So, our main schooling part of the year is over, and we're on to our lighter summer program. This was The Plan set up at the beginning of the "school year." And here's what really happened.
2013-2014 School Year Curriculum Plans:
We will be following the Classical Trivium plan laid out in the Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer.
- Reading: Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading 4x/week, keep a reading log, make a narrative once a week No reading log happened, nor did weekly narratives. We did, however, do pretty well being consistant with OPGTR, even though most of it is review for the boys by now. We're still plugging away though the summer and we'll likely be finished before we re-start in September.
- Spelling: All About Spelling 4x/week (not starting yet) We started AAS in late winter of 2013; in a very disorgnaized fashion and then we stopped for a while.
- Grammar: First Language Lessons 4x/week We finished FLL1!!!!!! We didn't move on to FLL2, but we finished the first book!!!
- Handwriting: Zaner-Bloser Handwriting 4x/week I'm trying to remember; did we do this....oh, right, Builder Boy finished his 1st grade book and then we took a break from it; for the rest of the year.
- Writing: Writing With Ease 4x/week (starting November) We started it! We didn't start in November, but we did start it and have made it more than a third of the way through.
- Math: Right Start Mathematics 4x/week Oh boy; math has been....weird. You can read more about that here.
- History: Story of the World: Ancient Times and Activity Guide 2x/week. This curriculum also suggests using it with Usborne Encyclopedia of World History (Usborne Internet Linked)
and The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia
. Continue with the series with Story of the World: The Middle Ages and Activity Guide. Nope; never happened. Not once the entire year. But we did do a Knights Unit Study and Lapbook.
- Science: finish Space School using Exploring Space
with the Usborne First Encyclopedia of Space . Then finish using Evan-Moor ScienceWorks for Kids books Learning about Animals
, Learning About My Body
, Learning about Plants . Nope, none of that happened either. Instead they watched and memorized all the Magic School Bus episodes. And watched some Bill Nye videos, too. And Wild Kratts and other learning shows. And I attempted a growing science lesson, but my black thumb got in the way. I think we read some books from the library, and they asked a lot of questions that I answered. Oh! And we started a Magic School Bus Human Body Kit. Did I forget to blog about that? And we did a month of Time4Learning; they did science on that, too. And we visited a hands-on, kid exploration science museum. And watched some new Sid the Science Kid dvds on our road trip.
Extra Day:
- Music Uhhh, nope, unless you count that one time we looked up how many strings a piano has and all the Piano Guys YouTube videos we watched together.
- Art Another nope.
- Holiday Study This actually happened! Not as often as I planned, but more than nothing!
- I Love America This happened....once. Some year I'm going to make it through that awesome book.
- various Scholastic workbooks Hmmmmm.....I know I bought a bunch of those on the Dollar Days Deal....where did they go.......
- Nature Connection Another big nope.
So, I'm thinking for next school year, I'm going to keep my expectations a bit more simpler until I can prove to myself that I can actually accomplish what I plan.
Newbies to homeschooling: please don't read this and be discouraged. Rather understand that it is better to under plan, and add based on ability and interest rather than make a big, guilt inducing list. It's taken me two years to learn that. And to learn that just because I don't have something on The Plan, doesn't mean the kids aren't going to learn anything for that.
Didn't you also do Dreambox Math and Reading Eggs? That counts too!
ReplyDeleteGood point!
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