Sonlight is always our Core, but I am going to add unit studies and other things as they come up. I usually add a number of writing assignments to the Sonlight stuff, but I will pass on those when we are doing unit studies. I hope we can finish Core 6 sometime in September and get started on Core 7. My goal is for Ga'hoole Girl to start Core 100 next fall, when she's technically in high school (EEK!).
The first week of August will be spent studying the history of the Olympics and doing a quick review of world geography (and putting together our puzzle of the world). The next couple of weeks will be spent watching the Olympics and learning about the sports and about some of the countries that are represented. Ga'hoole Girl is opposed to the whole Olympic thing, so I'll have her spend much of her effort doing some fiction writing that uses what she learns about world geography (and I won't make her learn too much about the sports). The County Fair is the third week in August and, even though my kids aren't participating, I'm sure we'll go several times to see all their friends' work.
Ga'hoole Girl will finish up "Jump In", her writing curriculum in the fall. After that, we might try IEW (Institute for Excellence in Writing), but who knows. She will also continue Spelling Power and finish her Easy Grammar Plus. Once she's done with Easy Grammar Plus, the only grammar we'll do is to have her review mistakes in her writing and then do a good grammar review before her standardized testing in high school. Wild Man is now doing Explode the Code workbooks. He's also doing All About Spelling. With those and daily reading, I think his reading should improve even faster than it already is. (The last several days, he has started the reading in our Bible reading. He usually does about 4 verses before Mr. Math Tutor takes over.) I'll have Wild Man also start some basic writing - starting with just sentences - this year with the hope that he'll be able to write some reasonable paragraphs by the end of the year.
For science, both kids have basic science curricula that they'll continue using - Apologia for Ga'hoole Girl and Real Science 4 Kids (Physics) for Wild Man. In September, Wild Man will do a unit study on fishing that should take 4-6 weeks. In August or September, we'll start Ga'hoole Girl's Food Science course. This is a course that I'm creating in which we will use Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for the Food v.2 and I'm Just Here for More Food as her textbooks. I'll add in writing assignments and have her do lots of the activities and recipes in the books. Both kids will also watch "Good Eats", "How'd That Get on My Plate?", and "Food Detectives". I'm figuring that the full Food Science course will take an entire year for Ga'hoole Girl since the information is pretty intense. I also figure it will be a lot of fun and very tasty!
Both kids will continue with ALEKS math and Power-Glide Spanish. They'll both have piano lessons and dance classes as well. Ga'hoole Girl requested that I order a course from the Teaching Company called "Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning". This should be fun for everyone. I think Mr. Math Tutor and I are going to watch the lectures along with her.
I've also taken to recording in Homeschool Tracker Plus whatever the kids have been doing during the day. It turns out that they do lots of educational stuff that I don't even plan. For example, we're reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Ga'hoole Girl drew a wardrobe scene using 2 point perspective. I'd call that an art project. Recording this stuff helps remind me how much the kids learn without my insistence. That really helps me feel better.
It looks to be a fun and, hopefully, educational year!
No comments:
Post a Comment