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Friday, June 26, 2009

Back to School - Already?

I know many of you have just begun your summer vacations and here I am talking about school. We've decided to follow a year round schedule and school starts in our household on Monday. The plan is to have school four weeks in a row, take a week or two off, then start back up for another four weeks. By planning to school year round, it makes our schedule more flexible when we need to take time off. We will see how this set up works for us and adjust as need be.

When we homeschooled Sully for first grade, I used the K12 curriculum. There wasn't much planning on my part and it was pretty simple to prepare for just one student. Things are going to be different now with three children to teach.

Our "class" consists of:

Sullivan - 9 years old - 4th grade (possible learning disability - dysgraphia)

Owen - 7 years old - 3rd grade (skipped Kindergarten - needs more challenging work)

Connor - 5 years old - Kindergarten (attended preschool for 6 months where the focus was on play - no formal learning as of yet)

To help make things a little easier for myself, I have decided to use the same curriculum for both Sully and Owen. This will also give Owen more of a challenge. I found a copy of the Learn at Home series at the library and really liked the layout. It gives me 36 weeks of instruction, covers all of the core subjects, relies heavily on library books to enrich learning, and there is some connection between the subjects. I decided to purchase the 4th grade level and use it as our primary source for the year.



We also plan on learning a bit of Latin. I've heard great things about this book and even I'm looking forward to beginning.



Since Connor is already reading and writing quite well, I am not going to push too much on him this year. He did help me pick out a big workbook and has already shown an interest in it. Primarily, I will be focusing on teaching him both upper and lowercase letters (he currently writes in all caps) and then following his lead with everything else.



I have been trying to get organized and come up with some sort of way to keep our paperwork in order. I found some great deals at Office Depot last week and scored these plastic bins and hanging folders on clearance.



Before Chuck headed down to Florida, we were able to get the office area set up. Unfortunately, when we moved we went from a four bedroom to a three bedroom townhouse and lost our office. Fortunately, our master bedroom is large enough to also house a desk. I love my new space! The large L-shaped desk allows me to have my printer, computer, books, supplies, and bins all easily accessible from one spot.







Think of us on Monday as we begin our new adventure. And feel free to send along some extra patience - if you have any to spare.

9 comments:

  1. I hope you students bring you an Apple on the first day of school.

    Goofster

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  2. Seeing as "school" is going to be in our kitchen, that should be a pretty easy task for them to complete! ;-)

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  3. Hey putting that desk together was no joke. It sucked. I spent about 4 plus hours on it.

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  4. Nope! No Ikea close to us here. It was from Office Depot. ;-)

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  5. I think you are all going to really enjoy Latin. I studied it for four years in high school and took it in university as well.

    It should also help open doors to the romance languages should you or the boys choose to study any of them. The knowledge of Latin will only make learning those languages easier!

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  6. Hey Lessa! I've been enjoying our short daily lessons and agree that it's valuable tool to have. I hope the boys continue to be enthusiastic about learning Latin.

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  7. We are using the same Latin curriculum for our homeschooler (finishing up Kindergarten). How did you all like it?

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  8. I enjoyed it while we did it. I think the boys liked it too and having the online quizzes helped with retaining the information. We stopped doing it when we switched curriculums but hopefully we'll pick it back up again in September.

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