2011 - 2012 Homeschool Plan

Can it be that is is already October and I haven't posted our homeschool plans? This blog started out as I way for me to publicly think through my homeschooling plans with a little bit of regular life thrown in.  Now it is mostly  regular life with a little bit of homeschooling thrown in. When I actually get around to posting...  But in case I have any homeschoolers still reading,  here are our plans for 2011 - 2012:

Reading: Books, books, and more books.  I have 3 readers now, so now it's just about finding good books for them to read.  I made Kali and Sierra lists of books to chose from.  Sierra started the year with The Magician's Nephew and Kali read Alice in Wonderland.  Then I chose for them and had Kali read The Witch of Blackbird Pond and Sierra read The Crucible to go along with our history studies.  Arwen is still developing her reading skills, so I let her chose to read whatever she wants.  She read one of the Gail Carson Levine Princess Tales chapter books and she also sometimes reads picture books.

Writing - My older 2 are using Writing Strands and also writing papers that I assign, like research papers, etc.  Arwen is doing freewriting this year.  All three girls are doing copywork.  And Arwen is learning cursive.

Spelling - We are still doing individualized lists.  Each week I look through the girls' writing and find misspelled words and they study those words for a week and then do a test.  Any words misspelled on the test go on the next week's list.  I give them between 8 and 10 words to work on per week.  If I can't find enough misspelled words in their writing (either they didn't write much that week or they didn't spell very many words incorrectly - unusually the former), I have them pick out words from their grade level in Natural Spelling to work on.

Grammar- We are still using Growing with Grammar. And I am still going with the plan of using the 4th, 6th and 8th grade books but taking 2 years to complete each books.  This avoids much of the repetition in many grammar curricula.  Arwen is beginning level 4 as a 3rd grader.  Kali is doing the second half of level 6 as a 6th grader and Sierra will finish level 8 this year as an 8th grader. I still feel like it is very repetitive, but it is working for me to have the girls each do 2 grammar lesson per week.

Math - Arwen is working on Singapore 3.  Kali is doing Singapore 5 with a plan to also complete (or at least begin) level 6.  Level 6 is not has long as the other levels. Sierra is finishing up Thinkwell PreAlgebra and will begin Thinkwell Algebra in about two weeks.  I am loving Thinkwell.  Sierra can pretty much do math on her own now with the video lessons.

History - We are studying American history by reading through The History of US.  We read 10 chapters per week.  I was hoping to get through the series this year, but we may have to finish the last book at the beginning of next school year. Sierra is reading Don't Know Much about History on her own.  Kali is reading the Jean Fritz history books as they tie in with our other reading.

Science - We are working through Apologia Elementary Science Human Anatomy and Physiology.

Foreign Language - Sierra and Kali are using the free Live Mocha program.  Sierra is studying French and Kali is studying Italian.

Music - Sierra is taking flute lessons.  Kali is taking violin lessons.  Arwen is taking piano lessons.  All 3 girls are in a choir.

Art - We aren't doing any formal art lessons.  Art just seems to happen naturally at our house.

And that's it.  We have finally found a schedule that works ( I'll post that later). Most of the curriculum is a continuation of what we used last year. It was an easy beginning of the school year because we just kind of jumped in where we left off with the same schedule and curricula.