On Monday morning as I was doing my planning for the week I realized that our first day of school was in 3 weeks! The summer had flown by and it was time for me to start organizing and thinking about how we were going to put the Sonlight Curriculum into use on a daily basis. I also realized that I needed to get the right paper work from our Department of Education in order to "register" Jeremiah as schooling at home. In Georgia, once a child is 6 you have to officially register your intent to home school as well as keep attendance records that are submitted monthly.
Wednesday night I was up late coordinating Aaron's calendar, with the Sonlight curriculum (our calendar), and making sure that we would be getting the 180 school days required by Georgia. This was such a helpful exercise! I was able to map out everything on my handy Google Calendar and see our school year shape up.
I then began to think through what our "typical" day would look like. In our house everyone does better with a structure and routine in place. Especially when we are doing school. We usually do the more structured school time after breakfast and some play time. If they have had some time to play then the boys are ready to sit down and concentrate. We do the more intensive, instructor oriented subjects first and leave the things that can be worked on independently for quiet time or later in the day.
I give Jeremiah a 3x5 card with a list of what we need to get done that day, that way can see how we are progressing, and hopefully we are laying the foundation for him to work more and more independently as he grows. So far the flow of our day looks like this:
- History/Geography
- Language Arts
- Math
- Readers (Jeremiah reading aloud to me)
- Handwriting (during quiet time)
- Read-Alouds (before naps & bed)
I feel more ready to tackle the new school year now. At first I was a bit overwhelmed because the Sonlight curriculum will require more direct instruction from me (last year Jeremiah did many of his k12 lessons on the computer without my help). But I realized as I started to look through the Instructor's Guide that the subjects are broken down into manageable pieces and I am pretty sure that we will still be able to get the bulk of school done in the morning hours before lunch.
A few notes:
- We are not going to follow the Bible curriculum outlined by Sonlight. We are happy with what we do as a family for Bible so are going to stick with that. (More on that later!)
- We are not going to do Science every day. After much conversation with veteran home schoolers, public school teachers, and some research we have decided that doing Science every day is just too much. Most kids in public elementary school do Science lessons about 2x a week and many home schooling families don't start a formal Science curriculum until about the 3rd grade. So, we will do Science 1 day a week, completing 2 lessons a week. This will stretch our curriculum to 2 years. We also have the option of continuing to do Science during the summer when we have finished all of our other courses.
- I still have no idea what I am going to do with Nathaniel. He is super excited about school and has begun to show lots of interest in learning his letters. Today when I was talking to Jeremiah about what Language Arts was Nathaniel excitedly asked me, "Mama, are you going to teach me to write my own stories too! Please?!" So, I may have to work in the next few weeks on a simple schedule/curriculum to at least start with letter and number recognition. He does love doing read-alouds with us and I imagine he will be hanging around as we do History/Geography.
Wednesday night I was up late coordinating Aaron's calendar, with the Sonlight curriculum (our calendar), and making sure that we would be getting the 180 school days required by Georgia. This was such a helpful exercise! I was able to map out everything on my handy Google Calendar and see our school year shape up.
I then began to think through what our "typical" day would look like. In our house everyone does better with a structure and routine in place. Especially when we are doing school. We usually do the more structured school time after breakfast and some play time. If they have had some time to play then the boys are ready to sit down and concentrate. We do the more intensive, instructor oriented subjects first and leave the things that can be worked on independently for quiet time or later in the day.
I give Jeremiah a 3x5 card with a list of what we need to get done that day, that way can see how we are progressing, and hopefully we are laying the foundation for him to work more and more independently as he grows. So far the flow of our day looks like this:
- History/Geography
- Language Arts
- Math
- Readers (Jeremiah reading aloud to me)
- Handwriting (during quiet time)
- Read-Alouds (before naps & bed)
I feel more ready to tackle the new school year now. At first I was a bit overwhelmed because the Sonlight curriculum will require more direct instruction from me (last year Jeremiah did many of his k12 lessons on the computer without my help). But I realized as I started to look through the Instructor's Guide that the subjects are broken down into manageable pieces and I am pretty sure that we will still be able to get the bulk of school done in the morning hours before lunch.
A few notes:
- We are not going to follow the Bible curriculum outlined by Sonlight. We are happy with what we do as a family for Bible so are going to stick with that. (More on that later!)
- We are not going to do Science every day. After much conversation with veteran home schoolers, public school teachers, and some research we have decided that doing Science every day is just too much. Most kids in public elementary school do Science lessons about 2x a week and many home schooling families don't start a formal Science curriculum until about the 3rd grade. So, we will do Science 1 day a week, completing 2 lessons a week. This will stretch our curriculum to 2 years. We also have the option of continuing to do Science during the summer when we have finished all of our other courses.
- I still have no idea what I am going to do with Nathaniel. He is super excited about school and has begun to show lots of interest in learning his letters. Today when I was talking to Jeremiah about what Language Arts was Nathaniel excitedly asked me, "Mama, are you going to teach me to write my own stories too! Please?!" So, I may have to work in the next few weeks on a simple schedule/curriculum to at least start with letter and number recognition. He does love doing read-alouds with us and I imagine he will be hanging around as we do History/Geography.
2 comments:
I remember going to the homeschool curriculum fair a few years ago and attending a session about what to do with your younger children while working with the older children. I think it was lead by a rep from My Father's World. It had great information with products they sell but could easily be duplicated from things you probably already have or could make on your own. And of course, including N in read alouds and hands on things is usually not such a difficult task.
I've been trying to not thing about school starting because we have a week at the beach coming up. But alas, I attended a homeschool group planning meeting this evening and now I'm a teensie bit excited.
when do you guys start?
Post a Comment