Long-winded homeschool post!

I just emailed some friends and sisters who are all thinking about homeschooling and I decided I want to put it here on my blog as well. I was able to get all of my thoughts about this year down in that email, and I want to share it with others as well. So here it is - the plan for our first year of homeschooling!

In all of my crazy brainstorming (and reading, and researching, blah, blah, blah...) here's what I've come up with for this year. I must give the disclaimer that I could change any and all things at any given second, depending on how I'm feeling, what I've read, etc. but I'm hoping to do as one of my new homeschooling friend does and put on the "homeschool blinders" toward everything new that I see this year and stick with what we've chosen as long as it's working. Good luck, right?

Someone lent me The Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer (mother and daughter) and I'm loving it! Not that I'm going to be die-hard and stick to it no matter what, but I love the guide it's given me already, and it is well written and very easy to follow (and easy to see myself pulling off!). I love the approach they take to learning, including the subject matter as well as being based on the written word. I also love the spirit of excitement and curiosity that they encourage. I've read all of the preschool to 1st grade chapters, a few other chapters that are general, concerning things like daily schedule, socialization, resources (in the back of the book), and I've browsed the 2nd - 12th grade sections. Based on their recommendations my plan is to focus on teaching John Marshall to read above all else this year, and my goal is that he will be a fluent reader by 1st grade. Math will be the next subject, just doing as much as he's ready for (I think he'll be ready for as much as I give him!). Handwriting will be the third main thing we'll work on, not because I'll be a stickler and require lots of drill or heavily emphasis neatness in his work (it should be neat, but I'll try to be more laid back about it) but because I know this is an area where he will need alot of work. Much of our handwriting work will be activities that strengthen his fine-motor skills necessary for writing neatly, not just practicing letters. Supplemental subjects will be science, history, music, and art.

Now for our chosen curriculum:

Language Arts -
Phonics -
The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading by Jesse Wise
This is the same author of The Well-Trained Mind, the mother out of the pair, and I love her style and approach. This book (I've only seen it on Amazon, but I've ordered it) is both parent and child's copy, with a script for the parent and material for the child to practice with. I like that it's all in a paperback book, and it's about $25. It has as much phonics instruction as is needed through about 2nd grade.

Reading -
I'm considering this reading that John Marshall will do himself as he gets better and better, rather than what I'll read to him. Bob books are great first books to read (they're at our library - I'm not spending $20 per set of books - there are 5 sets of them!) because they're easy, using only 3-letter words early on so the child feels success reading them himself, and they progress well with each book and each new set. We'll also use the Little Bear series and Frog and Toad series. I've got some Dr. Suess books, and probably a few others that are basic.

Literature -
This is what I intend to read to the kids, not what John Marshall will be practicing reading on his own. I'm reading The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. It's a great book, filled with lots of research concerning reading aloud to all ages of children. It also is a wonderful resource for great children's literature that will excite their imaginations and encourage a love of reading in them. There's a website called Great Books Academy (www.greatbooksacademy.org) that has a great list of "good books" that are broken down to each year of school.

Handwriting -
I've beaten myself up looking for the "best" curriculum here, and I've finally come to the conclusion that, um, I know how to write letters, and I'll just teach him myself! We'll use lots of lined paper, and I'll pick up some fun practice books from our local teacher supply store. This will definitely be a seperate subject from learning to read because I think he's much more ready to read than write. I don't want to link the two and cause undue anxiety. So we'll just make this seperate and (hopefully) fun! The activities I was talking about using to develop fine-motor skills are ones I've picked up along the way, like using tweezers to pick up tiny beads and set in tiny suction cups (part of a kitchen sponge, I think - someone showed me this), or stringing beads, or doing smaller puzzles that take detail work. I also plan to let him practice forming letters in other mediums, like shaving cream on the kitchen table, or a pan of sand, or using playdough, etc. Then we'll move on the paper and pencil. Y'all are proabably way ahead of us on this...

Memory Work -
I've got a great poetry book called The Sound of Poetry. I love it! I've used it in the classroom, and it's a great collection of lots of different poetry that especially appeals to the imagination and children's love of rhyme and rhythm. That and some other collections (Robert Lewis Stevenson, James Whitcomb Riley, and others we'll add) will be our poetry beginning. Scriputre memory will be part of it (probably alternating weeks - not sure). That, and daily reading from the Bible in the morning (whatever I'm reading) and The Jesus Storybook Bible (increadibly awesome! just found it and love it so much!) in the evening, or afternoon, or whenever will be our Bible "curriculum". The Storybook Bible we've started from the beginning and will read all the way through to get the feeling of continuity that the scriptures have that I so incredibly missed until adulthood. We'll probably read it a few times...


Math -
Math U See Teachers Edition - Alpha Book - 1st grade. Math U See Block Starter Set.
It was between this curriculum and Saxon. The thing I love about this curriculum is that it definitely takes a conceptual aproach to teaching operations, not just memorizing math facts. I know Saxon is hands-on, but I also know from experience that it's heavy on drilling math facts (at least 1st grade seemed that way to me when I was student-teaching). John Marshall is already loving number concepts, and he has no clue that you could ever write them, and I want to keep going with the conceptual approach before I teach him to put it down on paper. Again, there's that writing challenge...but more than that, I always thought math was just something worked out on paper. I loved doing it, but never understood that it was concepts just being shown on paper just like the difference between speaking words and writing them. I chose the 1st grade level because I think he's beyond the kindergarten level (the website has an assessment test you can look at to figure out where they are). I'm only getting the teacher's edition at this point since so much of what we'll do will be verbal. Once it's written I think I can write it down myself if I need to (or we'll just order the student book then). If it's over his head we'll just keep it for next year and focus on learning to write numbers and using base-10 blocks and other manipulatives to learn basic operations. There are also lots of number books at the library that are fun and teach the concepts through the stories.


Science -
We'll probably try to do some sort of experiment once or twice a week. Not a subject I'm going to spend much time on. I plan to try to find some sort of "kitchen science" book at the library. Am I cheap? Also, we'll be doing Nature Study at least once a week, with our homeschool group taking monthly field trips specifically for a Nature Study notebook. I'll have to get into this to know better what we're doing. Maybe just observation of the seasons, the natural setting where we live (trees, birds, animals, flowers, etc.) Nature Study will go hand-in-hand with Art.


History -
Some people start with dinosaurs in kindergarten, some with American History to just give a basis for where we've come from. 1st grade will be Ancient Egypt (if we follow a classical curriculum), so I'm not sure on this either. We'll just check out library books on the subject. Again, not something we'll spend a ton of time on.


Music -
I plan to have a hymn of the month that we learn and sing everyday. I also plan to have a spotlight on a particular major classical or contemporary composer and spend quite play time (or writing, or playdough, or dancing, or just listening) with that music in the background. I'd also love to get the Classical Kids series. I used it when I taught music, and it's awesome! It would be a splurge...


Art -
I found a used copy of Drawing With Children. We plan to all have a sketch book, yes even John and me (I hate to draw!!!), and we'll all learn to draw together. This will help with writing too. We'll use it in our Nature Study quite a bit.


On a side note, Isabella thinks she's doing 2-year-old kindergarten :-) I've bought a few things that we'll only bring out for her "school" time that would be considered educational. We're still looking for a DVD teaching ballet, since that's been her only true request for 2-year-old kindergarten...we'll see what happens! So much of what we'll be doing she can pretend to do with us (here's hoping!).

In terms of keeping it all together, I'm looking for a sketch book that will be for Nature Study and Art, with a few pages to devote to some letter practice, a book list, memory work, and maybe some basic collection of math facts as we learn them. Maybe I'll be changing everything next year, but this is how I intend to begin! So much of this is stuff we already do in everyday life, just done more formally (and some of it not!). I'd love to know what you all think and where you'll be this year, if homeschooling is something you'll be doing or considering.

Um, thanks for reading this, if you've actually gotten this far! I can't tell you how great it is to get down all of my thoughts in one place! Hurray!!!