2011 School Planning

Hello hello!  Sorry it's been so long!  Our break is almost over and I just finished the main outline planning for the school year.  We start school on the 15th and I am so excited!  I need to hurry up and finish decorating my room!

I have the majority of my school plans outlined.  The rest I am going to do further into the year to see how we are progressing.  Since I love to plan, I leave the day to day planning for the week before.  But I'm too excited to start, so I will start planning for our first week probably tonight.

I have a fun and exciting year planned!  For Science I am going to use a book called Science in the Creation Week for grades 2-5.  This looks very interesting.  I am going to add my own stuff to it so they get the ideas in concrete because the book doesn't go in depth in teaching.  It's more for some science labs and activities.    After we are done w/that book, I will be using The Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett for some Social Studies I guess you'd call it.  After that, we will study missionaries. We'll also be reading Stories of the Pilgirims during Thanksgiving time.

For Phonics for Bubba, we'll keep using the Hooked on Phonics because it's working so well for us.  Stinky will finish her English book that we got her in the middle of last year by Rod & Staff and we'll get her going on a new book.

For Math I am going to use a website called Lesson Pathways.  I am basically going to follow their math program suggestions, use some of their info and add my own teaching to it. 

History we are going to finish Story of the World book 1 and start the 2nd book. 

During our Bible study we will finish reading the Bible that we're reading and then maybe move up to a higher level Bible for children.  I haven't decided yet.  Maybe just individual character profiles too.

For Language Arts so far I have planned to read: The BFG by Roald Dahl; The Boxcar Children #2 Surprise Island by Gertrude Chandler Warner; Grimm's Fairy Tales; Spy for the Night Riders by Dave & Neta Jackson; Superfudge by Judy Blume; The Queen's Smuggler by Dave & Neta Jackson, George's Marvelous Medicine by Roald Dahl and an abridge for children version of The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss.

I can't wait for school to start!!

Homeschool Week 8

This was a great week in homeschool.  It was fun!  Our topics this week were Judges/Ruth/Hannah in Bible; we finished our Egypt study in History; Science this week was all about weather; and Stinky had her first spelling test.
I have worksheets that I bought from Currclick.com that has Bio pages for almost every person in the Bible.  This week they did a bio page on Samson and Ruth & Naomi.  They also have different coloring pages that I print out for them if the Bible reading doesn't have something else for me to put with it.
I believe that we have finished all of the history of Egypt that we will be learning about.  We are sad to see them go.  This week we finished reading some books that we wanted to read from Hatshepsut and Tutankhamen last week and then we started Moses and the Israelites leaving Egypt during the Exodus.
For Science this week we learned about weather.  I gave the kids a weather chart to keep track of weather in different places for the week so that they could see the difference in temperatures at different places.  On Wednesday we did a rain experiment to make our own rain.  It was very simple and we all enjoyed it.  First you need a mason jar with a lid.  Boil some water and let it cool for just a bit.  Pour it into the jar.  I found it worked best at about 3/4-1/2 full.  Put the lid on the jar upside down and put ice cubes in the upside jar lid.  Then watch the rain inside the jar!  It was neat!
We finished reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume this week.  Somehow we missed one day of reading it this week.  I wanted to finish it this week and my plan was to read the last chapter on Saturday.  The chapters were sorta long, I thought.  Not really longer than Charlotte's Web though I guess.  But when I finished reading chapter 9 on Friday, both kids wanted me to finish the book by reading the next chapter!  So they sat through about 30-35 pages!  But they LOVED that story!
Math is the same every week.  They work on 2 pages in their workbooks.  They learn various skills in that book and I explain and teach as we go through it.
Bubba is just about ready to start learning the sounds of his letters.  There are just a handful of small letters that he doesn't quite have down yet.  But I'm thinking that he knows enough of them that we might just start this week!  And I read a story to Bubba for our reading time together each week along with practicing his AWANA verses for each week.  This week we practiced 2 because they were so short.  You really need to do more than one per week to finish the book in time.  And I want to be able to get him the other workbook after he finishes this one.
Stinky and I read a chapter in a chapter book together.  Right now we are reading Plum Fantastic by Whoopi Goldberg.  This is a book that Stinky picked out to buy quite a while ago because it was ballet.  I don't care for the book myself, but Stinky likes it.  We read alternating pages.  The page on my side is what I read and the page on her side is what she reads.  We enjoy this so much!  This was her first week doing spelling.  It was really my fault for waiting so long, but I didn't ever make a list!  lol  I need spelling curriculum I think.  She is supposed to do a Reading Power from our Hooked on Phonics box, read a chapter in her Bible (Read and Learn Bible) and work on her language arts worksheets by herself everyday.  And now that includes practicing her spelling words.  Then she either works on her AWANA alone or I help her.
And without further ado, here is the books that we read this week:








The only book that I could not get to show up on there was a book called My First Bible Stories by Creative Publishing that Bubba wanted me to read to him, since his big sister reads her Bible everyday.  And so does Mom.  So we read this over 3 days I think.  I better get him a new Bible for himself.  This one is a board book and for younger folks.  And pretty old and torn up!
This week on our learning list: Thanksgiving, Samuel and reading Mummies in the Morning by Mary Pope Osborne.  School is easy this week.  We are going to combine Social Studies and History this week with Thanksgiving.  I'll give a crash course on the Pilgrims since we aren't that far in History yet.  It is an easy school week. 
And next week we are on Thanksgiving Break! 

Homeschool Week 7

This week in school we studied life cycles, Middle and Late Kingdoms of Egypt, Judges in the Bible and we started reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume.  Both of the kids LOVE this book!  They don't care when the chapters are long.  They just want to hear what is going to happen next.  I also know that my hubby is listening in because he loves this book.
We all really enjoy learning about Egypt.  I think it seems so exotic and mysterious that it just draws us in.  This is just a fun time to learn about!
We covered life cycles in general, what it meant. Then I went into a frog's life cycle, a chicken's life cycle, a plant's life cycle and a bee's life cycle.  The kids liked learning this Science subject too.  I am saving a water cycle for another time in Science class. 
Some of our books that we read were left overs from past History because we had to wait to get them from the library. Here is what we read this week:

and these:
Rimonah of the Flashing Sword by Eric A. Kimmel











Callie Cat, Ice Skater by Eileen Spinelli

Science Lessons for Our Bird Project

We are so excited to do some lessons on birds.  We are also going to learn about some birds that live in our yard and learn how to attract them or others.  We will be starting this project after we do our animal lessons.  There are 6 of those lessons, and if I stay on track, we'll finish them next week and can start birds the first week of May.  After our bird project we will be doing a lengthy study on plants/flowers/gardens that will go quite a bit into our summer.  I really want to start a compost pile.

1.  Learn about birds body parts and feathers, Read First Book of Birds ebook (FBB) pg 6-16
2.  Learn about birds body parts and feathers, Read FBB pg 16-25
3.  Learn about migration, Start bird-watching journal, Do Nature Journal cover, Read FBB pg 52-60
4.  Learn about mating/nesting, Read FBB pg 33-43
5.  Learn about eggs/babies, Read FBB pg 43-51
6.  Look at books with birds in Washington and choose bird to do lapbook on, Learn about bird watching, Read FBB pg 62-65, Bird Watch
7.  Research favorite foods, flowers, etc. of chosen bird, Take notes, Read Bird Watching For Beginners (BWFB) ebook pg 8-19, Bird watch
8.  Anatomy lapbook, Read BWFB pg 8-19, Bird watch
9.  Migration lapbook, Read BWFB pg 19-22, Bird watch
10.  Nest lapbook, Read BWFB pg 22-34, Bird watch
11.  Babies lapbook, Read BWFB pg 34-37, Bird watch
12.  Predators lapbook, Read BWFB pg 37-46, Bird watch
13.  Poem and Song lapbook, Read BWFB pg. 46-52, Bird Watch
14.  Observation lapbook, Transfer information from bird-watching journal, Bird watch
15.  Finish bird lapbook