Planning

I said in my last post what we are doing for the rest of this year, so this post will be my plans for the future....

First off we will be doing school year-round.  Works easier that way.  We will be taking off plenty of days, either because one of us don't feel good, or its to nice to be in the house or really any reason.... With doing year-round we will make up the time no problem.

So now that we have found some curriculum's we like we will be continuing on with them.....

Math

We will be continuing on with Math-U-See.  I already have the Beta teachers book and dvd given to me as a RAK (random act of kindness) through the homeschooling penpals and swaps group that I am an admin of.  So all i need to get is the student pages!

Reading

We will also be continuing our current reading program.  I need to get All About Reading - level 2.  I just need the readers and the instructors book, I have been making up my own activities for Fiona all year anyways.  The ones in the book are OK, but we have several that work wonders for us, and I don't see a reason to mess with something that works!

History

We will be beginning The Story of the World - vol 1 - Ancient Times.  I have actually owned this history program for almost 3 years now!  I found out about it and loved it immediately and then I saw a full set at a garage sale (including the text book, instruction guide, student workbook, test book and cds) for super cheap and bought it without a second thought!

There are so many activities to go along with this history course, I am in different fb groups for the course as well as already having lapbooks downloaded for it.  There are also people who post links for music and art appreciation as well as additional projects to go along with the lessons.... I am really looking forwards to our history lessons.  They are written as a story, not really a text book :)

Science

I THINK I know what science we will be doing.... but we haven't even gotten the science book 1 of the series yet, so I don't know for sure.  But I am hoping I love Science in the Beginning and that Science in Ancient Times will be our science for next year.

If we use the Science in Ancient Times next year it will go right along with our history program and so we will combine the two along with some music, and art to become a great big unit study,  Fiona LOVES doing unit studies, and with all the experiments, projects, arts and crafts projects and lapbooks I think Fiona will be waking me up early so we can get to our schooling for the day!

Geography

We are going to cover all the states between whenever we finish with Adventures in America history and then over the summer!  It might take longer then just 3-4 months and if it does that is fine.  I am planning on doing a lapbook of the states, and we will be joining postcard events trying to get a card from every state.  We also will be making at least one "signature" recipe from each state using "The United States Cookbook". After that we will just be looking up where things are taking place in our history book, and when we go to different cultural festivals throughout the year we will look up that country.

Spelling

We will be doing All About Spelling 1 this year.  Again I already own the program!  I got it used, so we are set and ready to begin whenever she starts AAR - 2.  According to the websight it is best to begin the spelling lessons a year or two after reading...

Extras

Sewing - IDK when we will begin, however I plan on teaching Fiona how to sew between now and a year from now :)  A long window of time I know, but I need to focus on the main lessons, and everything else before I add in sewing.

Cooking - I already have Fiona help me occasionally.  I plan on letting her come into the kitchen more often to help!  She loves working in the kitchen with me.  We will be doing a lot of cooking with our study of the states!

Art - I need to be more proactive in adding art into our curriculum.... I will work on that this year. We do do ATCs though and we will continue to do so.  And in doing ATCs we often experiment with new ways of making art.  We just need to add in more art appreciation.  The critical thinking books I have (Language Lessons for Little Ones) will often have a painting and ask questions about that painting.  I might try to find more things like that.

Music - again it needs to be added in, I am thinking of getting a couple Irish tin whistles and beginning books and just going from there.  Again I know there are music appreciation programs out there and we might look into adding them in....

Second Language - We want to add this in, but I haven't decided what to do yet.  I don't know if a forgein language will be added next year, if it is it probably will not be before December.

So I think that about covers everything.  I am so blessed that I can homeschool my daughter and love that I am on this journey with her!