for Kindergarten. Well, the beginnings of a plan anyway. You’d think after 4 months of research and note-taking (and clearly not blogging) and fussing with HST (Home School Tracker) I’d have a pretty concise set of lesson plans! Those are coming along, but for now I think mostly we have a good skeletal framework. Some of you may be thinking “that is WAY too much planning for a kindergarten curriculum!” – but I am such a scatterbrained, unorganized thinker. Truly. Without a daily plan and boxes to check, I very soon get overwhelmed and lose track of where we need to go. At 5, I think it’s quite beneficial for my little kindergartener (!) to have a teacher who knows exactly what is supposed to be taught at any given time of day. So for the benefit of those few family and friends who wish to know where I’ve been hiding the entire summer… here are the choices:
Schedule: This year we will continue with our 4 day a week program, saving Fridays for our new local teaching Coop. Coop days will include a program for our little 2 year old DD too, and possible a music program. One small glitch: This scardy-cat mom will have to learn to teach a room full of other people’s kids from time to time, as the Coop is not run by one teacher (apart from the music program), but is a shared program with other moms who will take turns at the helm. Yuck. I am not looking forward to that part. I love teaching. But not in front of a crowd. Still think this is going to be a great experience for the kids and so I’m preparing to make a big silly fool of myself in front of other 5, 6 and 7 year olds. And, on another topic entirely, we are nearly finished potty training our DD (2). Very big deal. HUGE. (That’s my darling daughter’s favorite word… that and, “oh, man…” which she says when she doesn’t get her way!)
MAIN: We will be using Tapestry of Grace, Year 2: Between Ancient and Modern as our core curriculum, but I’ve mixed up the schedule quite a bit to make it more appropriate for Kindergarten. After reading through the first two units, which include literally hundreds of pages of teachers notes and reading assignments, I’m convinced this part of our “plan” will be more of an education for me than my children. The worldview assignments are rich and varied and I’m certain my little guy will have a blast learning about knights and castles and kings and explorers, but I’ll be studying the differences between the Southern and Northern Renaissance and the various influences of these movements on the Reformation. Which, in theory, will prepare me to teach the same topics at a higher level next time we cycle through this period of history, but in reality is just plain fun. I’m in heaven! I could write about TOG for hours, and prob. will in another post! My only real struggle with TOG is the decision of the fantastic folks (they really are super friendly and responsive) at Tapestry to refuse access to HST daily lesson plans created by other moms who want to share, or even providing their own version of downloadable lesson plans (I’d happily pay for this privilege!).
In the lower grades, when the student really can’t “plan” their own schedule every week (what TOG suggests in order to encourage discipline and self-government), it’s near to impossible for the mom to keep good records without going nuts. With over 70+ resources, just keeping track of the reading log is a monumental effort! (Here is a link to the TOG forum discussion on HST) They finally posted a “sample” daily lesson plan over on their site last week (and it’s great!)… but the mom of Lower Grammar students still needs to do all that work in planning out the daily assignments for the remaining 35 weeks (I’ve logged easily 40+ hours doing exactly this and I’m nowhere near finished) that would otherwise be provided in a plan like Sonlight.
If you homeschool in California and you’ve been following the court case this year, you will understand why I want to have my records complete, extensive and, well… perfect.
Sonlight and KONOS were the runners-up. Overall I’m really happy with TOG, despite the scheduling weakness. It’s just a top-notch, Ivy-League prep style education – in the best sense. If you complete all the assignments as listed for the Rhetoric Stage, I’m convinced your students will have been exposed to more good literature and philosophy than 95% of recent Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Columbia graduates. TOG is unmatched. Which is why I need to start now to prepare myself to teach that stage!
Math: We will continue with Shiller Math 1 & 2 starting up at lesson 117, where we left off in June. This is my little guys favorite subject and while I debated switching over to Math-U-See (and the DVDs that go with this program!), we will be sticking with Shiller for the next year or two. I have a slight philosophical conflict with the program. Dorothy Sayers would challenge the teacher to do more drilling and work less with abstract ideas at this early stage of learning, but for many reasons this Montessori based math program is engaging for him, and that is a top priority for me this year.
Science: We loved Apologia Astronomy last year! We used only the parts that worked in a pre-school setting (projects and read-alouds), and there is still plenty to explore should we want to circle back in a few years. We are now moving on to the newly released Land Animals of the Sixth Day with much anticipation. Dinosaurs are included in our topic line-up, and lots of gardening and field trips (like Grossology at the local Science Museum) to supplement, thanks to our new COOP!
Language Arts: This is where “the plan” gets a little tricky expensive. I’ve spent the bulk of the summer trying to get my mind wrapped around the Spalding method of teaching reading and spelling with some success. I’m sold on the vertical method of teaching reading/spelling: basically where all the sounds of each letter/phonogram are taught first instead of all the short vowel sounds first, and then the long, for instance, and then word families. And I’ve written up a gazillion lesson plans using the Spell to Write and Read Wise Guide Spelling Lists (Which we used last year at a slower pace). And trying to fit in a local STWR training seminar into our schedule, with no success. And then, right when I had the entire year planned out, I stumbled upon The Phonics Road. Wow. It’s still “Spalding” based, but with 2 important differences: (1) It has lesson plans (thank you Barbara Beers!!!) so I don’t have to spend every moment my husband is home (thank you my patient love!) trying to create my own lesson plans in addition to teaching myself graduate-level language theory. And (2) It has DVD teacher training disks for the entire curriculum! And (3 – I know I said 2, but I just thought of another very important part) the program actually looks like FUN! The entire Phonics Road program (up to about 4th grade and then it segues into the Latin Road to English Grammar, which I am also excited about!) has a construction theme with “tool boxes” and “blueprints” and “building codes” to get little ones a bit more excited about spelling rules. So far Matt has memorized all but the most advanced phonograms (and even those he gets right more times than I do), he can break down nearly any word by clapping syllables, and finger spell aloud with me (all this thanks to the excellent Spell to Write and Read program). But reading and spelling are his least favorite lessons nonetheless… he consistently says they’re boring. Not sure where he picked that word up, but in this case, he is absolutely right. No matter how much phonogram bingo we do, it’s just not an exciting subject yet. Once he is reading fluently, I think he will have a change of heart. Until then, having a few catchy “Bob the Builder” type themes will come in mighty handy around here!
I’ve also ordered up Cursive First… I’ll let you know what I think once work a bit through the program. So far we are loving the cursive sandpaper letters. Even our 2 year old loves to practice her letters this way!
Art: Artistic Pursuits: Books 1 & 2. Tapestry of Grace suggests Book 2 as a supplement to their “core” studies, but I liked the few pages I could preview on CBD in this program and ended up ordering the wrong book! Book 1 instead of Book 2. But I enjoyed it so much I decided to keep it anyway and I just ordered up Book 2 also. We’ll be adding this about 3 weeks into the school year so we can get a handle on the main subjects first. I might make an exception though, for the incredibly messy make-at-home oil pastel scratch board projects… I loved those when I was a kid! We may have to try that our first week. Just FYI. These are not cheap art programs. And you need to source and buy all your own supplies (no, office depot will not carry the required materials). But they look easy to use for the artistically challenged (I love art, but technically have no skills to pass on to my children in this regard!) AND I know I will use these for years to come at different ages. So there. That’s my weak justification.
Music: Stories of the Great Composers, with CD. I will be reading these stories aloud and listening to some of the “great compositions” during our lunch breaks. This brilliant time management idea I picked up from a fabulous home school blogger whose name now escapes me! I’m not sure how else we’ll fit classical music in on a daily basis (we already have a sing-along program with Bible Memory Songs in the morning), but I so want to do this. Another option is to outsource this subject to a teacher in our new COOP on Fridays.
Nature Study: A subject all on it’s own because I think the study of God’s creation is awfully important at this stage. We are one of those radical home schoolers who believe in a literal 7 day creation and want to reinforce our strong (and faith-building) belief in a God who can do miracles. Because I truly believe my children are living, breathing miracles. Yes, I want to teach my little ones all about modern scientific discoveries… but I also want to instill a hope in God who is not limited by the laws of nature, but indeed created them and governs them! And so, in an effort to balance out the push towards all things evolutionary in both the secular and Christian media… I read from Genesis (crazy me). And, I want to carve out some time each week to get out of the house and really hunt down the local natural treasures. Even the snails that are eating all my green beans and climbing up into our engines. Or maybe it’s rats that are catching the snails and crawling up into our car engines? We have various theories as to how they actually get up there. But however it happens, they get cooked. Crispy. Nice topic for our first week of Charlotte Mason-inspired nature study, huh? Morning Star Learning has some great natural study bundles here.
Our Morning/Circle Time is a combination of singing, dancing (I have very energetic morning kids) and memory work (everything from verses, to continents to math facts, to phone numbers) and devotions. Sounds like alot, but it’s really less than 20 minutes.
Foreign Language: We are continuing with Bonjour Les Amis and our favorite cat Moustache, but I’m still looking for a good supplement. Ideally we’d enroll him in the local 3-day a week afternoon French immersion classes. But that is not going to happen this year. I’m hoping to continue on with French for the next 2 years and transition into Latin once we progress from The Phonics Road to The Latin Road. I wish we could do both! This is the only academic subject (at this age) where I feel outsourcing would provide a better result. Oh. And I should mention my sweet husband wants me to teach Chinese at some point. I will definitely be outsourcing THAT one.
PE: Karate is on the short list for our PE requirement. I like the schedule and the discipline. It’s never too early to learn how to do a proper push-up. Not that I can do anything close to a proper push-up. Football was the number one request this year by DS, but for some reason I think 5 is a bit young for organized Pop Warner. Any dissenters out there? Maybe I’m just in mourning. I can’t watch any football now, knowing Farve is playing for the Jets. I’m happy that Rodgers is getting his chance, finally, but still. Now it’s time for my PE requirement: laundry.
P.S. Please excuse the lacking photos and links. I’ve already exceeded my personal “blog” time limit and truly need to peel myself away from this machine. But I love to read what other HS moms are planning for the year (pictures or no), so I’m just publishing it as is!
