Friday, October 16, 2009

Second Semester 2009-2010

note: I lost half this post but want to put it out there and just make my own handwritten notes as it has been a work in progress for a week. I hate it when that happens!

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I decided this year to do our plan in quarter increments. This achieves several things for me the first being self esteem...mine. And Andrews. When I plan out the whole year, things change, Andrew does some things way ahead of schedule but some far behind. By doing it quarterly, I can tailor each term to his needs more specifically.


One big change is that we will be starting RDI or Relationship Development Intervention. I hesitate to even plan our academic term because that will be a large chunk of our time but I don't feel that our current plan is all that aggressive and I am a planner by nature.




Science
Last term this was a loosely planed subject. Andrew took an interest in the planets so I dusted off Appologia's Exploring Creation with Astronomy. I learned quite a bit in the first few chapters myself. We are reading it at our own pace and I have yet to do any experiments- in this book or any others. I dislike experiments. I must break out of my mold.

I love librarything and my effort is paying off. I can go there and see what other books I have on the subject of Astronomy. By no means do I have all our books cataloged, but there are enough, and they are in various specific locations though the house, so within five minutes or so I can typically find a book I need. (Those of you that have seen my house do not believe this do you??) I plan to read When is a Planet Not a Planet? by Elaine Scott. I have several other books listed under Creation Science in my librarything and a few more in Earth Sciences. I think I will do some 'crossover' poetry activities with The Earth is Painted Green.

I am not an 'unschooler' but I love going with Andrew's interest in the area of science. It makes life so much more enjoyable.

Math
We are working (aka stuck) on regrouping which, I have been told, is a difficult concept. I was toying around with moving toward multiplication but after finding some online help, including this youtube, I have decided to continue working on this but in new ways. I think the manipulatives will lend themselves to some guided participation.

I do also plan some living math books but have not found any specific this topic. A living math website has this list list for possible subtraction books. I found several on my librarything that I will try and read. In addition I want to do more math games. Oh..and Halloween is coming up which will lend itself to 101 Things To Do With Your Halloween Candy.

Social Studies and Handwriting

This is where I lost most of my post. For social studies we are continuing to do Hero Tales. I will blog all we have done on that at a later date. We continue to work our way through the alphabet lower case for handwriting using Smart Start paper.

Bible
We are reading from the Egermeier Story Bible. It is written as a story (go figure) and we are both thinking about Scripture in a new way. We are reading our way through the new testament to focus on Jesus love instead of the heavy hand of God that seems to jump out at Andrew in the old testament. I considered taking his Bibles to Kinkos and having them re-bound into New and Old Testaments and hiding the Old. For now we will just work on reading together.

Reading
On a recent trip to the library I picked up several audio books including two Hank Zipzer books. I want to get back to books on CD with the book in hand. I want to work on Andrew listening to new and varied voices. Andrew reads almost all day every day that he isn't drawing or doing other school.

Art etc...
I still want to do art, poetry, hymns and other 'electives' but I think these will wait for formal study. He draws every day and I do wish to find him a teacher to eventually take him to the next level. He is already beyond me in technique and perspectives (although that doesn't take much.) He enjoys doing his own thing here and so I am not sure I should mess with it too much.






2 comments:

argsmommy said...

I love Library Thing too, but mine is not nearly as organized as yours. : ) We just started EC Astronomy too, so I was very excited to see your list of science books.

Kellie

Laura at By the Bushel said...

Hi there- skipped over from Kellie's blog- what a wonderful piece on the playground(wordless wednesday w/captions) and appreciate so much mentioning the library thing. I have it, but haven't thought of it as an organizational tool! Great- God bless you in your efforts! love the counting candy ideas. Can't wait to toss the stuff! :)

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