A New School Year

I'm planning out the school year this weekend. We are starting school tomorrow, will skip the next week since Ga'Hoole Girl is going to piano camp, then school for a couple more weeks, then take a week off for the Fair. I am trying to be more relaxed about schoolwork, but still keep enough of a schedule that the kids have some structure.

I am going to start getting up early every morning so that we can have breakfast together and start school and chores at about the same time every day. This is going to be hard for me because I don't always sleep well, so I tend to sleep in on those days. When public school starts, Mr. Math Teacher will have to leave early for his student teaching, and Ga'Hoole Girl will have to be at school by 8 for her art class (first thing in the morning this year!). That will give me and Wild Man some time to work on his reading and dictation stuff. My plan right now is that Wild Man works from 8am until 11:30 (lunch time). Ga'Hoole Girl works from 8am until 2pm, unless she needs more time. I am going to start giving Ga'Hoole Girl a week's worth of work at a time so she can plan out her week accordingly. But, if she is done with stuff before 2pm (or there's only stuff that she needs me for and I'm not available to help her), then she is to continue doing math, grammar, typing, or Spanish until 2. Those are the subjects that she can just continue on her own. [The caveat is that we're only going to school until noon while Grandma is here so that the kids have time with Grandma and Ga'Hoole Girl and Grandma have time to work on Ga'Hoole Girl's sewing projects.]

We are Sonlight die-hards in this family. Mr. Math Teacher and I just love how the Cores are put together (a Core is the history/social science subjects combined into a type of unit study). I decided last year that it was too hard to have kids in 2 separate Cores so this year we are doing Core 6/Core 1. Actually, we are doing very little of Core 1 since both kids have already done it. We don't want to do the Core 1 read-alouds again, and Wild Man has very good comprehension and is doing well with the Core 6 read alouds. For the history stuff, we are doing the Core 6 Story of the World with The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History. Then, I have the kids do a notebooking page every week on what we have studied. I also print off maps for the kids to put in their notebooks. We use a timeline to help understand how stuff fits together in History. The main difference between Ga'Hoole Girl's work and Wild Man's work is that I expect a higher level of writing from her on her notebook pages and she and I will discuss some things in more depth. Wild Man dictates his notebook pages to me, while Ga'Hoole Girl writes or types hers.

I don't believe in changing up the Core too much - I figure that I paid a lot of money for someone else to make a schedule for us to follow, so it better be a schedule that I like. But, I am starting to add art history and music history for Ga'Hoole Girl using internet resources. I was very surprised to find out that there are some great sites about ancient Greek music - I assumed that we didn't really know much about music until the Middle Ages. I occasionally add some hands-on stuff since Wild Man is a little more of a hands-on learner. For example, we mummified apple slices in the spring and learned which combination of salts did a better job of mummifying. Right now, though, I think that notebooking provides a good "multisensory" experience for him (at least, he seems to be learning!).

Language arts is a tough one for us. I have the Core 6 and Core 1 Language Arts (actually, for Core 1, I only have the activity sheets). Ga'Hoole Girl does not like Sonlight LA at all, though. We have come to a reasonable compromise: We are using Easy Grammar Plus for grammar (she can learn most of it right from the book), we will still do dictation /copywork from Sonlight, and I will add Sonlight writing assignments as I see fit. She has to do a research paper this Fall, and the Sonlight resources for that are very good. Wild Man continues with reading lessons with a tutor. He is a little past where he would be in Core 1 reading, but I have him working through the Core 1 worksheets because they give him practice in handwriting, some introduction to grammar, and a boost in confidence since they're so easy. Ga'Hoole Girl also uses Spelling Power which has been very successful for us.

We use Singapore Math and love it. The one exception is that Ga'Hoole Girl is finishing up the "Key to Fractions" series. That was such a great series! I am planning on getting her the sets for decimals and probably several other topics. I was concerned that she isn't as far along in Math as I'd like her to be, but she told me that she was the only one of the kids in her summer school math class who really understood fractions - I felt 100% better. It appears that she is really learning her math, even if she hasn't covered as many topics. Wild Man loves his Singapore math so we continue that. I have also used the game "24" to help the kids with math facts. We have the addition/subtraction, multiplication/division, and original games.

For Bible, we are using Sonlight's Bible curriculum. We use the Children's Bible Field Guide as our main text. This book does an overview of the entire Bible in 36 weeks. So far, we have really liked it. I don't always do the activities in the book, but have supplemented with maps and charts from the "Tyndale Handbook of Bible Charts and Maps". I also find some stuff on the Internet at times. For example, we are learning about the Tabernacle this week, and I found some great sites about the Tabernacle on the web. Sonlight also has a Bible reading schedule that we follow so we're also reading in 2 Chronicles right now. That has spun off some interesting things. When we read about the Temple, I found some good internet sites with pictures so that we could visualize what was going on. Ga'Hoole Girl wants to do a math project in which she figures out how much all the gold and other expensive stuff in the Temple would cost in today's dollars.

Science has been kind of an issue for us. The Sonlight stuff has been OK, but not very in-depth. We are currently using Apologia Elementary Biology - "Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day of Creation". It is an in-depth study of bird, bats, and insects. It is working pretty well, except that our experiments have not gone well. We have very few birds visit our bird feeders and haven't had a chance to go on a nature walk yet. But, the information is clearly presented and she has some pre-made notebook pages on the Apologia website. After this, I plan to do the book on Astronomy and then start Ga'Hoole girl with the 8th grade physical science. Next week, while Ga'Hoole Girl is at piano camp, I'll be doing one of the TOPS books with Wild Man. He wants to learn about electricity, and Ga'Hoole girl never got to the electricity TOPS book. In this book, we will use everyday type of items (which were included in the Sonlight Science kits!) and learn about current, circuits, and other important electricity things.

I also have developed something called "Code H" for when I have a headache. When I have a headache so bad that I can't do schoolwork with the kids, I call a "Code H". Code H for Ga'Hoole girl means that she will do what she can do from her schoolwork list without my help and then continue until 2pm with workbook work. She is responsible for keeping the kitchen presentable and, if I'm still not feeling well in the evening, for starting dinner (usually a frozen pizza!). For Wild Man, he will do any work that doesn't require my help, then do work in his math book or Explode the Code until 11:30. He is responsible to keep the dining table cleared off during the day. When I'm feeling better, we go back to our regularly scheduled day. So, now I feel like I have a plan for days that have previously been out of control.

Well, that's our "school" schedule. I am learning to relax about the whole schooling thing. My kids have learned far more from just living as part of a family than they ever will from school books. I feel very strongly that they need to learn to communicate well, so we do lots of writing. I feel strongly that they need to know how to take care of themselves and our home. They are both learning to do their own laundry. Mostly, they need to learn about Jesus. And that comes more from watching the adults in their lives than it does from books.