You know you're homeschoolers when ...
0. You've been doing a soft-start to school for a couple of weeks already, especially with the rising 9th grader, but in fact everyone kept up with math most of the summer, the middle kid has been writing fiction non-stop with her friends, and the youngest has been learning lots of recipes.
1. You plan to do your formal start "a little early" this year, and do so, only to learn after the fact that all the PS students in the area are starting the same day.
2. You deliberately don't take pictures on the first day of school because several years ago you made the kids "Not My First Day of..." pictures to color and now they won't have it any other way.
3. When you hand your daughter her "Not My First Day of 7th Grade" sheet, she says "Oh, am I in 7th already?" And she isn't joking.
4. Getting up early for school means breakfast is served at 9 am.
(And it's Hard for 2/3 of the kids to make it! )
5. First day plans to teach outside are derailed by the neighbors' yard-care service deciding to start up their leaf blower at 11 am
6. Everyone (except maybe the High Schooler) is pretty much done before noon.
Seriously, it's going pretty well with 2 days of real school under our belts.
Seriously, it's going pretty well with 2 days of real school under our belts.
The summer flew by at light speed this year: each kid had a week of camp, Grace had several days of Nationals competition in July, dance and TKD never let up, I'm still on the Family Camp planning committee, and to top everything else off, in late July my parents moved from Gresham to Beaverton after 49 years in the same house. Shockingly that imagined unscheduled week for curriculum research and school planning never materialized, and the task had to be accomplished in the dribs and drabs of time left over - often while the girls were at dance. As we started "for real" this week I had it driven home that that this meant certain things never got entirely finished on my end.
But let's review the plan of record anyway.
History
This year we are doing History (Notgrass Exploring America, a high school textbook) and Bible together. Practically that means we read the TTB.org prayer team e-mail together and pray, and work on our Bible memory project. (This year we're re-starting Philippians with some review of chapter 1.)
I intend to add some Bible study to this time over the next few weeks using resources from Not Consumed, but I haven't done my part on that yet. Then we read the current chapter of "Exploring America" aloud. Like last year Grace will take notes and Lucy mostly just listens in. James rotates between following along in a second copy of the book and taking notes. Unlike last year I am expecting James to step up and do additional readings, unit projects, reviews, and tests. We'll see how that goes.
Vocabulary
We are also doing Vocab together, using the Jensen's Vocabulary book for the 3rd year in a row, but this time with some serious modifications. While I love building familiarity with Latin and now Greek roots, I was never was fully convinced that the analysis worksheets (where each word is traced to it its exact root and affixes) were adding a lot of value. We also mutually agreed that the 4th worksheet where you plug the week's words into sentences was not great. The sentences could be obscure, sometimes above even James's level, and sometimes even ambiguous. So this year we are doing the following:
Day 1: Match words to definitions as a team
Day 2,3: Write out definitions for 6 words (chosen by Mom)
Day 4: Write 5 sentences unambiguously using one vocab word (assigned by Mom) and turn in
Day 1: Match words to definitions as a team
Day 2,3: Write out definitions for 6 words (chosen by Mom)
Day 4: Write 5 sentences unambiguously using one vocab word (assigned by Mom) and turn in
Day 5: Match the 20 vocab words to the sentences written by everyone.
We are also going to start doing a full unit per week instead of every other week.
This means we will run out of units perhaps as early as Christmas, so I will need to find a new Vocab resource for the rest of the year.
We are also going to start doing a full unit per week instead of every other week.
This means we will run out of units perhaps as early as Christmas, so I will need to find a new Vocab resource for the rest of the year.
Foreign Language
We are adding Spanish this year, and have chosen "See it and Say It Flip Flop Spanish," not coincidentally the same resource the Meyers are trying out. It's conversational rather than grammar focused, and theoretically suitable for ages 3 to 93. It's only take 15 mn 3x/week. They suggest that it be recorded as "Conversational Spanish" on a transcript and followed up with their grammar-based study in the last two years of HS.
But we're not starting that until tomorrow!
But we're not starting that until tomorrow!
Science
Choosing science gave me fits this year. James is sticking with Apologia for the third year in a row, but we are going to go with the mostly online version. (Again, not coincidentally the same route the Meyers took last year.) I am also going to stop obsessing over labs, especially since it's Biology this year and No one wants to dissect anything. He'll do some of them and watch the videos of the rest.
But I didn't really want to do Apologia General Science with Grace. I asked her what she wanted to do and she freely admitted that nothing at all sounded interesting. She and Lucy reject entirely any video-based course, which ruled out the easiest open-and-go options I had recommended to me.
I started to get excited about a literature-based (read: Mom spends hours and potentially many dollars assembling books from a curated list) Botany course, but when I took Grace to Exodus Books she unexpectedly got super excited about a biology book. That book was at the HS level and I eventually decided against it, but she accepted a middle-school level biology book as substitute and she remains excited about what she's learning after the first couple of days. There is a lot of fascinating information, but it is decidedly light on tests and experiments, which is exactly what she needs this year.
Lucy will tentatively read a bunch of the botany books I checked out from that resource list at her own pace: she was eager to start paging through "Wicked Plants" today. Other things she and I may do include planting stuff (herbs?) in our new raised planters, and maybe... maybe! get some chickens. Maybe.
I started to get excited about a literature-based (read: Mom spends hours and potentially many dollars assembling books from a curated list) Botany course, but when I took Grace to Exodus Books she unexpectedly got super excited about a biology book. That book was at the HS level and I eventually decided against it, but she accepted a middle-school level biology book as substitute and she remains excited about what she's learning after the first couple of days. There is a lot of fascinating information, but it is decidedly light on tests and experiments, which is exactly what she needs this year.
Lucy will tentatively read a bunch of the botany books I checked out from that resource list at her own pace: she was eager to start paging through "Wicked Plants" today. Other things she and I may do include planting stuff (herbs?) in our new raised planters, and maybe... maybe! get some chickens. Maybe.
Math
Math we are doing exactly the same as last year. That means that Lucy continues to plug along in Life of Fred (current book: Fractions), and Grace continues the "Learn Math Fast" program we switched to for her mid-year. James technically finished the Beginning Algebra LoF text at the end of last school year, but we both agreed that he had not mastered the material and spent some time this summer reviewing. I suspect we will spend at least another 4-6 weeks in review before moving to Advanced Algebra. I'll be honest: this math is starting to stretch me. I am having to learn from the book, and while I am catching on much faster than James, I'm definitely making mistakes too. And yet it's also kinda fun. There hasn't been much cause to really stretch my technical brain for a few years now.
Programming
James is adding Programming as an elective. He identified an online course from Brilliant.com that is not aimed at school kids specifically, but also doesn't assume any knowledge of either programming concepts or coding. It's designed to run 15 minutes per lesson, so he does as many per day as he has energy for. He started it about 3 week ago, and had progressed to Python programming in their sandbox by last week. Today I had to help quite a bit with a program to generate a Fibonacci sequence. Please note that I have never learned Python. This, like the math, should definitely be interesting!
Writing
Writing was another last-minute change. James is not going to have a formal writing program this year, but instead focus on the writing assignments from history and possibly a few additional book reports. (prediction: those probably won't happen. But I hope I am wrong.)
I was going to have Lucy and Grace finish the "Jump In" textbook they all three did last year, but at Exodus books Grace happened across the IEW Narnia-correlated course "Song of the Lion." She immediately got excited about it, and I was happy to change my plans since I already have some experience with their courses from James's 7th grade year. IEW *wants* to be highly teacher-led, maybe almost scripted. But you can ignore all that and let it be largely student lead if you choose. We chose! I will also have Lucy do this course.
I was going to have Lucy and Grace finish the "Jump In" textbook they all three did last year, but at Exodus books Grace happened across the IEW Narnia-correlated course "Song of the Lion." She immediately got excited about it, and I was happy to change my plans since I already have some experience with their courses from James's 7th grade year. IEW *wants* to be highly teacher-led, maybe almost scripted. But you can ignore all that and let it be largely student lead if you choose. We chose! I will also have Lucy do this course.
Grammar
Finally, for the moment we are sticking with Easy Grammar Daily Grams for grammar practice for everyone. That is definitely open to change. I looked briefly into the IEW "Fix It" series, but my gut tells me it will be too heavy. Philosophically I am far more concerned about their ability to write a coherent and well-crafted sentence with good mechanics than I am about their ability to list the 12 helping verbs, 43 forms of "to be" and 87 prepositions. So there's a good chance that I will let even Daily Grams fade into the sunset as the year progresses. If I could find a resource specifically tuned to help students identify and avoid run-on sentences, I would be a happy homeschool mom indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment