Bible:
Family-Time Bible In Pictures by Kenneth N. Taylor. We will read a story daily out of it. I took this from Sonlight's curriculum.
Phonics, Reading and Handwriting:
Abeka
It took me awhile to decide on this. First, I wanted to look at a variety of curriculums since there are so many great ones, but ultimately decided on Abeka, since I have taught it in the past and I liked it then. Then, I couldn't decide on bumping Macy up to 1st grade in language arts or not since she is reading fluently already. However, after talking to some more experienced homeschoolers, they recommended keeping her in Kindergarten for the moment, but if we finish all (not just the language arts) of Kindergarten quickly, then going ahead to first grade. But they also reminded me that our goal in homeschooling is not to graduate the kids by they are 13, but to take time to build a strong foundation. So that is what we are doing! I imagine we will pick and choose out of the phonics part since she we already did "Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons".
For handwriting, I have decided to do cursive first with her, so wish us luck in that. I am hoping she will have beautiful handwriting (unlike me) since we are starting with it first rather than printing.
Also for reading, I have typed up a reading list from recommend books from Honey from a Child's Heart, Sonlight, Five in a Row, Beautiful Feet and a couple other places. We will continue our weekly trip to the library, and will have this list as a guide of books that I want to read to the kids or have Macy read aloud.
Math:
We are using Horizons Math. It is an award winning curriculum, so I am hoping that we will enjoy it. To save money and as recommended by some other homeschooling moms at the big home school convention, I didn't buy the teachers edition, but I flipped through it and it doesn't look to hard. :)
In the mornings, we will do a circle time, where we will do a calendar, days of the week, memory verse, counting, weather and a few other things. When we get going officially, I will blog more about it.
Those will be our main subjects that we will be focusing on this year. In addition to those we will do a little bit of the following:
Character - I thought about doing a character trait a week and doing an activity for each, but I think I will hold off until next year. Instead, we are going to focus on doing chores, being obedient and also we will have a day a month that is purposed to do some sort of service activity (visiting residents at a retirement home, making cookies for someone, buying groceries for a food pantry, and some other age appropriate things that I can think of or find from other people.)
Geography-we will do a notebook of the 50 states. The objective will be to identify that there are 50 states. We will have a coloring sheet for each state, just mainly identifying that there are 50 and learning where they are located. Also, I plan to ask some of you to send us a postcard from your state.
Science- We have an ant farm, so I plan to order some ants and we will get to watch them in action.
P.E-Lots of playing outside, going on walks, and going to the park. We have decided not to do a formal activity for the first few months of homeschooling, just so we don't have another thing to keep up as we are getting use to homeschooling, but maybe we will enroll Macy in gymnastics in a few months. When Charlie is old enough to attend, the YMCA here has a home school PE class, so we will probably do something like that in the future.
Home EC- I plan to set aside a time each week to do a cooking activity. Also, she will be doing chores. I have also looked at a couple books that are geared towards little girls Macy's age for Home EC, I haven't ordered anything yet though.
Arts and Crafts- We will do a craft/art time each week. Nothing formal, I just plan to get ideas from either other homeschoolers blogs, my old education stuff, or making something to go along with our bible lesson.
Music-Again, nothing formal this year. I just plan to check out a wide variety of CDs each week from the library and play them for everyone to listen. Also, my mom just told me she ordered this book for us 
which I think will be really good and I am sure we will work our way through it.
There you have it! That is what we have planned so far.
Tomorrow I will post a schedule of our daily routine.... stay tuned.
7 comments:
Thanks for posting this. I am so interested in hearing about your homeschooling experience.
Yay I can't wait for the next post! I'm also interested to know how you figured out which curriculum to use, where you go to browse through it all and decide, and how long the lessons are (what Emma does during that time?
just had a thought...those putumayo kids cds I blogged about would be a great music/geography lesson someday. They have kids songs from all different cultures. They are prob at your library too.
It sounds like you'll have a great school year, Katie, and that you're super organized. Best of luck and have fun!
You are so organized Katie! I like that math curriculum as well and have taught out of it. Also, please teach Macy the "Fifty Nifty United States" song!!! I think you and I did a project on that.
I think what you are doing is really, really cool. :)
Man did I hit the jackpot tonight! I'm homeschooling two preschoolers this year but I will bookmark this post for when we are ready. I can't wait to read more about how you homeschool since I am very new to the scene and could use a few friends going down the same oath right now. I added the books in your biblical portion to my shopping cart adn will be sure t purchase them soon.
We do a lot of random acts of kindness type things that would work for your character building lessons. I'll get a list together for you.
Also, we are in the middle of a Great American Post Card Swap right now with 49 other Moms, I highly recommend you do one too! You get a postcard a week from each of the states alphabetically for pretty much the whole year. Te kids love it because they get their own mail each week & I like it because it gives me a chance to talk to them about a new state each week. We have a US puzzle that we put together and then search for all the states we have post cards for.
Next year, I plan to do some state trivia type stuff with them and a cook a meal typical of that area.
All right, that's enough to bombard you with for now. Chat with you more soon
Hey Katie! This sounds like a great curriculum. How is everything going so far? Are you enjoying it? How is circle time going? If you are like me...some days are better than others. :)
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