2008-2009 Schedule

I've finally narrowed down our resources for the next year. For those that might be reading from DeafVillage and are working on 'listening' exercises, you may find the music history and poetry resources interesting and helpful- something different than typical listening work.

I will say I am probably 'more' eclectic than 100% Charlotte Mason. A suggested schedule on SCM indicates heavy history and not starting science, other than nature study, until 4th grade. After much prayer and looking at Andrew's interest, I do plan to do a full science curriculum and use history and literature to 'practice' our reading. I will likely move back and forth between non-fiction history living books and literature, at least at the start, as I think doing everything every day would be too much for us to handle.

Math: We are going to stick with RightStart for the first half of the year at least. We still have half of book B to do. I also have a few other math resources tucked away for variation. (ie: I purchased way too much last year but can draw on it as needed.)

Science: I blogged about this a week ago. Since then I have discovered NOEO Science Kits and I am going to purchase the Chemistry I kit and supplement with additional books as Andrew desires- and as I find on ebay;)

Copywork: I am going to use resources from Simply Charlotte Mason, Scripture and verses from God's Wisdom for Little Boys. I plan to use paper from Donna Young. I am also going to purchase StartWrite software. I have looked at this for several years and think it would be useful at this point. Oh and I almost forgot; we do typing. We are using Type to Learn which has worked quite well. To some degree it is out of the 'zone' for Andrew; however, he has started using the internet and I would like to cement good habits vs. the hunt and peck method. We will be taking it slow. We have been doing the program all year and only made it to level 6. And I just took him back to level 2 to cement more good habits.

Poetry: A Child's Introduction to Poetry has a CD that is played with the book. Any chance I get to introduce another's voice, I take it. I will also be using various poem books including A Llama who had no Pajama. I found this while cleaning the "books from last year." I may have forgotten to mention that Andrew loves poetry. Check out his blog for his latest creations.

Music and Art Appreciation: Hymns for a Kids' Heart part two, The Story of the Orchestra, and Can you Hear it? .All of these come with a CD. The Hymns also have sheet music included in the book. The last book also contains famous pictures of art paired with appropriate music. I have written about this on my art and music blog. I am also considering Art Through Children's Literature.

Art: Drawing with Children. It is for the novice to teach. Enough said;)

OK...so what's missing...History, Literature / Reading, and Bible. First on Bible. As I was praying over everything and what to do next year I really thought that Bible shouldn't be a 'subject' but should be wrapped up into everything we do. That said, I plan to start the day with some sort of Praise and Worship and some Bible reading. I will have additional books lined up in addition to the Bible to help us. I am going to also download some music to the ipod that he enjoys. He thinks classical music and hymns are 'too pretty.' I am still going to do them weekly but daily I want to put on praise and worship music that he really enjoys. He likes things along the lines of "This is the day the Lord has made."

Second, History; I keep going back and forth in my mind on what to do. I think I will purchase the D'Aulaire packet from Beautiful Feet and call it a year. I love those books and even though we have read Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, I would love to re-read them. (So much for reading a book one time as outlined by Charlotte.) I was planning on continuing with SOTW but it just isn't right for us.

Third, Literature and Reading; I have a list of books 'left over' from my Sonlight core curriculum that I purchased. I am going to start with these and see where Andrew's interests lie. I will post these as I go along. We are reading in EVERY subject and will use narration to ferret out where he is at for reading and for listening.

I am continuing to refine our narrating activities. They will be oral this year but I will have Andrew draw pictures as a way of narrating and I also plan to use graphic organizers as a way for us to keep track of longer stories.

As a final note; We are going to continue to work on listening by using hearing journey exercises. I need to tackle speech with Andrew and will probably start with the Straight Talk program that I already purchased. I also have the Balametrics program which is similar to BrainGym in nature. We can call that PE. And of course there are all the sensory activities in the various SI books that are on the shelf.

As I type this I see that it will be a challenge to do everything although we obviously won't do every subject every day. And I am not even focusing on things such as language arts and spelling. As I map out the semester and weekly schedules, I will likely pare things down, at least in the beginning.