Wow! It's already July! I am still getting my ideas and thoughts together for the upcoming homeschool year. I have come up with a lot of brainstorm ideas on things that I want to do with her and things that I need to purchase as well. I am not getting a whole lot this year - I can utilize so many materials that I already have. My Mom was a 2nd grade teacher for six years so you can imagine how many cool and useful things I am getting from her! :) The things that I really want to get is a year pass for the zoo and an endless supply of art supplies. Some of the things that I have written down as well are:
- learning to tell time (she's already learning the hours and can recognize when it is exactly 2 or 4 o'clock - just need to work on minutes)
- work on writing letters correctly and then advance to words
- choose an animal to study each week for science (can also lead into Social Studies with studying the country they are from)
- plant a small garden for science including flowers and vegetables
- addition, subtraction and simple measuring for math (she knows the concepts, just needs to practice more)
- study holidays for history
- start learning and identifying States
- creating a "Chore Chart" to learn more about responsibility and working together as a family (yes, that is the 'neat-freak' in me coming out! haha! But she has to learn at some point, right?)
- play Mad Libs to learn what nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are
- continue working on her reading
- start keeping her own journal - good for pre-writing skills and developing sentence structure (can tell me what to write until she learns to write herself)
- start including her in cooking
- lots and lots of art projects!!
There are probably many other things that we will come across that I just have not thought about yet - but it's a start. Besides, she is so good at asking lots of questions so she will give me ideas as we go and take the lead with some things as well.
It was pretty cute last night - Brenna was watching some show with Brendon and one of the kids was speaking French. So then she proceeded to go around the house pretending to talk in French. I told her that if she really wanted to learn French then we could get her either a DVD or computer program that would teach her (kids this age pick up other languages a lot quicker then adults). Then Brendon went and got the globe and showed her where Europe was and then where France was. He went about it very well and first located Texas and then our city and showed her how far it was from here to France. He told her all about Grandma Shore living there for a year when she was younger and that led to showing her where Australia was because that is where Grandma is right now. So you see how that all happened? She learned something new at 9pm, right before bed because she instigated it by pretending to speak French. You just have to take advantages of opportunities like that when you are homeschooling. We could have elaborated on it but considering the time it had to be a very short lesson. Things like that happen all day long at our house though - that was just one example.
One thing that I am trying to decide on is how I am going to do our school calendar. Some homeschoolers follow the public school calendar, some do year round with 3 weeks on and 1 week off, others do school 4 days a week. I am not too concerned about it this year but next year when we start a structured curriculum I will need to decide how I want to do it.
There are just so many details that I still have to iron out. It is going to be a learning experience for the whole family - but one that I am really looking forward to!
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