I've finally picked out our home school curriculum for this up coming year. I've made some changes from what I originally thought I was going to do but I am excited about starting a new year. I'll finish up Kindergarten with Ev in May and then we'll have maybe two weeks and then we will start up again. I had thought I was going to give myself and the kids a full month for a break in between our school years but then I realized that the kids really don't know any different and it would almost be easier if we just kept going rather than spend time out of routine to then go back into a routine. My desire is to finish Ev and Elijah's full year of 1st and K before we go back to America for a few months, in about a year from now. I'll do stuff with them in America but I would rather not drag all of our supplies/books back to America when we have limited space in our bags to come back!
Last year for Kinder I created my own phonics/language arts/reading program. I threw in some Abeka resources with that which have been helpful for Ev. I did Abeka Math with Ev and then had created my own Social Studies/Science study but haven't been able to get to them very much. We also did a free Bible curriculum that I found on the web.
So this year for Elijah's Kindergarten year I will continue to use my phonics program. He'll do Abeka Math and we will start using Grapevine Bible Curriculum. I'm really excited about this program for a couple of reasons. The levels are multi age. The one I picked to start with is for 5-7 year olds, which as I start teaching my two oldest I am going to do Bible time together and since they both fall in the age range it will be so nice.
For Ev this year she will also be starting the Grapevine Curriculum. We are switching to MathUSee and she will start All About Spelling program. What I've read about this is great and it is not only a spelling program but phonics is adding in too. I'll continue to do my phonics program with her and her Science/Social Studies is a thematic unit throughout the year that I did when I taught First grade. I originally starting teaching this in Kansas and then when I moved to Texas they let me adapt it to the Texas curriculum standards. The best thing is that I've taught this for 6 years and can remember projects and things we did, along with the fact that I have lots of teacher resource books, books and other resources for it. I'll use the handwriting and writing programs I did when I taught in Texas.
In addition to my new curriculum for the year I've decided I am going to use the workbox organization system created by Sue Patrick. If you don't know what it is you should check out her website or search Pinterest for workboxes and it will come up with tons of ideas or ways others have implemented the system. I have been wondering how I am going to make teaching two levels work and I think this system will help our day flow. From what I've heard it has really helped other moms homeschooling multiple grades. I've even figured out how to write lesson plans for all of my kids (with Ian I will be doing pre-school activities) on one week of plans. Yeah for not having to have 3 separate lesson plans for each of my kids! I'm going to use magazine files for my kid's boxes. With the Ikea bookshelves we own I can fit 6 magazine files on one shelf. My two older kids will each have a shelf and Ian will have his set up differently. Todd is going to buy me some Ikea white magazine files next week when he goes to Ikea for me. I'll post pictures when we get them set up.
Now we'll wait for our new curriculum to be sent to us and I'll finish up getting things ready for First grade. After all the time it took me to plan, create and print out things for Kinder I now get to use to again for Elijah and then the year after that with Ian.
No comments:
Post a Comment