Planning a we will goooooo.........

Hello everyone!!  Finally got a Cricket hotspot.  Works like a champ!  So happy to have some internet back!!

I'm taking two classes this term.  Both are rather intense.  One is an ethics class.  The instructor posts about 25 questions each week and we have to answer our assigned question.  Each post each week is worth 5pts.  The final makes up the remainder of the points to equal only 100 for the year, so every point counts.  The problem is that the final is going to be ten questions taken from the ones she assigns each week.  ugh

My other class is on the American Revolution-love that time period so I'm enjoying the class.  I picked out my term paper topic-spies!!  So, I need to start reading up on that so I can start outlining my paper in a few weeks.

I'm starting to put together our schedule for next year and I hope to start working on lesson plans this week.  I need to print out the forms that I designed.  Some subjects we'll do five days a week, some two, and some three.  Sounds confusing, I know, but I have the schedule all worked out so it should be okay (I hope).

How's your new year planning going?

School year 2012-2013

So here's what books I've planned so far for next year:

Little Miss Trouble-kindergarten
Sing Spell Read and Write
All About Spelling Level one
Bob Jones Kindergarten math
little unit studies for history and science

Bug-a-bug-Fourth Grade and Princess Fifth Grade
English:
All about Spelling
Growing with Grammer-Grade 4 and Grade 5
Student Writing Intensive Level A-IEW
Poetry Memorization
Library Skills grade 4 and 5
Literature to include: Boxcar Children, Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry, Pippi Longstocking, Heidi, Charlotte's Web, and Long Winter

Art:
Meet the Masters

Math:
Teaching Textbooks Grade 4, Grade 5

Geography:
Daily Geography Grade 4, 5
Passport Club

Bible:
Awana
Positive Action Grade 4, 5


Science for Fourth and Fifth Grade
Unit studies to include: animal classification, weather, space, plants, owls, and the food pyramid.  Will be using some units from Hands of a Child, free unit studies from Homeschool Share and lots of books.

History for all
Lessons, readings, and projects to include chronological history from Civil War to current times.

TL-Ninth Grade

English:
Student Writing Intensive Continutation Course
SAT Vocabulary flashcards
English from the Roots Up
Study Strategies Made Easy
Discover what your Best at
Teaching the Classics
Introduction to Poetry
Shakespeare, Yes You Can
Reading Selections:  short stories from Great American Short Stories, The Hobbit, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, To Kill A Mockingbird, Tom Sawyer, Christmas Carol, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Taming of the Shrew, and Midsummer Nights Dream video

Math:
Saxon Algebra with CD teacher

Spanish
Tell me More Level One

Bible:
Switched on Schoolhouse Grade nine

Art:
Artistic Pursuits

Science:
Saxon Biology

Computer:
Lifepacs on Word, Windows, Powerpoint and Excel
Typing skills

Government:
American Government text from Power Basic
Are you liberal? Conservative? or thoroughly confused


So, how's your planning going?

Planning next year....already?

If your anything like I am, you've probably been outlining in your mind what you plan on doing in your homeschool next year as soon as this year began.  Next year, I will have four different school ages and a preschooler to contend with.  TL will be entering high school and its just going to be crazy around here.  I'm still planning on doing history together as a family.  TL will be adding in some extra classes, such as computer and spanish.  I have to find time to teach the soon to be 5 year old to read.   So, I've decided to change our schedules.  First, we'll have Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays which will be the days we do the most important subjects: writing, grammer, spelling, reading, bible, and math.  Tuesdays and Thursdays we'll dive into nice long history, science, and art lessons.  TL will also be doing his computer classes on those days.  He'll also be doing a government class for a 1/2 credit but I haven't figured that out yet.

So, his ninth grade looks like this:

Math
English
Spanish
Bible
Computer
Art
Science
History
Government

I also decided to change our school year around.  We're going to do six weeks on and one week off.  Here's how it looks so far:

August 20th-September 28th

(Labor Day off)

October 8th-November 16th

(the week off is Thanksgiving week, yeah)

November 26th-Jan 18th

(we will probably take close to two weeks off for Christmas because my dad will be here during that time.  This will also be the end of the first semester)

January 28th-March 8th

(off for President's day)

March 18th-April 26th

May 6th-June 14th

(memorial day off)

I think I've calculated 177 school days for the year.  This of course, does not include any field trips we may take on our weeks off. 

I've picked out all the curriculum for next year too, although I'm too tired to type that up tonight.  Did I mention, I have to give hubby pain meds every four hours?  Oh, and my laptop seems to have died and it looks like the air conditioning has gone out in my truck (its 95 here this weekend)

Have a wonderful week everyone!

Summer schedule

We've been on summer schedule, unintentionally for about a month already.  We were expecting orders to be cut for us to move so we went to half school days to clean out and organize stuff.  Then the sicknesss hit that lasted about 10 days.  Then it was really too late to start a new unit for science and history.  So, we've just been working on math, reading, writing, and spelling.

We'll continue the same for the summer, only working four days a week, about an hour each day.  Not each thing everyday, just a little.  This will help too, for when we do move out of the house and into the camper. 

I'm still working on lessons for next year.  I want all my copies made and lessons made for history, geography, and science.  I will probably be working on reading this summer.  I have a bunch of books to read and prepare for TL's school year. 

I'm still working on making a small stockpile of food and supplies for the house.  Not extreme couponish-some of those people are nuts.  I saw one lady with diapers and no child.  Another had 78 bags of cat treats she got for free and she doesn't have a cat.  Then why not give it to the local shelter?  Some of them do, but most don't.  I consider that hoarding, especially when you have 250 rolls of toilet paper under the bed.

None of the stores on the island double coupons, so I'm settling for stocking up when things are on sale and trying to use a coupon with them.  Cereal is a big item.  I try not to pay over $1.25 a box.  I've got bbque sauce, ketchup, and a couple of other things that I've stocked up.  I've got soap and deodorant for the boys stocked up.  I have eight bottles of good smelly soap for the girls. Unfortunately with five of us in the house, that won't last too long!  I need to stock up on shampoo and toothpaste.  I would really love to know how they stock up on free toilet paper.  I would love not to spend money on something we literally flush down the toilet. 

Its a rainy day here on the island.  I'm going to do a little cleaning and climb Mt. Laundry and the kiddos are going to have a movie day I think.  I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Lesson planning and financial wisdom

I am working hard on my lesson plans.  My goal is to have all/most of them done by the end of the month.  I pretty much write my own history, literature, and science lessons; so it takes me a while.  This year I also have to work on my preschool stuff.  I've got that outlined, just getting it all set takes a little time.  I'm gathering binders, books, and other stuff and piling it on the table.  This will be my work space for a while. 

Long ago I figured out how much money we would save if we didn't order out for pizza every week.  Pizza is a family favorite and easy to make, however, costs a bundle to buy.  At $20 per week, we were spending $1040 a year on pizza, and that's if we only spent $20.  Usually it was more.  Now, I stock up on pizza making supplies and make our pizza night really fun for the kids.

We don't often eat out, its just too expensive.  We did once this week because daddy was leaving and it was a huge bill.  I felt guilty for asking to go out to eat when we could have spent the money somewhere else.  I guess its alright if you only go once in a blue moon, but I doubt we'll be eating out any time soon.

Our other big luxury is dairy queen.  The kids love to go for ice cream.  Most of the time its too cold here to go out to have any, but we go on several occassions.  I've seen that bill go up and up too.  My kids love when we make ice cream at home, so I think that will be our plan from now on.  I plan on stocking up on fun sundae materials and of course, straws for milkshakes (another favorite).

We enjoy donuts too, however, we don't have a donut shop on the island.  I'm toying with making my own.  I've done it once and it wasn't too hard.  I just need to find a good recipe.  Anyone got one to share?

How does your family save money food wise?  Do you go out to eat often?  Splurge on donuts or ice cream?

Our next literature year

Right now, I'm currently setting up the books we'll be reading aloud and TL will be reading next year. I think I've decided on the following:

Girls Read Alouds

• Betsy books
• Betsy-Tacy Books
• Little House in the Prairie books
• Boxcar Children series

Trey's Read Alouds

• Continue with the Frank Peretti series
• Redwall
• The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings series

We will all read together Christmas Carol

Trey will read and do literature studies on the following:

• Wrinkle in Time
• Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiller
• Phantom Tollbooth
• How to Eat Fried Worms
• 21 Balloons
• Wind in the Willows
• Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimph

We will also be doing a lot of reading for history this year. We've always done alot of school reading, but I've really been getting away from reading good literature with the kids. I guess, because a baby and toddler in the mix make it very difficult.

You're probably also wondering about the differences in read alouds. TL is the only boy and could use a little one on one time. Plus, I don't want him being bored with books I read to the girls and the girls not enjoy what I'm reading to TL. And, as I stated, he's the only boy and is interested in totally different things.

How's your year planning out?

Its the most wonderful time of the year!

Edited*** I just realized as I was copying my list into my notebook so I'll be all ready to go next weekend, that I never wrote our Bible Curriculum for next year. And that's because I'm not sure if we're going to go with individual studies or a family study. I may have TL do his own and the girls do the same. Not sure yet!

This is the time of year that my obsession with curriculum gets satisfied. I have to remain in check the rest of the year or I'll break the bank. I'm currently looking at getting our curriculum ready for next year.

Science-We'll be doing Christian kids explore Earth and Space as our spine. TL will be expected to read more and do more in depth projects with his grade.

History-I love history, which is why of course, I'm a history major. What I don't like is almost every history program out there. I love the concept of studying history chronologically, however, I don't like either program that's out there. Why? Well, because I think kids get just as confused studying each little event and jumping back and forth from place to place as studying four major events in history out of order (like the public schools do. I never understood what Ancient Egypt, the Civil War, WWII, and Lewis and Clark had to do with each other). What I really wanted was a program to guide us through with a list of good books to read and I could add in projects as I wished. I finally found it-Truthquest! I'm very excited. I love that all of Jamestown will be discussed before moving to the next topic.

Spanish-I'm currently looking for a computer spanish program for TL. I'm looking at Powerglide, I think its called. He needs something more that the girls are not ready for yet. And he needs to move at a faster pace than we've been moving.

Reading
TL-continue through classics, vocab study and roots study
Princess-BJUP grade 3, vocab study
Bug-a-bug-BJUP grade 2, vocab study

Spelling
TL-will continue with AVKO
Princess and Bug-a-bug will continue with the workbooks, Building Spelling SKills

Writing
TL-Using Student Writing intensive
Princess and Bug-a-Bug will be doing little writing projects to build sentence structure and paragraph building skills

Handwriting:
We usually use BJUP, but Princess seems to be struggling with cursive. I may look at Handwriting without tears.

Math-
TL-Grade 7 Teaching Textbooks
I think I may move the girls back to Abeka. I like Abeka through grade four. We'd switched to BJUP, but I'm not too happy with it. More word problems, but very little review. I like a little of review each day, otherwise they forget. To build the word problems, I'll be doing the Daily Word Problems workbook series.

Geography
All will be doing their Trail Guide to WOrld Geography. We'll also continue with our Passport Club program, and the girls will be working on Daily Geography Skills. I love this workbook program.

Grammer-Absolutely no idea!! I want daily teaching of grammer with some review each day. I want punctuation, capitalization, etc taught and reviewd all the time. And I want the kids to know what a a noun, verb, adverb, adjective, pronoun, etc is. I could really care about indefinite or reflexive pronouns. Can't we just label it a pronoun and be done with it already? Any suggestions anyone? I NEED HELP!

Have a great week!