So we are about to start the 2013-2014 school year in a week! Smith kid #2 will be in first grade and is pretty excited! Smith kid #3 is pretty excited as well! I love seeing their faces as they see some of the things I have planned out for them!
Looks like Smith kid #1 will not be joining us this year. Oh well there is always next year.
I have decided to change things up. As I was doing the lesson plans for Smith kid #2 I was noticing that it seemed like he was doing more then he had too and it was other stuff that was all over the place. I was planning on going with the weekly themes that I do for preschool.....well I decided to nix that idea and go with something else. Since I was already planning on going with Story of the World for their History course and English I am using this book "The ABC's and all their tricks" and I am doing basic grammar and sentence building from that, plus reading books to build up his brain muscle. For Math I was just following his lead and just going with his flow and seeing where we went. We are still on track to do double digit addition and subtraction since he is learning place value of the 1s place and 10s place. The last thing I needed to come up with was Science. I found these awesome books, Apologia Science books, and I just decided to do one of those a year. We will not be doing them in 1st grade, but 2nd grade we will be starting with Astronomy. The book is called "Exploring Creation with Astronomy", they also have 2 journals to go with it. One for younger kids and one for older kids, depending on what age you want to teach your child about astronomy. So, it just seemed silly on top of all of that to do these weekly themed books with other history, math and science in them....when we could just focus on what we were currently doing and make it a little more fun. For 1st grade I decided to do geology and weather. Basically study rocks and dirt and weather. For the weather experiments and some lesson plans I got them off of weatherwizkids.com and for the rest of the geology stuff I found an awesome website that was basically like a text book that I printed out. Kidsgeo.com. Now it seems boring.....but I was able to find some awesome experiments and crafts to go with it off of pinterest. Like the earth's crust and inner layers....I found a paper mache earth we could make with labeling the inner layers! How fun is that! For crystals I found how to grow your own crystals. For volcanoes....well you know that one! A baking soda volcano! LOL There is also an erosion experiment and I could keep going! Don't be afraid to change things up if you find an easier way or better way to do something! That is only 1 of the beauties of homeschooling!
I have also decided to do a notebook with a zipper and a zipper pouch for their crayons and colored pencils and scissors and pencils to try to keep all their stuff together and not all over the dining room table. LOL we shall see if that happens! HA HA HA I am still going to use the old system of pencil boxes and my labeled filing cabinet in my homeschool cabinet for the loose papers for the preschoolers, but who knows that may change too. We will eventually find something that works. We loose markers, crayons, pencils and just about everything under the sun and I have no idea where it goes. I have tried 3-4 different organizers and so on to try to keep up with the chaos....it doesn't happen. LOL
We are also about to have Smith kid #6, we are about a week away from that as well and I will not be starting their school year while I am recovering. We will be doing basics like math and reading till August then we will get to the nitty gritty. I think a month should be good to get back into a sort of routine. So even though their school year starts in a week....we will be starting actual school work in August. We get into a routine pretty quick around here....we all have had quite a bit of practice with the 1st 5! LOL
Now that all lesson plans are done, baby prepping is just about done and Spring veggies are winding down on the farm, I will go enjoy my children a little more and maybe swim in the kiddie inflate a pool with them! I am sure roasting enough! LOL
Talk to you next post!
Mrs.Smith
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