Tuesday, August 2, 2011

It's "NOT" back to school time

We are starting school in two weeks!  AHH!  I only have two more weeks.  Two more weeks to finish organizing and to do my planning and to do whatever it is I think I need to get done before we start school.

I shared my curriculum choices a few months ago when I was actually buying curriculum but lets have a refresher here.  I feel like I'm missing something (I generally do - feel this way) but lets see:

Squirrel will be doing 1st grade with the following "mommy" boxed curriculum:

All about Spelling
Math Mammoth
First language lessons
Handwriting practice with weekly awana verses
Reading practice - reading to Spider while I work with Howler

Howler will be doing k-4 with:
LOTW for phonics
Ordinary parents guide to teaching reading
Handwriting without tears
math games and general play with math manipulatives

Howler being that he's kinda tagged along with Squirrel for a while now has a VERY firm knowledge of the letters and their sounds already.  So we will see how he takes to learning to read.  I've never formally taught anyone to read before.  Squirrel picked it up on his own using leapfrog videos and starfall.com.  So I can only hope that Howler and I do well together on this journey.  There certainly isn't going to be an extreme amount of pressure from me.  I just feel like this is the next step for him and I don't want to hold him back if he CAN go forward.

Spider monkey my "little" guy who will be three in November will tag along with a lot of the activities that Howler will do but I'm also going to have a few bins for him with his own "activities" so that he can be busy and occupied and learning at his own level.

As for Princess we just hope and pray that she either plays quietly while we work or that she cooperates with naps.

For our group curriculum in the afternoons we'll be using Five in A Row.  This will encompass our geography, social studies, history, art, some math, science, and language arts also.  I'm very excited about this!  I can't wait to see where this will spark the boys' interests to go this year!

I'm linking up here at the Not back to school blog hop so check it out!

Not Back to School Blog Hop

3 comments:

  1. Blessings for a wonderful year of learning!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Looks like you have a lot of fun planned for this year. I am still deciding on if I should start teaching my son (4) how to read this year or wait and see if he starts picking it up by just listening to stories etc. Have fun!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lindsay ~ it's going to be a totally laid back thing for my 4yr old. But he's tagged along with my oldest for the past few years so the foundation of letter recognition and sound knowledge is there. If he doesn't catch on this year we'll just continue to work on it next year. lol

    Thanks for stopping by ladies!

    ReplyDelete