Curricula Goals 2016-2017

Vocabulary: Wordly Wise Book 3 and 4
Handwriting: Zaner Bloser workbooks
Grammar: Finish First Language Lessons 3 and do all of FLL 4
Spelling: Finish All About Spelling level 3 and begin AAS level 4
Math: Beast Academy
     Early Bird: Work through level 3 and hopefully complete by the end of the school year
     Builder Boy: Work through both levels 3 and 4
Science: (Biology year) 3 weeks Intro to Biology, 18 weeks Animal Kingdom, 1 week DNA and inherited traits, 8 weeks Human Body, 6 weeks Plants
History: Story of the World Ancients
     Early Bird: Read chapter and answer questions from activity guide, do narration, coloring page from activity guide
     Builder Boy: Listen to chapter, outline history encyclopedia pages or paragraph
     Both: map work from activity guide, time line, SOTW chapter tests, occasional activities, additional reading

Writing will be folded into science and history until comfort level has been reached, at which point we will continue with 4 Square Writing and How To Tell a Story.

I am going to try giving the boys their very first assigned reading assignments and accompanying project starting next week. We'll see how that goes.

I would like to eventually add in Beginning Editing, Word Roots study, and Logic again.

First Day and Week of School, Take 5

Another First Day of School happened this week. Our 5th one so far. I took pictures and then tried not to cry over the obvious differences in the boys' faces over the years of First Days. Despite Lady Bug waking me up at 2am and not falling asleep until 6am almost every night, I really feel like I rocked our first week of the new school year. And that's funny, because the me of 5 years ago would never have considered what we did this week for school as "rocking it." We didn't do a single project or craft! How is that good enough?! But we actually got all of our subjects done at a sustainable level. And that's key for me.

Don't get me wrong, I still love the idea of the crafts and awesome projects laid out in the Activity Guide for Story of the World. I want to do ALL THE THINGS and have fun! But I also want to homeschool consistently for more than a few months at a time. I managed to homeschool last year in a few big chunks with a multi-month break for the fourth move in four years. However, despite the very full school files, it doesn't feel like it was quite enough. And that's with unschooling the science and history that year.

The last two weeks of July we did morning subjects and a fun engineering project in the afternoon. It was a really good way to ease us back into out schedule. The first week of August we did morning subjects plus an afternoon subject. I am hoping that over the months we will find time to add in the less basic subjects like editing, word root study, and formal logic. Right now we're doing vocabulary, handwriting, grammar, spelling, math, science, history, and writing. And it feels really good to be getting things done.

And no, I didn't make a mistake on Early Bird's sign. He's been doing the same work as his brother in most subjects now for a few years and his lowest grade level subject is math which he is working on at a 3rd grade level. So he has officially "skipped" a grade even though he did all the work.