern blocks to practice patterns, a clock to learn to tell time, and we played lots of games.  One of my favorite things we did was to use the Racko game cards to put numbers in order.  There are numbered cards from 1-60.  I gave Elliot 10 random numbers and had him put them in order from least to greatest.  This was so good for practicing reading two digit numbers, greater than/ less than with larger numbers, and number order of non-consecutive numbers.  After finishing the Skill Sharpeners book we still had a few months left of school, so I printed worksheets online in areas that I felt he needed more help in, or that covered concepts left out of the Skill Sharpeners book.  Greater than/less than using symbols, even/odd numbers, simple measuring worksheets, some extra practice with money and place value, addition and subtraction using a number line, etc.   We learned a lot of math, with minimal time invested and with little to no frustration.  Kindergarten goal accomplished!

Everything else:  Classical Conversations!  We continue to love classical conversations.  It really doesn't take much time to learn the memory work each week, and my social boy loves having a day with friends.  It is efficient yet thorough, so it's a perfect fit for us!  As he gets older we will supplement CC more and more, but for now we basically just do the memory work.

Oh, we also took lots of random field trips and did a very basic character study using the We Choose Virtues tools.  It isn't very in depth, but has introduced 12 virtues in a fun way.  The boys at least now know what it means to be diligent, attentive, perseverant, etc.  I think it has mostly helped me to be more intentional about praising them when I see them display these virtues.  It is so easy to get into the habit of only correcting bad behavior and not praising the good, thus discouraging my precious boys.  Looking over these cards together each day reminded me of the things that I could be praising them for.  The biggest change in them was when we learned about being helpful.  They now take lots of pride in being helpful without being asked!  

That's it!  For first grade I still want him to have plenty of play time, but we will add All About Spelling for a formal spelling curriculum, and get serious about math with the Math Mammoth Level 1 curriculum.  Math Mammoth is mastery oriented with some spiraling over grades; focuses on conceptual understanding, mental math, and number sense; and the teaching/explanations are right in the student work text (meaning there are not separate teaching manuals and work texts, so it requires less teacher preparation/makes my job easier!)  It is similar to Singapore Math but moves at a slightly slower pace, with more built in review.  We will have a new baby, so my main goal for 1st grade is simply to survive without getting too far behind.  :)   

Experienced homeschool moms and early elementary educators... I welcome any thoughts/feedback you may have about what we are doing!  If you ever see an area that you might be concerned we are not doing enough, or maybe something we are missing all together, please feel free to tell me!  I am so new at this and still learning, and your input can only make our homeschool better.  I really do crave your input!  Thanks!!