School time!

Yes, as July is quickly coming to a close, it's time to start gearing up for another school year. This year I've got 2 in school! Yikes. I'm not sure I'm ready for this! Luckily, Luke's work is still very low key and flexible. And since they are only a year apart in grade they will be doing a lot of things together, which will make it easier on me! I decided to try several different books this year. I just couldn't find one curriculum that had everything I wanted. So, I hunted around and am experimenting to see what is going to work best for us. I wanted to share the choices that I made and maybe at some point a little later I'll share my schedule for the year.

For Luke:

I decided to go with Christian Light's Kindergarten program. Luke LOVES to do workbooks. I really liked everything that these workbooks covered (mainly-math, reading, and bible) and the fact that they were Christ centered. I think it will be a good fit for him and I think he'll feel very grown up having his very own workbooks. :)




For Lilly:

I decided to do some review with Lilly instead of moving her directly in to first grade. I figure if she whizzes right through the reviews then I can just move her ahead to first grade. But with this being such fundamental information I want to make sure she's got a firm grasp of it. With that being said...

Reading:

I'm going with Christian Light's Learning to read program. It's somewhat like a transition between Kindergarten and first grade. I know she'll enjoy the stories and hopefully think the workbooks are challenging too. Again, love that God is incorporated into everything and several people around here would use CL so I would have some people who I could ask questions should I need to. We will also be beginning each day with reading either a fiction or non- fiction book. (Plus, I read to them through out the day, anyway!)

I'm also ordering Bob Books for Lilly to practice her reading skills on. In reality, these books are pretty easy for her but they are supposed to be great confidence builders.



Math:


Okay, so...technically this is a first grade book. But, I really think she's ready for it. We are going to take it pretty slow. I like the way this book is very hands on. It has lots of activities to do with the children, which I KNOW they will love. One thing this book lacks (from what I hear) is workbook pages. At least, people seem to say there is not enough of them. So I'll be supplementing with worksheets from edhelper.com and education.com



Science (for both Lilly and Luke):
L & L are still pretty young to have a daily course in science. So, we'll be taking one day a week to do some sort of fun science project. I have two great books that I actually used when I was in elementary school that my mom passed onto me when I started homeschooling. They've got some very fun crafts that we can get the whole family involved in! I'll probably also pull a couple activities from education.com too. That website is just so handy!

Writing: (for both L&L)
We'll be doing a good bit of writing in our workbooks but at the beginning of every school day we will be doing journaling as well.

Art (for both L&L):

Three days a week we will be having art class. Two of those days we will be going through "Draw to Learn" This book is so neat! Each lesson is based on a passage of scripture. We will be going through Proverbs but they have several other choices! Check it out!

Also I've set aside some extra time one day a week to do a bigger (possibly more messy) art project. Fun, fun!




Bible:


Three times a week we will be reading out of Luke's Bible workbook that he will receive with his curriculum and then the other two days we will be reading and working on memorizing scripture from "My ABC Bible Verses". I've had this book for several years and have yet to make it through it with the children. It's such a good book though. The stories are very well written and engaging.




We had hoped that one night a week we could work on learning Spanish together as a family but I have yet to find a curriculum that is well suited (and affordable!) for little children. I've decided to do a little more research and hold off until next year.

Those are the books I've chosen to go with for this year. Hopefully things work out as smoothly in real life as they have in my head! I told Lilly we were going to be ordering her school books soon and she literally teared up and starting jumping up and down on the couch saying "Yay! Yay!" I'd say she's excited! We are planning on having a back to school party. I have no idea what that is going to look like but we thought it would be a fun little tradition to start and a nice way to kick off the beginning of a new school year. We are also planning on taking them shopping for their (and my) school supplies here in the next couple weeks. Every time we are at a store they ask me if they can get their school things now! How fun!

Well, I hope I haven't bored you to death with all my homeschool talk. As a homeschool mom I just love looking at what other people are doing and getting ideas. As I said before, I'll probably post my schedule in the next few days, so you can get an idea of what our school time is going to look like. I even made a spreadsheet. John was so proud! :)

Thanks for reading!

~A