Darcy over at Live with my 3 Boybarians is hosting a Not Back To School Blog Hop. Head on over and check out all the wonderful links!
I have been busy at planning our new school year. Our focus this year will be on geography and cultures. I’ve chosen Galloping the Globe (GTG) as our spine. I’ve really liked what I’ve read so far. Its a unit study approach and encourages notebooking. Many of the book suggestions are also Five in a Row (FIAR) books. Since we LOVE FIAR we will be using thoughts books when there is one for each country.
I will post soon a more detail plan for our year.
I have included a links carousel at the bottom of the post.
2nd Grade
Language Arts
First Language Lessons
Copy work
Natural Speller
Readers (Christian Liberty Press Nature Readers, Pathways)
Language activities from Five in a Row
History
Story of the World 1 with activity guide (we are about half way through this already)
Geography/Social Studies
Map time
Galloping the Globe
Five in a Row
Science
Science selections from GTG and FIAR.
Considering Gods Creation
Nature studies
Extra studies on botany, weather, animal kingdom
other interests
Art
Drawing with Children
FIAR suggestions
Composer and artist study for countries studied in GTG
Math
Math U See Beta
Supplemented with MEP and Mammoth Math as needed
Bible
Leading Little Ones to God
5K
Language Arts
Teach Your Child to Read In 100 Easy Lessons (we have already started this)
Writing worksheets/copy work
Bob books
Math
Math U See Primer
Geography/Social Studies/Science/Art/Bible
Same as 2nd grade, adjusted for grade level
PreK
We will be making an ABC notebook (also for our K’er)
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Last week when we went shopping the library was having their annual book sale, it’s by donation. I stopped to look and picked out a nice box of children’s books! Some of them are for the Before Five in A Row and Five In A Row program we use. I was so excited about that! I also found some nice history story books.
We happened to be back in town a few days latter and they were still having the sale. So I just had to peek again. LOL I found another book to go with the B4FIAR and some nice children’s farming books! I’m planning to do a farming unit this fall with the kids. The International Plowing Match will be in our area and we are planning an all day field trip there. Dh is really looking forward to that to. I also picked up some wonderful animal videos for the kids and some documentaries for us. Dh also picked out a encyclopedia set on natural history.
I’m hoping to get to a homeschool book store this weekend. My shopping list has been gone over and over..I’m still tweaking it. So far I’m thinking of getting this:
Christian Liberty Nature Readers 1 & 2
Bob Books #1
Leading Little ones to God
Canadian Colouring book
FIAR Christian supplement
Before FIAR
Canada My Country
Ecoutez! Parlez! (beginner French)
Our plans this year are:
2 year old.
I’m going to use B4FIAR with her at a slow pace. Should be fun!
4 year old PreK
Teach Your Child to Read 100 Easy Lessons
Bob Books
B4FIAR
FIAR
Leading Little Ones To God
6 year old, grade 1
FIAR
Math U See Beta
SOTW 1 (we started this last year and put it on hold for a bit)
God’s Design for Science, The plant kingdom and human body
Leading Little Ones To God
Canada My Country
Nature Study
Copy Work
CL Nature Readers
DD6 and 4 will also be starting on some hand crafts, keep working on crochet and maybe simple sewing.
We made it out to the Learning House homeschool store on Sat. I’ve been wanting to visit there for a long time now and since they were having their yearly yard sale it was the perfect time!
We arrived about mid morning and I found lots of great stuff on the clearance tables. I had to be strong LOL. I picked out the Five In A Row Holiday book and a human body activity booklet. Then went on to get the other things on my list. They had a nice play area set up for the kids and comfy chairs to. So dh was happy to sit and play with the kids while I looked around.
I made one change to my plans this year. I’m going to use the Exploring Creation with Botany with Botany instead of God’s Design. I have been looking over the samples of them for a while and really liked it when I got to sit and peek through. I wont need to supplement it at all unless I want to. With the GD book I would have had to do all the lessons from supplemental books to fit my children’s ages. And I love the project ideas, it fits in well with our notebooking/lapbooking love.
I also picked up the following that were on our list:
I also picked out some of the story books for B4 FIAR that we needed and dh picked out a really nice story bible for dd6.
After we were finished there we walked down to the big craft show that was going on that weekend. It was huge! We had to be really strong there were so many nice things LOL. We did buy each of the girls a nice kerchief though as they all managed to forget their hats. We had a nice lunch and lessoned to some of the music playing.
One other important thing taking up a lot of my time lately is planning our school year. We were very blessed to get a tax return this year, while not huge it was a help. Especially when we’ve had to pay for the last few years. We decided to use this to buy our homeschooling materials for the next few years. I lean mostly toward the classical methods and really wanted items that could be used with multiple age groups.
I decided to go with math U see. And I’m glad I did! I just received there free information DVD today and watched it. I have to say I’m actually excited waiting for this to come lol!! There see it, write it, say it approach really makes sense. And I think using the manipulative blocks will really help our kids learn this.
For science I decided to go with God’s design series. I like that its multi age level and creation based.
I also picked out Five in a Row to start with and will be doing a mix of their ideas and lapbooking with it.
I have read Teaching the Trivium and loved that! I’m also waiting on The Well Trained Mind and The 3 R’s. As part of our history we decided to go with the Story of the World books, by the same author as the Well Trained Mind.
So I’m all set for our math, science and history for the next few years. I’ll post some reviews of the products when I receive and read through them. I’ll also post my lesson plans as I put them together. I like having a plan to work with, as long as it doesn’t rule me! I like to be flexible and have fun. One of the nicest things about homeschooling is having the freedom to explore different interests as they pop up.
I’m still waiting on our butterfly and frog kits to get here. It should be next week!