Plans for the school year

In addition to the activities we do on a daily basis, e.g. reading, games, coloring, cooking together, play-doh, chores, and learning new things as they pop up in our everyday lives, we will also be implementing more structured times.

First of all, we are excited to begin a unit study program called "Five in a Row". A great friend, Nicole, gave us the information on this great "curriculum". Here are some of the details;

"Five in a Row provides students with a unit-study approach to early education based on outstanding children's literature. Together, the three volumes of Five in a Row provide 55 lesson plans covering Social Studies, Language, Art, Applied Math, and Science in a way that causes children to fall in love with learning. You'll teach a different subject each day beginning with social studies on Monday. You'll find history lessons, geography lessons, and discussions on foreign culture taken directly from the story you've just read. On Tuesday you'll examine the author's use of language, learning about punctuation, vocabulary, literary devices, creative writing and more. Wednesday you'll discover a comprehensive art curriculum as you explore the illustrator's techniques, style and use of materials with lots of hands-on art lessons for early learners. Thursday your children will explore applied mathematics as they learn about counting, grouping, measurements, simple geometric shapes, etc. Finally, on Friday you'll explore science together with activities to learn more about weather, astronomy, biology, physics, chemistry and more. Experience tells us that the most important educational lesson we can teach early learners is to fall in love with learning itself. When children discover that learning is a pleasurable experience, both their job and yours becomes immeasurably easier! So gather your young learners around you and begin teaching the way you always hoped it could be; fun, spontaneous and enjoyable for both you and the student. Five in a Row provides a delightful gateway to the extraordinary lifelong adventure of learning." (http://www.fiarhq.com/)

For Savannah, structured time will also include separate penmanship, math concept and mind-puzzle workbooks (since she loves these) and more work on math concepts with manipulatives and money. We will work on money values for her, while working on money names for Liam (dime, penny etc.). Savannah knows her seasons, days of the week, minutes vs. hours, so now we will concentrate on names of the months and reading clocks with hands, not digital numbers.
With Liam we will continue working on ABC and 123 recognition. All of this "work" will look more like "fun" time, and another plus - the kids love one on one time with their parents.

We also are joining a homeschool co-op where we will be getting together with other families one day a week and the kids will take fun "classes" with other homeschool kids. The co-op is still in the works.

When the kids are older, our homeschooling will look more like this. The mom from this blog is one of the people heading up the co-op effort.

Piedmont also has homeschool PE and art classes that we will participate in from time to time.

The main purpose of this blog is to keep those who want to keep up with what the kids are doing posted. Our prayer is that you would celebrate their accomplishments and understand more of the how and why we choose to keep our kids at home.

Side note- the kids enjoyed the rains we had this morning:

We have been talking a lot about evaporation, clouds, rain, liquids, gases, and solids as the kids watch the water dissapear.

Felicity enjoyed it, too :)

Look for updates weekly or bi-weekly!