2010-11 School Curriculum

I know a lot of my fellow bloggers are enjoying their summer and haven't wrapped their brains around school starting in the fall. But my brain has been anticipating school this fall for several months already. We will be doing our first year of homeschool, and I'm an obsessive planner, so I feel even yet unprepared for this fall to be approaching in just 6 weeks. Eeek!

Here's a run down of what we'll be tackeling this fall, I'm hoping my homeschooling mentors will offer suggestions if they see fit! (pleeeeease!) And since Maren and Kellan are close in age, I will teach them the same subject for most things. But some of it is tailored for their learning curves, of course.

Language Arts- We will be doing Abeka Phonics, Reading, and Writing cursive K5, Kellan will be tailored to writing manuscript first. (*even though Maren has a year of public school under her belt, there are so many concepts in these subjects that they didn't cover with her, sadly.)

Reading: We'll be going through Aesop's Fables through the year, as well as their own independent reading choices for afternoons.

Numbers/Arithmetic: Abeka K5 for both kids, again some concepts and sequences that Maren didn't learn last year.

Science: Usborne The living world encyclopedia, I plan to adapt my own lesson plans for this (lots of prayers for sure!) but we'll be following the outline of the Creation recorded in the KJV Bible, and learning about the life and intelligence and God's plan for each living species in his kingdom.

Social Studies/Geography combined: I have a few things on the United States and their capitals by Scholastic, we'll focus mostly on that through the year with Galloping the Globe K-4th grade, flash cards, and coloring diagrams.

Music: Both will be taking lessons from Master's Musicians School of Music, learning basic theory on piano, Maren will begin violin and Kellan will begin baby cello (so excited for my own little Yo Yo Ma!)

Spanish: I'm pretty excited for the course that we will try this year called "La Clase Divertida" (The Fun Class) with an interactive DVD, audio CD with songs and lessons for the car, arts and crafts, teacher workbook for me, and workbook for the kiddos too!

P.E.: We will continue with Bonita's School of Ballet for both children, James is also pushing for them to start a self defence or martial arts type of activity, but I'm starting to feel like Bilbo Baggins where he said he was like butter, spread over too much bread ;)

Typing out this list is mostly for me, to journal the beginning milestone of this shift our life is taking, and to put it out there for fellow homeschooling mama's to make sure I'm not missing anything!