Science and History

Next year for Science and History my kids will all do the same curriculum but in a different way.  We will be using a mixture of Magic Tree House and Magic School Bus for these subjects.

Every other month we will be reading a Magic Tree House book.  Then Princess will come up with a project on the subject of the book.  She will be allowed to act, draw, make a model or write a report on the subject of the book. 

The months we do not read the Magic Tree house we will watch an episode of the Magic School Bus and study that subject in depth for a full month.  There will be science experiments, research and lots of fun.  Princess will be required to do a month long project to present at the end of the month for Science also. 

The younger children will be doing arts and crafts and small projects that they can do hands on. I want science and history to be lots of fun. 

When we start school in July we will not do either.  These lessons will start in August.  We will start with Dawn of the Dinosaurs.  We will discuss prehistoric history and paleontology.  I am hoping that they will enjoy the lessons.  We will be coloring dinosaurs.  Talking about prehistory times and whether or not cave men lived in the time of the dinosaurs.  If they believe they did then how would they survive?  If not then what were the dinosaurs like and how did they relate?

It should be interesting to see.

Reading

Today I am going to address next years reading program.  We will be using our local library. I have a book list that we will be reading for Literature.

The Phantom Tollbooth
The Little House Series
Peter Pan
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
The Boxcar Children series
The Magic Tree House series
The Chronicles of Narnia series

I will be using a website and the 3rd Grade Complete curriculum for grammar.  Princess will also be required to pick out one fiction and nonfiction book to read on her own time.  Each week she will also hand in a book report one of the books she read in her free time. 

Here is the website I will use for grammar for Princess.

http://www.sfreading.com/resources/ghbgrd3.html

She also enjoys this and I use it to check her comprehension.

http://bookadventure.com/Home.aspx


With Buddy and Baby girl there are several websites that are fun for them to play on but they will only access one per day for about 15 min.  I set a time limit because I want them to not get to attached.

I have Hooked on Phonics K and Phonics Factory for Phonics for these two.  We will be reading several books also.

Here is their book list.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Stella Luna
How do Dinosaurs series
The Alphabet Tree
Three Billy Goats Gruff
Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes
and many others from the library

These two little ones will get to choose whether they want to do school.  I am not going to force them to sit quietly for more than a few minutes.  I have letter magnets and a chalk board and dry erase board for them to play on, and small quite toys for them to play with when they do not want to do school or I need to work with Princess.

Math

Princess will be homeschooled next year as I said in a previous post.  I plan to use a workbook called 3rd Grade Complete Curriculum by Harcourt Family Learning.  She is going into 2nd grade chronologically but is doing 2nd grade math this year with K12.  So I am going to use this book to see if we can find a way to challenge her.

We will also be using Khan Academy once a week with daily practice from XtraMath.  For worksheets off the computer we will also use education.com. For a more complete curriculum we will also be using The Head of The Class and Lesson Pathways.

As you can see for math most of what we use will be free.  Princess will be reviewing and practicing adding and subtracting up to 3 digit numbers with borrowing.  She will also be introduced to 4 digit numbers.  We will continue to work on multiplication and division with her also.  She will review money and telling time also.  She will also practice solving word problems.

In case you would like to look at some of this curriculum here are the websites.
xtramath.org
http://www.khanacademy.org/
http://www.theheadoftheclass.com/Default.aspx
http://www.lessonpathways.com/

For Buddy we will be practicing writing our numbers, recognising the words and counting to 20.  Once he understands that we will review shapes and patterns.  Then if he still wants to do school work we will work on addition and subtraction.  Followed by telling time and money. 

He will also be using The Head of the Class and Xtramath.  His lessons will also include starfall and abcmouse.

Here are their websites.

http://www.starfall.com/
http://www.abcmouse.com/home

I do need to add that we pay for starfall so there is more math on the website than most people know.

Our Plans for Next Year

This year we are using K12.  We have enjoyed it for the last 2 years.  It has been challenging at times, especially with Princess.  We still have not completely gotten her challenged.  We are leaving k12 next year more than likely.  We are moving when my husband gets his new job.  We are planing and praying for him to get the job.

I am planning to use many different tools I have found both online and bought to give Princess a challenging fun curriculum next year.  I will be using 3rd grade curriculum with her, though technically she will be in 2nd grade. 

With Buddy we will be using what is left of our k12 curriculum to build him his very own kindergarten curriculum. Baby Girl will join him as she so chooses. 

Fairy and Bumble Bee will be attending public school.  Though Fairy may come back to homeschooling if she does not learn anything.

Circle time

All the children participate in Circle Time.  We spend a good 20 minutes on this.  It is the only thing I make Baby Girl and Buddy participate in. 

We start off by going over classroom rules since Bumble Bee will be going to kindergarten next year, we do try to run the day in a small way like a classroom. 

Our next step is to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance.  For our family this is very important.  Both husband and I were in the military and loyalty to our country and the men who died protecting it is important.

Then we do the calendar.  We sing the months of the year, and days of the week.  We discuss what today is, tomorrow will be and yesterday was. 

Next we go over the weather.  We sing the weather song and ussually I have Baby Girl and one helper check the weather for the day.

We start our day like this everyday.  It is fun for the kids and they love the routine.

Meet Our Family

To start this blog I would like to introduce our family.  There are 6 of us not counting the pets.  If you count the pets there are 26 of us.  We are very busy and life is never dull.

We will start with myself.  I am Mommy.  I was in the Navy for 5 years after graduating highschool.  By the time I had finished my contract I had 2 beautiful girls and childcare was more than I could make at the only job I could find, so I started my journey as a stay at home mom.  I love being home with the kids, though sometimes I do need a break.  I never thought I would homeschool.  I always figured only wierd people homeschooled.  Well I guess I am wierd.

Next would be Daddy.  He served 9 years in the United States Marine Corps.  That is how we met.  He is now serving in the Army Reserves and going to school for Electronical Engineering. His favorite subject are math and science.

Our oldest child is a little girl, lets call her Princess.  She is the reason we homeschool.  She started kindergarten knowing how to add and subtract.  She knew all her alphabet and was reading.  She was also able to tell time and could do math at a first grade level.  She was also reading at a first grade level.  She was bored and always in trouble. When we moved I decided to use k12 till the new school year started.  I asked her what she wanted to do.  She said she wanted to go back to public school.  I asked her why just so I knew.  She told me she wanted to go back so I could have a break because that is where parents sent thier kids to get a break and that she enjoyed helping other kids learn what the teacher was teaching.  We decided to homeschool after that.  She no longer has a desire to go back to public school.

Our secound child is also a girl, we will call her Fairy.  She went to public preschool and did great.  We homeschooled with k12 for kindergarten this year.  But she has decided she wants to go to public school next year and would love to try a regular public school next year.

Our third child is a boy and he is a handful.  We will call him bubby.  He would be going to preschool next year but he refuses to poop in the potty.  So he will be home with us next year and he will be working on preschool to kindergarten work here at home.

The baby of the family is our third girl.  She is a delight.  Let us call her Baby Girl for this forum.  She will be 3 and will be able to do school with us if she chooses or she can just play quitely.

This year my niece who is 4 is with us and she is doing school with us next year but will be going to public kindergarten next year.  We will call her Bumble Bee.

We also have a cat, dog, 12 fish, 1 hamster,  2 guinea pigs, and 3 whites tree frogs.  Our life is busy and full but I would not have it any other way.