Oi! I had high hopes of a beautiful post here with pictures and details of the yummy brunch we had a few weekends ago to celebrate Isaiah and Marian's first unit of 2nd and 1st grade homeschool this year. That dream post isn't happening....
Just for my own record-keeping, here's a quick list of what they learned... some of which showed up at the "museum" on the dining room table or in a sweet performance for Grandma and Grandpa and two "uncles" that our kids also love.
Psalm 135- Isaiah and Marian recite it beautifully together. A perfect passage to memorize to remember the Lord's sovereignty over Egypt, all the idols of human hands...
My Shadow- recited by Marian, Ships Sail on the Ocean- recited by Isaiah
Landform map- we made it out of salt dough in August I think.... it's pretty crumbly now!
Science art book- we studied creation, land (continents) and water (oceans and irrigation and canals), our bodies- major organs, five senses, and we began studying the animal world with insects....
Tirzah book report. My Help, song from Michael Card.... like the song of hope that Tirzah ends the book with.
Seder Dinner poster, 10 commandments and Ark of the Covenant
Ziggurat and pyramid clay models
Sumerian Cylinder Seal (out of a toilet paper roll)
Ancient peoples of the world book- pages for Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Egyptians, Sumerians, Harrapan, Ancient Chinese, Ancient Americans (3 groups- Mound Builder, Inuits, and Maya)
History timeline, Veritas Press and Classical Conversation cards, creation through ancient Americas, except Greece which we will do in our third trimester
I read several books aloud to them (including their main book report book, Tirzah- a spectacular book!- but now I don't even remember all of them.... Brave Keepers, Little Pear, Caddie Woodlawn, Five Children and It, A Door in the Wall, and I think there were more... (The kids fell in love earlier this year with Dahl's James and the Giant Peach and especially Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Matt also reads to the kids in the evening... finished all the Chronicles of Narnia earlier this fall and now they're into the second book in Andrew Peterson's The Wingfeather Saga.
Isaiah and Marian each also read to me every (or near every) day... Isaiah: Boxcar Children 1-2, Bears on Hemlock Mountain, Eat my Dust: Henry Ford's First Race, and several more...
Marian: Progressive Phonics #8-11 plus several short readers at home. (I do love Progressive Phonics for the short, focused, humorous lessons.... and it's free! 5 stars!)
They didn't report on or share their math b/c their textbooks are all in Chinese and I can't help them present it very well! But I love the Chinese materials they've been studying. Both our kids run with math lessons quite quickly and easily.... such a grace. They both love doing "number games" as we call them, problems in their heads. I'm writing this a few weeks into our second unit, when we are using Math Mammoth in English, and they are both flying fast through the lessons one year ahead of their grade level.
May the Lord be praised in their continued growth, their character development and their love for learning..... all by His help and for His glory.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Mid-Year Adjustment
Our favorite Chinese teacher, who comes and teaches our kids Chinese and Math 4 days a week, has just left on maternity leave. We look forward to news of her baby and to having her back in Feb/ March! For now, I'm excited for this natural breaking point to adjust our homeschool plan too. (Man! I find myself adjusting my plans pretty often..... I am hoping that I can settle on a thicker pattern for us, that leaves less wiggle room, soon!)
So we took a stab at Tapestry of Grace and I love it. I love the information, the heart, the resources they suggest for me to gather. I look forward to using it with all of our kids when we've got upper grammar and lower grammar students together.
But for now, while our oldest two are in 2nd and 1st grade, I'm adjusting a bit again! So far for ToG I had skipped about 85-90% of the info they present and I just don't need to have that much stuff before me yet! Mostly I'm just finding ways to simply what I've already been doing for my sake.... I think you will tell from our Unit 1 Celebration post (coming soon) that the kids have loved their first trimester (we did ToG Year one + the first three weeks of Unit 2 and called it our first trimester.)
For Bible: The BEST help here: the Fighter Verse app on ipad. We may work on Luke 2 for the Christmas season and we can enter it there and the kids can do typing games to remember the verses....
History/Geography, for our "Maternity Trimester" we will be going through Simply Charlotte Masons' Stories of America and reading some great read alouds and making a timeline of American history as well as studying some geography of North America. I imagine that in the last trimester we will go back to the ancient world, using Story of the World... and all the supplemental reads I already bought from the Tapestry recommended list. We try to tie lots of Reading Aloud usually to our history topic.... but occasionally our read aloud is pure fiction. Regardless, I aim for at least 2 hours a day of reading aloud/ reading together.
For Language Arts, again: keep it simple. Copywork from Emma Serl's Primary Language Lessons and from Guesthollow.com and walkingbytheway.com and R L Stevenson's poems and the Bible, of course! Here's the golden (free and fantastic!) find.... Scott Foresman's Language Arts workbooks for our grammar slot. (just replace the number in the link at the top with your grade K- 6). I love how these workbooks very clearly aim to help kids write well. Yes, please! We will also do one day a week of writing a letter, and one day of a journal prompt.
For Math: Math Mammoth.... so good for us, downloadable and excellent and inexpensive. May supplement with Khan Academy if I find he's got lower level stuff?
For Science: We've been having a good time doing our own overview of our world.... I wrote up a list of topics (Our Creator God, Creation, Land and Water, then... our Bodies- overview of organs and systems... next we're onto the classifications of living animals and then solar system). The internet worksheets and a few readers we've been graciously given are abundant enough.... but I also just purchased 106 Days of Creation Studies from Simply Charlotte Mason as another help.
~Honor~ All of us need a time for this! Time to focus and discuss Honor, Character, Manners, Habits... How loving Christ transforms our lives.... Having time for this with my kids is one of the greatest reasons I want to homeschool.
Extra! I'm scheduling it in this time.... Friday mornings before lunch might be knitting, potholder weaving, baking, hopefully wood whittling, or even just ipad app time.... we have some great apps but we often go a week or so without playing at all! Once a week is completely appropriate... especially considering how excellent, helpful these are!
Our kids will hopefully get Chinese story time with some neighbors at least once or twice a week while their teacher is gone. And they attend a local art class Thurs pm which is a major highlight of their weeks. Tuesday afternoons is also "sports class" with several friends.... and Daddy is a helper. Super Stud Dad! They also have a fantastic teacher for piano who comes to our home once a week (and practice daily too). May all of their learning and all of our lives together be sweet and full for your purposes and your glory, God!
So we took a stab at Tapestry of Grace and I love it. I love the information, the heart, the resources they suggest for me to gather. I look forward to using it with all of our kids when we've got upper grammar and lower grammar students together.
But for now, while our oldest two are in 2nd and 1st grade, I'm adjusting a bit again! So far for ToG I had skipped about 85-90% of the info they present and I just don't need to have that much stuff before me yet! Mostly I'm just finding ways to simply what I've already been doing for my sake.... I think you will tell from our Unit 1 Celebration post (coming soon) that the kids have loved their first trimester (we did ToG Year one + the first three weeks of Unit 2 and called it our first trimester.)
For Bible: The BEST help here: the Fighter Verse app on ipad. We may work on Luke 2 for the Christmas season and we can enter it there and the kids can do typing games to remember the verses....
History/Geography, for our "Maternity Trimester" we will be going through Simply Charlotte Masons' Stories of America and reading some great read alouds and making a timeline of American history as well as studying some geography of North America. I imagine that in the last trimester we will go back to the ancient world, using Story of the World... and all the supplemental reads I already bought from the Tapestry recommended list. We try to tie lots of Reading Aloud usually to our history topic.... but occasionally our read aloud is pure fiction. Regardless, I aim for at least 2 hours a day of reading aloud/ reading together.
For Language Arts, again: keep it simple. Copywork from Emma Serl's Primary Language Lessons and from Guesthollow.com and walkingbytheway.com and R L Stevenson's poems and the Bible, of course! Here's the golden (free and fantastic!) find.... Scott Foresman's Language Arts workbooks for our grammar slot. (just replace the number in the link at the top with your grade K- 6). I love how these workbooks very clearly aim to help kids write well. Yes, please! We will also do one day a week of writing a letter, and one day of a journal prompt.
For Math: Math Mammoth.... so good for us, downloadable and excellent and inexpensive. May supplement with Khan Academy if I find he's got lower level stuff?
For Science: We've been having a good time doing our own overview of our world.... I wrote up a list of topics (Our Creator God, Creation, Land and Water, then... our Bodies- overview of organs and systems... next we're onto the classifications of living animals and then solar system). The internet worksheets and a few readers we've been graciously given are abundant enough.... but I also just purchased 106 Days of Creation Studies from Simply Charlotte Mason as another help.
~Honor~ All of us need a time for this! Time to focus and discuss Honor, Character, Manners, Habits... How loving Christ transforms our lives.... Having time for this with my kids is one of the greatest reasons I want to homeschool.
Extra! I'm scheduling it in this time.... Friday mornings before lunch might be knitting, potholder weaving, baking, hopefully wood whittling, or even just ipad app time.... we have some great apps but we often go a week or so without playing at all! Once a week is completely appropriate... especially considering how excellent, helpful these are!
Our kids will hopefully get Chinese story time with some neighbors at least once or twice a week while their teacher is gone. And they attend a local art class Thurs pm which is a major highlight of their weeks. Tuesday afternoons is also "sports class" with several friends.... and Daddy is a helper. Super Stud Dad! They also have a fantastic teacher for piano who comes to our home once a week (and practice daily too). May all of their learning and all of our lives together be sweet and full for your purposes and your glory, God!
Monday, June 24, 2013
First Grade: Boiled Down and Thickened
"Ufda"..... as the North Dakotans in my life really do say. And "Good night!"for you southern friends. Homeschooling is tough.
We're finally nearing the end of first grade (first year at homeschool for both Isaiah and me) and I feel like I'm just now catching a vision of what I want first grade to be about for our next three learners.... I had a very shaky start for this first run at homeschool. I know now that I don't need to blow money on fanciful curriculum and I really don't want to sweat over comparing me, my kids, or the methods and resources I've chosen to anyone else any more.... It has been so sweet to have such a great boy to learn with for this scary, fantastic, wonderful first year!! (Yea... I really wish someone would have told me I did not need to buy any curriculum package for first grade or kindergarden!)
Because our boys are very close in age with their sisters just below them and because our family is majoring on building bilingual kids from these early years it seems to work well for us to have a ease-into kind of approach with first grade (perhaps especially for the boys). The girls may get this plan of first grade squished and distilled even further in the summer before they start since they will be doing more of the second grade material we'll use with the big boys. I'm so looking forward to Tapestry of Grace, solid classical Christian curriculum guide, and their structure which aims to make learning shareable between all ages in the family. Our girls will do a bit different than the boys, but more of second grade stuff than I will give our boys when they're in first grade. I'm imaging (hoping hard!) this will just work better for our crew...
1) Lots of reading. Review the Dolch lists and the top 300 Fry words from k12reader.com. Veritas Press primers and every primer we can get our hands on. I read aloud too... stories and biographies as a way of introducing history. We've read The Tanglewood Secret (5 star), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sword in the Tree, Kingdom Tales (most excellent!), and Mr. Popper's Penguins, plus a few more less noteworthy ones...
Language Arts. Skip the spelling lists and heavy on complete sentences for every answer. Learn spelling by way of reading and writing- complete sentences and narratives as much as possible. Again, k12reader has some great Cloze worksheets and reading comprehension worksheets that even introduce other great subjects (some of the second grade ones introduce timelines, natural resources, rural vs. urban...). Copywork and dictation: love the Charlotte Mason idea of primarily leaning on correct and beautiful English rather than teaching particular grammar rules and wrongs. Memorize or at least know well, at least 4 poems from this great list.
Cover these essential topics: Capitalization, Ending punctuation, Nouns (common and proper), Adjectives (more worksheets at k12reader), Verbs, plural and singular, An vs. A, and plural -s vs. possesive -'s. Title abbreviations Mr. Mrs. Ms. Dr. Initials.
2) Learning about the world. The months and days of the week. The seasons and which months are in them. Continents and Oceans. Brief overview of major countries and cultures. Explore topics of interest- volcanos, jungles, snakes, solar system, theater...
3) Bible. We're very simple for this in homeschool because Matt leads the bulk of our Bible learning in our family devotions time several evenings a week (and I read a kiddo devotion at breakfast.) Besides that, we memorize Fighter Verses with the FV app which gives us a song to listen to for every verse, and a "typing game" as the kids call it (a quiz, actually). (And I'll be honest, we've skipped a few verses b/c the songs weren't something I could listen to 20x a day.) We also aim to make lunch time a prayer time for the world.... pray through Operation World, Operation China, our Compassion kids or orgs or churches or friends that we love... great learning here! How sweet too, to pray for current events around the world- tornados, elections, diseases, abortion...
I'm going to try to make a bit of a workbook for first grade for when I'm working with another learner and one child needs independent work. Some of the sites I'm printing worksheets from are here... (all are free to print):
www.k12reader.com I am really grateful for this site! Such helpful resources and all well organized and useable.
http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2012/12/first-grade-sight-word-sentences.html lots of great links at the bottom of the post
http://shared.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/phonics/1sightwordsentences.pdf excellent for sight words!
http://www.turtlediary.com/grade-1-worksheets.html I like the homophones pages as a fun way to introduce new vocab
http://www.worksheetuniverse.com/firstgradeworksheets.html several basic ones...me/ I, plural/singular, nouns/ verbs...
www.worksheet.fun.com just a few useable ones here
fantastic page of free copywork and writing links
http://homeschoolfreestuff.wordpress.com/english/writinghandwritingcopywork/
Wow--- I found this site from the last link (fantastic CS Lewis copy work) and she's got a beautiful creative writing course here too... all free. I love her. http://www.walkingbytheway.com/blog/creative-writing-week-1/
Aug 2013 update: This is a biggie.... Marian has quite nearly turned the corner in her reading with these free online primers.... there's the fun appeal to them in they cute rhymes and looking for differences between pictures. A few of the short stories we've skipped for undesireableness but most all of them have been just what we needed! www.progressivephonics.com
4) I've got it sweet for Math b/c Isaiah's Chinese teacher who comes to our home 5 mornings a week teaches him Math using local workbooks (which costs 8Y = one dollar!) and I think it's excellent..... exercises that make him think! We also have and use as a backbone, Math Mammoth, which is very fine. And Isaiah's sweet teacher, Chen Laoshi, also reads aloud good literature and teaches him Hanzi (Chinese writing) and the Bible verse we memorize in English, in Chinese too.
That's it.
Nothing to sweat over but plenty to take joy in! Oh Lord make our learning journey sweet for your glory!
We're finally nearing the end of first grade (first year at homeschool for both Isaiah and me) and I feel like I'm just now catching a vision of what I want first grade to be about for our next three learners.... I had a very shaky start for this first run at homeschool. I know now that I don't need to blow money on fanciful curriculum and I really don't want to sweat over comparing me, my kids, or the methods and resources I've chosen to anyone else any more.... It has been so sweet to have such a great boy to learn with for this scary, fantastic, wonderful first year!! (Yea... I really wish someone would have told me I did not need to buy any curriculum package for first grade or kindergarden!)
Because our boys are very close in age with their sisters just below them and because our family is majoring on building bilingual kids from these early years it seems to work well for us to have a ease-into kind of approach with first grade (perhaps especially for the boys). The girls may get this plan of first grade squished and distilled even further in the summer before they start since they will be doing more of the second grade material we'll use with the big boys. I'm so looking forward to Tapestry of Grace, solid classical Christian curriculum guide, and their structure which aims to make learning shareable between all ages in the family. Our girls will do a bit different than the boys, but more of second grade stuff than I will give our boys when they're in first grade. I'm imaging (hoping hard!) this will just work better for our crew...
1) Lots of reading. Review the Dolch lists and the top 300 Fry words from k12reader.com. Veritas Press primers and every primer we can get our hands on. I read aloud too... stories and biographies as a way of introducing history. We've read The Tanglewood Secret (5 star), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sword in the Tree, Kingdom Tales (most excellent!), and Mr. Popper's Penguins, plus a few more less noteworthy ones...
Language Arts. Skip the spelling lists and heavy on complete sentences for every answer. Learn spelling by way of reading and writing- complete sentences and narratives as much as possible. Again, k12reader has some great Cloze worksheets and reading comprehension worksheets that even introduce other great subjects (some of the second grade ones introduce timelines, natural resources, rural vs. urban...). Copywork and dictation: love the Charlotte Mason idea of primarily leaning on correct and beautiful English rather than teaching particular grammar rules and wrongs. Memorize or at least know well, at least 4 poems from this great list.
Cover these essential topics: Capitalization, Ending punctuation, Nouns (common and proper), Adjectives (more worksheets at k12reader), Verbs, plural and singular, An vs. A, and plural -s vs. possesive -'s. Title abbreviations Mr. Mrs. Ms. Dr. Initials.
2) Learning about the world. The months and days of the week. The seasons and which months are in them. Continents and Oceans. Brief overview of major countries and cultures. Explore topics of interest- volcanos, jungles, snakes, solar system, theater...
3) Bible. We're very simple for this in homeschool because Matt leads the bulk of our Bible learning in our family devotions time several evenings a week (and I read a kiddo devotion at breakfast.) Besides that, we memorize Fighter Verses with the FV app which gives us a song to listen to for every verse, and a "typing game" as the kids call it (a quiz, actually). (And I'll be honest, we've skipped a few verses b/c the songs weren't something I could listen to 20x a day.) We also aim to make lunch time a prayer time for the world.... pray through Operation World, Operation China, our Compassion kids or orgs or churches or friends that we love... great learning here! How sweet too, to pray for current events around the world- tornados, elections, diseases, abortion...
I'm going to try to make a bit of a workbook for first grade for when I'm working with another learner and one child needs independent work. Some of the sites I'm printing worksheets from are here... (all are free to print):
www.k12reader.com I am really grateful for this site! Such helpful resources and all well organized and useable.
http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2012/12/first-grade-sight-word-sentences.html lots of great links at the bottom of the post
http://shared.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/phonics/1sightwordsentences.pdf excellent for sight words!
http://www.turtlediary.com/grade-1-worksheets.html I like the homophones pages as a fun way to introduce new vocab
http://www.worksheetuniverse.com/firstgradeworksheets.html several basic ones...me/ I, plural/singular, nouns/ verbs...
www.worksheet.fun.com just a few useable ones here
fantastic page of free copywork and writing links
http://homeschoolfreestuff.wordpress.com/english/writinghandwritingcopywork/
Wow--- I found this site from the last link (fantastic CS Lewis copy work) and she's got a beautiful creative writing course here too... all free. I love her. http://www.walkingbytheway.com/blog/creative-writing-week-1/
Aug 2013 update: This is a biggie.... Marian has quite nearly turned the corner in her reading with these free online primers.... there's the fun appeal to them in they cute rhymes and looking for differences between pictures. A few of the short stories we've skipped for undesireableness but most all of them have been just what we needed! www.progressivephonics.com
4) I've got it sweet for Math b/c Isaiah's Chinese teacher who comes to our home 5 mornings a week teaches him Math using local workbooks (which costs 8Y = one dollar!) and I think it's excellent..... exercises that make him think! We also have and use as a backbone, Math Mammoth, which is very fine. And Isaiah's sweet teacher, Chen Laoshi, also reads aloud good literature and teaches him Hanzi (Chinese writing) and the Bible verse we memorize in English, in Chinese too.
That's it.
Nothing to sweat over but plenty to take joy in! Oh Lord make our learning journey sweet for your glory!
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
writing and spelling LINKS
I was just about to order some SpellWell workbooks and hope I could finagle a way to get them here and I realized I'd really better check to see what I can find online for free printables first. These finds are gold... For a mom who just wants some guidelines to make sure I'm track... heading somewhere rather than trying to get more poor student everywhere at once... these links are just. so. helpful.
WRITING
http://donnayoung.org/penmanship/handwriting-paper.htm She's got every size/ shape/ arrangement of writing lines with or without blank spaces to draw.
http://www.kidzone.ws/cursive/index.htm Cursive first is a beautiful program and it was recommended to me as far superior to simple copying because you describe the shape of each letter first... but sometimes I think our child development brilliance is just a bit much for what real learning needs to be, at least for my regular students! These worksheets would have made my cursive first purchase unnecessary! I think they do a great job describing and introducing and modeling each letter. I printed off the whole set and will make copies for each of our students!
http://www.classroomjr.com/learning-abc/ Super worksheets for our littlest two learners. So nice for us when even dollar store workbooks cost a bundle to ship here!!!
SPELLING/ GRAMMAR
http://www.k12reader.com Spelling lists (to blaze through... but still, the guidelines help me!) This site also has some super lesson plan pages to print off and grammar worksheets.... lots of resources here!
http://www.education.com Man.... so.... many... resources! This site and the one above it are similar to a hundred (thousand?) other sites but these two are presented beaituflly and tolerably... without dumb graphics to embarrass any teacher/parent who would want to use the site.
WRITING
http://donnayoung.org/penmanship/handwriting-paper.htm She's got every size/ shape/ arrangement of writing lines with or without blank spaces to draw.
http://www.kidzone.ws/cursive/index.htm Cursive first is a beautiful program and it was recommended to me as far superior to simple copying because you describe the shape of each letter first... but sometimes I think our child development brilliance is just a bit much for what real learning needs to be, at least for my regular students! These worksheets would have made my cursive first purchase unnecessary! I think they do a great job describing and introducing and modeling each letter. I printed off the whole set and will make copies for each of our students!
http://www.classroomjr.com/learning-abc/ Super worksheets for our littlest two learners. So nice for us when even dollar store workbooks cost a bundle to ship here!!!
SPELLING/ GRAMMAR
http://www.k12reader.com Spelling lists (to blaze through... but still, the guidelines help me!) This site also has some super lesson plan pages to print off and grammar worksheets.... lots of resources here!
http://www.education.com Man.... so.... many... resources! This site and the one above it are similar to a hundred (thousand?) other sites but these two are presented beaituflly and tolerably... without dumb graphics to embarrass any teacher/parent who would want to use the site.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
1st grade: Isaiah's second semester
We travelled for through the states to see family and friends from Sept 1, 2012 through mid Feb 2013. The time there completely covered Isaiah's first semester of homeschool 1st grade and Marian's kindergarten (though, had we been in China for this time, she would have been in Chinese preschool, the highest grade. She's set to graduate this summer.) Of course, I had high hopes that we would be able to keep up with some consistent chunks (a month here, several weeks there) but it was pretty much a wash..... We read lots. Lots of me reading aloud for the kiddos- some American Girl series Josephina, that I found at a thrift store- and Things Outdoors and Christian Liberty Nature Reader (1st book) as well as several beginning readers (both Veritas Press readers and online readers which were much easier.)
I had ordered My Father's World 1st grade basic set and I think I probably should have asked for commission for recommending the curriculum to so many people before I even had my own set in hand. It looked like everything I would want to do with my kids and I love how they present themselves as CM and Classical methodology..... But I guess, perhaps, 1st grade was their low spot? I believe MFW starts their history route in 2nd grade and I'm guessing that's where it gets really good. I wasn't so impressed with the 1st grade set I bought. The entire thick "Bible Notebook" I bought was blank pages with a few lines for kiddo print at the bottom. I'm sure I should have known that it would be a huge blank book, but I missed it somehow and was a bit disappointed with the whole set overall. The Bible Reader? Unnecessary. There are a bazillion sufficient Bible readers out there with much better art work than that one!
So.... I started picking up the homeschool resources recommended to us as we met with homeschool friends around the country. And one friend (thanks Christie S!) introduced me to homeschool books on ebay for cheap!!! Yea!!!
We've just returned to China and I have brought a fair bit of resources with us.... The Mystery of History vol 1-2, Story of the World 1 (and CDs to listen to!), Apologia Science 1-2. And lots of readers.... many from Jeanne at Book Ends (man, I love her!)
I'm realizing that a homeschooling mama has got to keep her eyes square locked on some trusted curriculum guides and not let herself be blown around, judging her/ her children's progress by what other homeschoolers are doing. I am SO grateful for Ambleside Online. Have referenced that and am running towards these goals now for the rest of 1st grade with Isaiah:
Much of the other goodness that was listed on CM's original list, Isaiah has learned at least bit and pieces of in Chinese at preschool (seasons, directions, a few nature observations) and we've covered them briefly at home. I know this semester we will go deep into much more of that, especially in studying Ann Voskamp's Child's Geography book.
Daily-Penmanship/ Copywork. CM actually recommends print but Isaiah has taken off very well with Cursive First's program to be writing very nicely in cursive. Perhaps it sounds ridiculous but I really think he'll be fine with this... we will try to do copywork in both print and cursive (probably alternating days.)
Phonics. Reading, reading, reading. Oh to see him learn to Love to read!! More VP primers and good literature (Frog and Toad/ Little Bear/ etc) ... Aim to develop good narration skills in him. Biography (Trial and Triumph by R. Hannula)
Bible memory verses. Fighter Verse app on ipad is perfectly fantastic!!! Daily family devotions in AM/ PM is sufficient for Bible instruction for now.
Math. I'm hoping to have a Chinese helper teach Math as they do in China but we are also enjoying the Math Mammoth workbooks as well.
Chinese. Reading aloud and practicing narration again. The same tutor for Math will teach him Chinese reading and writing. He's already off to a fantastic start- bilingual in speaking/listening at 5-6 yr level.
Weekly-Art- probably 2-3 times per week. Drawing with Children activities/ exercises. Chinese art instruction books
Piano- a teacher will come to our home. Independent practice 20-30 min daily. Pursue other ways of learning (itunes? friends who play?) as well and additional songs to practice.
An Artist and a Composer to study (Thank you Simply Charlotte Mason) We’ll start by listening to Bach, Mozart, Chopin, and Stravinsky looking up info to learn about them online. For picture study (artists) we’ll study John James Audubon, Carl Larsson, Maxfield Parrish, P. Buckley Moss.
Geography- Ann Voskamp’s Geography. Paddle to the Sea. Explore / navigate the globe and maps on walls.
Nature Study..... ahhh.... to figure this out for our city lives! (animal flashcards? hopefully we’ll be able to drive to a park for leaf and bug collecting/ observing)
He loves biking, roller blading, baseball, legos, drawing, play sword fights... So let’s pursue some new handicrafts: gardening, crocheting?, letter writing / emails?
Details-
Discuss/review calendar.... seasons.... years/ months/ weeks
Learn Chinese money
Review telling time.
Our Modified List based on CM's "A Formidable List of Attainments for a Child of Six" (And too, Isaiah will be turning 7 almost exactly at his starting time for this semester and we will still be filling in what’s needed to meet these very few, super simplified accomplishments!)
- To sing or recite beautifully 6 verses, poems, and or hymns
- Isaiah adds and subtracts very easily for numbers 1-100 (plus or minus a single digit)
- Reading... still needing lots more practice!
- To copy manuscript and cursive writing... he took really well to cursive first!
- To know a caterpillar’s life cycle
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