2011-2012 Curriculum

Pigby will still be 5 when public school starts in the fall. So technically I don't have to report him until NEXT year. Geez, I'm so glad I didn't have to wait until then to satisfy his curiosity. That right there would have killed his desire for learning. He started wondering about letters when he was 2!

Right now we're doing reading lessons. We're just flying through the ones where he can already easily read the words. With pregnancy and a new baby I was not the best about making sure even that got done. There were many a day when I just took a nap and had him watch TV. As a result, his ability got better, but we're still stuck back on lessons that he doesn't even need help with. So we just read them for practice, I don't even read the script or explain the rules, we just read and move on.

For this young age, people often talk about the three R's: reading, 'riting, and 'rithmatic. Those are the most important skills for a young child to have and a parent needs to make sure their child can do that before they worry about other subjects. So here is my plan:

1) Keep reading. Also add in read alouds and him reading to me.

2) Math. He already kinda sorta sometimes does Math U See, but I've slacked off on this. He loves math lessons, so we need to take this seriously.

3) Writing lessons. The R we've neglected severely. I've held off because well, I'm lazy for one thing, but he also didn't seem very ready for it. So to help his fine motor development, we'll be doing things like coloring, but he also needs more instruction and practice with his letters. I ordered the curriculum A Reason For Handwriting. Hopefully it can help him a little better than just me by myself, but according to more experienced homeschoolers, I'll probably have to sit right next to him and monitor that he's doing it correctly.

Those are the first three steps we have to consistently accomplish. Even that seems pretty overwhelming when you add in a newborn and a 21 month old maniac. So I've lately been looking into things to keep Digby occupied. More on that in another post.

Because I'm homeschooling mostly for academic reasons, I do feel a great need to add in other subjects. Now, I know myself and what I'm capable of. I desperately wish I had the ability to do everything perfectly all at once, but I've learned over and over that I can't. So everything will be added one at a time until it becomes part of our routine. It may or may not happen in this order:

4) History. I plan on using Story of the World Vol 1 and the accompanying activity guide. We will also be supplementing with books from the library about whatever we're studying. I don't know what kinds of activities are in the Activity Guide, I've just heard that it's really fun. Plus, I am the least creative person in the world, so someone else telling me how to have fun is a definite plus. There will be narrations and drawing pictures to go with this.

5) Science. I will be using Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding. I'm not exactly sure how this will go as science is my least favorite subject. Too many bugs and icky things. This will also have narrations and drawing pictures here.

6) Grammar. We will be using First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind Level 1. This is by the same authors of Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading and is laid out pretty much the same way, ie everything that I have to say is given to me in a script. I read and explain things, he answers and has his "assignments" (memorizing a poem or parts of speech definitions, etc)

7) Spelling. Some people *coughcoreycough* think that teaching reading also teaches spelling. There are some programs out there that do, but OPGTR is not one of them. Spelling and reading are different skills. My plan for this is A Reason for Spelling. It's a Christian curriculum, which makes me a little nervous, since my beliefs don't always agree with mainstream Christianity. However, I have looked at some sample lessons and feel like there's nothing in there that I disagree with. The program itself is an open and go (which I prefer) and very colorful and fun and interesting. So hopefully this works. I was a very good speller (not to brag too much or anything :-P) and it drives me batty when adults can't spell very well, the occasional typos aside.

8) Writing-Different from handwriting and grammar and spelling. A child needs to learn how to put his thoughts to paper (another blog post about that later). Many, many people write like they speak or think. I used to be one of them. I probably still am a bit, but I'm learning to do better. If you've ever read something where a person has written like this, you know it is very frustrating. There are sentence fragments all over the place and the thing just doesn't make a lot of sense. I think schools are failing teaching this in a big way. Susan Wise Bauer has lots to say on the subject, but for Pigby's age and level, we'll be starting with Writing With Ease Level 1. He'll be starting with narrations and copy work then eventually moving on to dictations. This will be our last stop of the essentials in order to give him more time for fine motor development and handwriting practice.

9) The last thing we will add is French, because it's not necessary. I wish we had done better about teaching him sooner, but I don't know French at all and can't even pronounce it right just by reading it and Corey wouldn't speak it and is now losing his knowledge of it. So we'll be using The Easy French. And hopefully it goes alright. It's very tricky to find a language learning program for a young child, most of the ones available are for older elementary or middle and high schoolers. I don't want him to wait that long. It's so stupid to wait that long.

10) Oops, I forgot about art. That was a last minute decision to add Drawing with Children to our order. But that's what we'll use. Hopefully that goes well, since I am awful at art, but it says anyone can do and teach this method.

Eventually I'd also like to add art appreciation and music lessons and music appreciation. But I've done little to no research on these and have no idea what I'd use.

Now I need to figure out how to keep Digby and Chuck occupied long enough so we can get to all these subjects.

***edit***
whoops, I forgot about gospel study and geography again!!! Gospel study needs to be added in first, geography somewhere in there.

For Gospel study I'm going to use Gospel Principles and the scriptures. This will satisfy my OCD need of starting at the beginning and going through to the end. Because if you were to start with the New Testament or something, then you'd have to go back and explain who Jehovah was. And even today, Pigby asked who Michael was. So then I had to explain that it was Adam. I seriously dislike history not being chronological.

For Geography, it will be pretty basic. We will use Galloping the Globe and just do a brief study of various regions.