Fall 2009 'Plan"

As an initial note, I am not going to put links in for the books. You can find most of them, especially the living books, on my librarything linked at the side of the blog. If you have a specific question about a book, speak up!

Math

I have four goals for the fall / early winter:

• Cement addition facts including regrouping
• Cement subtraction facts not including regrouping
• Complete 1 - 3 practical math units
• Increase CONFIDENCE in math ability and attention span spent on math. (15 minute max.)

Resources for math include:

• Primary Math: for practical math
• Minquon Math for fact work
• Living math books to show application

Reading / Bible/History / Social Studies / Geography / Handwriting / the habit of attention

Andrew loves hearing about missionaries. I am going to start the year out reading from Hero Tales. There are about four short stories for each missionary in the book. Each one should take us about 15 minutes to read. I plan to use oral narration instead of the questions presented and work on the habit of attention during these sessions. This goes along well a CM quote that a friend just presented recently

Volume 6, page 257-258
Give children the sort of knowledge that they are fitted to assimilate, served
in a literary medium, and they will pay great attention. What next? A clever
questionnaire? Questions, as Dr. Johnson told us, are an intrusion and a bore;
but here we have a word of ancient wisdom for our guidance; "The mind can know
nothing except what it can express in the form of an answer to a question put by
the mind to itself." Observe, not a question put by an outsider, but, put by the
mind to itself. We all know the trick of it. If we want to tell the substance of
a conversation, a sermon, a lecture, we 'go over it in our minds' first and the
mind puts its question to itself, the same question over and over again, no more
than,What next? and lo, we have it, the whole thing complete!

I do find 'questions' tiresome. Andrew always has better questions than I could possibly come up with anyway. When you don't ASK but just discuss (the grand conversation), you actually do get a grasp as to what a child really understands. You can also see them make some incredible connections. Of course this does require the time to sit there and discuss. Thankfully I do very much enjoy this part of homeschooling. I will say that I believe this can be done in school as well. Instead of tedious worksheets, a class of any grade can sit and discuss what was read. Large classrooms can be broken up into smaller groups. And this would be less for the teacher to grade!

For Bible I also plan to use Leading Little Ones to God. I am going to use the books of the Bible as spelling words. As various people and places come up I have a very interesting reference book that includes Biblical maps, timelines and charts. I will be using all of these for geography. We have a giant world map in the kitchen!

I will be using Leading Little Ones, Hero Tales and the Bible for copy work. I recently bought StartWrite software and will (ideally) type out Andrew's copy work for the week. This does seem like cheating..for the teacher. Shouldn't I be improving my horrific handwriting as well? We use Smart Start Writing Paper. This is a recent switch and is working well for us.

I am making a very cool summary project for all of the missionaries which will demonstrate Andrew's narration abilities, handwriting and grammar. That blog post will follow.


Science

Science I am going to mix it up for science. Every year I have a plan and it never works. I have oodles of living books and experiments. I think I will start with the Christian Liberty Nature books and see where it leads. I WILL do one experiment per week. That is unless anyone wants to take this part over?? (hint hint.) Andrew did just mention that 'Daddy knows a lot about science."

I do plan to read for fall sciene: Why do Leaves Change color?, From Seed to Pumpkin, and Look What I did with a leaf! The last one will also include a fun art project. All these books are pretty basic but I am hoping they will lead to rabbit trails that include outdoor adventures, weather studies and more.

Basically, science planning is a work in progress.

I really want to do art. I am going to wing it for a few weeks and then get a plan in place. I do have some ideas in my head including the incredible resource I found for free last year in the area of art history. Perhaps I will start up the Art/Music blog again!

Extras: I have a book called What the World Eats which I find very interesting. Two books I picked up some time ago are Maps & Globes by Jack Knowlton and My World by Ira Wolfman. Andrew has read both of these books by himself but I want to read them together. In addition, I plan to read 'from Akebu to Zapotec...A Book of Bibleless Peoples" by June Hathersmith.

Literature reading includes Great Joy by Kate DiCamillo and Teddy's Button.

I also found an interesting Graphic Organizer at a used book store. I want to use it to talk about different perspectives characters have in a book. I think I will use that as my primary backdrop for fall teaching while reading....Character Perspective.

Now all of you that know me and what planning means..and what happens with Andrew and plans...can stop laughing. A girl has gotta start somewhere.