January 2012 plan for the year

Originally posted on its own top-bar page as our Grand Plan for the year, written in January 2012. Now being put into a regular post for the archive.

Of course this is subject to change. For that matter, who knows if I'll get any of this off the ground at all in the first place. But here is my GRAND PLAN FOR 2012. Technically, we'll have a 5-day school week but Fridays will be Art and Game Day! For math, we'll play something like Monopoly or Yahtzee or Connect Four. For language, we'll do crossword or word search puzzles. Free reading for literature ... You get the idea. No workbooks on Fridays.

I realize this may seem opposite my "interest-led learning" post here, but really - except for math and language - these are all subjects that our girls have expressed interest in. That, and it's also a bit of the method of "throw mud at the wall and see what sticks." How do they know what they're interested in unless we expose them to a lot of different subjects and materials?

MATH
Sunny: Horizons Math Level 1 workbooks 1 and 2. (I did not get the teacher guides, just the student workbooks.)
Posy: I got a preschool workbook at Walmart for 5 bucks and it has an early math section with things like shapes, size differences, patterns, and learning to write the numbers. She knows how to count, but much more than this seems a bit beyond her reach at the moment.

LANGUAGE
Sunny: Language Lessons for the Very Young workbook, and spelling lists I created from Posy's phonics book.
Posy: handwriting practice in the preschool workbook, and learning to read from the phonics book, The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. I skipped the entire first section which teaches the sounds of the alphabet - she's known all that since she turned 2. The book has a dialogue all written out word-for-word for the parent but I'm skipping that. I'm just having Posy read the text blocks - we're going through the small short-vowel-sound words, but it's all review for her. I haven't yet gotten to the point where she doesn't already know it.

LITERATURE
I'm not working with any kind of curriculum or book list, just what we already have on our own bookshelves and related things I come across at the library. We're going to revolve our reading around authors and their birthday months this year. A.A. Milne's birthday is in January, so we'll go through a child-level biography for him and read the original Winnie-the-Pooh books. Laura Ingalls Wilder's birthday is in February - Little House in the Big Woods will be our chapter book for a few weeks. And so on. I have authors for every month of the year, and maybe we'll even have a birthday party each month. Sending letters to the authors would be on the list as a related activity, except that I'm trying to stick with classic literature and most (if not all) of the authors are deceased. Maybe we'll write letters anyway and just add them to our portfolio. The chapter books will also be added to our Chapter Book Alphabet Reading Challenge list.

SPANISH
Sunny and Posy think it's the coolest thing in the world to say things in Spanish. They've picked up random things from Dora the Explorer so I'm going to start teaching them vocabulary in a more organized manner. I don't have this entirely figured out yet but we're starting with vocab lists of things around the house.

SCIENCE - alternating with social studies 2 days a week, on Monday and Wednesday.
The Well-Trained Mind outline suggests that 1st grade science cover the human body, plants, and animals. Sure, sounds good. Right now, we're getting books about random animals from the library, starting with various fish and other animals we saw at the aquarium. In the spring when we start our garden, we'll have the girls be more involved in choosing what to plant and learning how to care for each specific thing (how much water, direct sun vs. shade, etc.)

SOCIAL STUDIES - alternating with science 2 days a week, on Tuesday and Thursday.
~ Geography: We're starting with this because of the sticker book atlases we got recently. There are a lot of things in the books that I'm unfamiliar with, so we might as well get online and look them up, and get some books from the library! The Confessions of a Homeschooler blog has 2 geography programs (one world, one USA) that are inexpensive and look interesting. I don't think we're quite ready for them, but maybe in a few months or next year.

~ History: Story of the World Vol 1 Ancient Times. We have the text and activity book but haven't worked out of it yet. I'm not sure when we'll pick it up. I don't know about the girls but I'm having more fun with geography right now. I love maps and learning about places.

THE ARTS
We have some friends joining us for a Friday morning art group. Our preschool playgroup seems to have died off, so we'll do this instead. We're going to start with the sewing and holiday crafts.

~ 5 (or more) weeks of sewing activities from Whipstitch. Sunny has been asking to learn to sew, since watching me sew like a maniac for the past couple of months with Christmas decorations and gifts. These are activities that they can all do and I like how it builds with the skills.

~ Holiday fun. This is something I'll be coming up with as we go along, but there are holidays in pretty much every month of the year (is August our lone major-holiday-free month?) with art and projects to go along with them. For example, January 29 is National Puzzle Day, so we'll be putting together puzzles and making puzzles this month.

~ Confessions of a Homeschooler also has a World's Greatest Artists unit study. 8 artists, 8 lessons per artist - the curriculum suggests one artist per month over the course of a school year. I'm not sure when we'll start this, but it looks really interesting to me, and I'll enjoy the books even if they don't grab the attention of my girls. I recently had a children's book about Monet from the library and Sunny enjoyed looking through it.

~ Dance class. We're continuing their enrollment in their ballet and tap class (Monday afternoon for Sunny, Tuesday afternoon for Posy) and now they're getting ready for their recital in May. Can't wait! They love love love dance class! I don't know how far we'll go with it in the future but they're having a blast with it now while they're little.

~ Piano lessons. They took a 12-week beginning music class in the fall and are asking to learn to play the piano. I have the First Piano Adventures (lesson and separate writing book) and play well enough myself to at least get the girls started. They both like the CD that comes with it. We'll get them regular lessons in a couple of years.

RECORD KEEPING
Mississippi does not require any kind of record or portfolio reported to the state, but I've started keeping detailed weekly logs anyway. We anticipate moving in the next year to another state, and frankly, we figure we'll be moving every 3-5 years as our kids grow up. We'll eventually land in a state that requires records, so I might as well start creating them now and get used to it.