We have actually been working on school work/educational activities all summer. I gave them the last roughly 3 weeks off due to all the remodeling and we had relatives visiting. So we are officially starting back up tomorrow.
With our living room remodel, we were able to open up a big space for family room and school room area. We are all loving the newly renovated space.
I added a dresser to store supplies in. Found it on a Facebook Garage sale page. The shelf is just from Walmart. One of the white drawers (The larger one) holds a ton of LEGOs and the one on the bookshelf is holding construction paper and colored printer paper for art projects.
I bought a Double Duty Caddy for each of the kids from 31 Products for each of the kids to keep all their current school books in. They have a handle, so they can carry them all over the house. I bought them the black and white and the gray and white thinking they would want to color them in with sharpies, but they wanted to leave them the color they were.
In the back corner, I set up all our other supplies. Science, math, history, etc is all sorted by subject. I took the time to do it when I was reshelving everything. I also have upcoming textbooks on there. Games are stored on top and on the shelf.
I bought this small student desk to have in the living room, even though the kids have desks in their toy room and also their bedrooom. I'm sure this will come in very handy.
This year I plan on art, history, geography and science to be group subjects. We will be studying American History staring from the Native Americans. I will be creating the units with the help of Trail Guide to Learning - Paths of Exploration, A History of the US series, and also History Scribe materials.
For Science we will be loosely following the Christian Kids Explore Science series and using Visual Learning Systems as supplemental materials. I hope to get through Chemistry and Geology this school year.
Art will also be a combination of many various projects I have collected. It will start mainly with Native American crafts/projects since we will be starting there for history. It will be easy for me the first few weeks of school.
In Geography we will be focusing on the United States. We are going to be using GeoScribe for our worksheets and activities from the United States Cookbook
and the Eat Your Way Through the USA book
We will also be watching episodes of Aerial America from the Smithsonian Channel for each state.
Joey is officially a high schooler, even though he is not there work level wise. So we are working on various curriculum choices that will also reinforce life skills for him. This year he will be using:
Everyday Life Skills
Brayden will also we using the above Social Skills Book and Life Skills book. He will also again be using A+ Interactive Math.
He is using the simple Harcourt Spelling/Grammar that we got on Amazon. It gives him a daily page to work on.
Both boys will be reading this series as part of their daily reading program:
Horrible Geography
Horrible Histories
Lydia is starting a new math program with supplemental material. She is using Horse Lovers math as her main program, but we will be supplementing with extra practice from A+ Interactive Math and also CTC Math.com.
We are going to be working on sentence structure and Grammar through less structured ways this year. I purchased copies of the Do-It-Yourself Homeschool Journal for the girls. This is a fun way to work on creating sentence and work on grammar, without the typical textbook approach.
We will loosely be following their "schedule" but using educational magazines like Kids Discover and Zoobooks as our library books. I went to a retiring teachers garage sale over the summer and scored a ton of the Kids Discover magazines on a huge range of subjects. She was also selling a bunch of Zoobooks. So I bought all she had. We'll pick some for fun, some to go along with other subjects we are learning about and some just because I think we should. I am hoping this goes well for both the girls.
She is starting Mandarin Chinese classes online with Middlebury Languages. She is very excited to get started on this program. She has been asking for a while, but I wasn't sure where to start even.
Lydia also will continue using 4H books as curriculum. She wants to continue with Photography, so I have that on her schedule. She LOVES archery, so I have that added also. I may enroll her in the archery class also that she took before. I just need to do it.
She also has several cooking books she wants to work on and try her hand at the 4H Make a bag project and Quilting 1.
For Vocabulary and Spelling she will be using a combination of Always Ice Cream and WordBuildOnline. She is doing really well on spelling, so I want to let her chill and have some fun with this subject this year.
And last, but not least....Miss Caty
Caty will also be in our group subjects and use the Do-It-Yourself Homeschoolers Journal.
She will continue to use Reading Eggs and we hope that reading takes off for her this year. She is going to be working on 4H Snack attack to work on her cooking skills.
For math she will be using Horizons - Grade 2. We will be supplementing with CTCmath.com.
We will continue traveling with my husband, so who knows where we will end up in our travels. But we will have lots of activity while we are at home.
Hope everyone has a wonderful school year!!!
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