It's almost that time of year. The time where yellow school busses ferry chatty students to and from school in the midst of all the glory of cooler weather and blazing leaves. The time where new worlds open up for young minds. New adventures are had. New friends are made. It's a great time of year.
This will be our second year of homeschooling.
Dylan starts preschool this year. We will be working on learning colors, shapes, the alphabet, simple counting, pre-writing, separating from Mommy and whatever he happens to pick up from watching Ryan learn. I have built into the schedule time for "recess" where the boys will stay at the YMCA child watch. This will be time for the kids to socialize with other kids and also work on Dylan's ability to separate from me.
We are using a mix of curriculum this year. For Phonics, Ryan will continue with level 1 Saxon phonics. For math we are using Math-U-See Alpha. For social studies and science we are going with Sonlight. With Sonlight there is also structured "read-aloud" time, which sounds really good. I will be following the general "bible" layout Sonlight provides, but will use our own children's bible. Sonlight can be a little pricey, so I have cut costs by not purchasing all the reading books (there are a lot of them!). I have only purchased the schedules and encyclopedias to be used every day. The read-aloud books will be reserved ahead of time at our local library.
I am extremely excited to be part of a co-op with some other moms in our church this year. We will be teaming up to teach units during the year on fitness/health, art, and music. Each unit will be taught with an instructive/informative part which our children will help with teaching the "class" the first week. Second week will involve a craft, third week will involve a writing assignment and fourth week will include a field trip. It is also a great opportunity to make friends!
Last week, I spent some time organizing the school room. The games and books are organized by subject (math, reading, science, etc). I made a colorful bulletin, which I'm sure will be changed throughout the year with dfferent seasons and themed units. For now, it is the solar system. I made it out of some long pieces of styrofoam attached with sticky wall attachments from target. The black background was made out of a dollar store table cloth ($1.00). The planet banner lining was the most expensive part ($2.99) from the teacher store. The planets I googled and printed from my home computer, cut out and taped on. Thanks to the tablecloth, they will pull of easily and I can still use the black background for a few units in a row. Above that, are the constellation charts Ryan did for the class offered by his local library (FREE). It's not easy to see, but there are glow in the dark stars taped onto each major "star" in the constellation so they glow in the dark when the lights turn out.
This is the "opening" station where the days of the week, month, weather, holidays and simple counting for Dylan are discussed.
Our school table and white board for lessons. The magnetic strips are for hanging timelines, art, charts of phonics rules, maps, etc....
This is where their best papers and artwork can be displayed.
And since we will be learning more about writing and sentence structures this year, a few posters to remind them how to create great sentences and helping generate writing ideas ($2.00 at the teacher store).
Last year, I bought a leapfrog tag system map. This year we will actually get to use it. The kids have been pulling it out lately and it's surprisingly informative. It offers various levels of identification of continents and countries. It takes the children on "journeys" where they have to "walk" the tag pen from the Saharah dessert to the Nile River, find the tallest mountain, find a waterfall, find a dessert, etc. There are pictures of children in various countries and they can ask questions about what they eat, how they say "hello," and what the weather is like in their country. It also introduces the children to the rose compass (North, South, East, West), and the legend. This will certainly be implemented to add fun to the geography lessons this year!
Last but not least, we have a "class pet" this year. The kids found and caught a wooly bear caterpillar a few weeks ago. We read up on them and discovered they turn into Tiger Moths. We learned about what they eat and also that they hibernate for the winter. So, we will be attempting to keep this one alive, watch him hibernate this winter, and then turn into a moth this spring.
It's going to be a great year. I'm very excited for all the new things the children will learn and all the new friendships we will make!
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