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.

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.