Planning the Upcoming School Year
After a nice LONG summer break, we’re starting back for the 2009-10 school year next week! I can’t believe I’ll be teaching 7th and 4th grades this year – and we can’t forget the 2 1/2 year old who will continue to wreak havoc daily! 🙂
Here’s the basic daily plan – which hasn’t changed much from last year:
- Dressed/Bedroom Chores
- Breakfast/Bible
- Daily Chores
- Math
- Language Arts
- Unit Study
- Free Time for outdoors/handicrafts/hobbies
- Reading Break
Curriculum plans are (as always) subject to change, but here’s the projected list. Remember, I never teach from all these materials everyday, or even every week for that matter. These are just resources that we’ll use at some point or another. 🙂
7th Grade
Math/Logic
- Saxon Algebra 1/2
- Mind Benders Grades 7-12
- Introductory Logic
- The Thinking Toolbox: Thirty-five Lessons That Will Build Your Reasoning Skills
- Other problems solving projects will come from various sources
Language Arts
- Easy Grammar
- Spelling Power
- Words on the Vine
- Vocabulary from Classical Roots
- Daily Paragraph Editing
- Writing will be tied into unit studies and other real-life events
- Some reading will be assigned to go along with unit studies, some reading will be free choice
- No formal handwriting practice this year
4th Grade
Math/Logic
- Saxon Math 5/4
- Mind Benders Grades 3-6+ Book A3: Deductive Thinking Skills
- I have lots of other problem solving books that we will pull activities from here and there, too.
Language Arts
- Language 3
- Conquering Cursive
- Spelling Power, Fourth Edition
- Writing is the same as 7th grade
- Reading is the same as 7th grade
Bible/Devotions
- Bible Topics – Daniel, Jonah, Ruth, Romans, Psalms, Proverbs
- Possible Bible/Character/Devotion Missionary Studies include:
How to Study Your Bible for Kids
Journeys of Faithfulness: Stories for the Heart for Faithful Girls
The Squire and the Scroll
with Life Lessons from the Squire and the Scroll
Princess & the Kiss: A Story of God’s Gift of Purity
with Life Lessons from the Princess and the Kiss
Bible Games Packet that reinforces books of the Bible, divisions of the Bible, Bible research skills and more. I bought this at a Bible outlet store that was going out of business a few years ago. The game boards and pieces are all just paper tear-outs. Since I’ve already prepared all the games, I can’t find the title of the product anywhere. It was originally published by Standard Publishing, but I’ve had no luck finding it on their site either. It’s a wonderful resource! If I find out the title and it’s still available anywhere, I’ll be sure to post it.
George Muller: The Guardian of Bristol’s Orphans
Bartholomew’s Passage: A Family Story for Advent
Hero Tales, vol. 1: A Family Treasury of True Stories from the Lives of Christian Heroes
Unit Studies
This is the fourth year in our four-year history/science cycle. We will be working on modern history and physics. I’ll post plans as each unit comes along. For now, here are the tentative unit lists.
History/Geography
- US Geography
- Statue of Liberty and Other National Monuments
- US Government
- US Presidents
- Inventors
- 1900-2010 History – This will be our biggest unit!
- World Geography
Science
- Energy – Heat & Electricity
- Light, Color & Sound
- Magnets
- Simple Machines and Work
Nature Study
We’ll use various ideas from the NaturExplorer units once (or more) a week. I’ll be posting many of those ideas here and at Shining Dawn Books.
Artist and Composer Study
August – Cezanne, Chopin
September – Rousseau, Vivaldi
October – Rodin, Gershwin
November – Gauguin, Ellington
January – Toulouse-Lautrec, Schubert
February – Seurat, Berloiz
March – Russell, Schumann
April – Matisee, Brahms
May – Kandinsky, Stravinsky
I’ll be sure to post lots about our daily lessons and happenings through the school year! Have a super 2009-10!
(You can find our current studies along with the resources I’m using in the sidebars.)
Everything looks so great. I don’t know how you fit it all in. The extras that I wanted to do this year I had to break down into terms, like: typing, spanish, learning how to research, Virtous Bible Study, Georgia State History, and nature study. We start today. Yeah! Glad to get back on a regular schedule. Hope yours goes well also.
Diane
Thank you for posting your curriculum for the year. It looks really good! I do a similar sort of system for history and science as well. I am hoping to add nature study this year. Right now, I am working on our master calendar and am putting one day down a month for a day devoted to nature study with a hike. I am also hoping to do a little each week with nature study…but we will see. Thanks again for posting.
Samantha
Looks like a great year. I am so afraid to actually list my plans out for some reason. It always seems like so much but I know when we use the CM style of learning that we get so much more done.
I love Cezanne’s style and we are going to be studying his artwork this year too. We are also going to listen to many of the composers you have lined up as well.
I hope you have a great year and that you have lots of fun learning time.
I enjoyed reading your plans.
Barb-Harmony Art Mom
It looks like a great plan! I love reading others ideas and choices for the upcoming year. We started back on Monday. I guess I should list our books.
Blessings,
Dawn
This will be our first year of scheduling artist/composer studies into our school year. I have chose 1 of each for each semester with 3 semesters for the school year, so 1 composer for 6 weeks and one artist for 6 weeks. Should I schedule more than that?
Jessica
I enjoyed reading your plan for the year. You reminded me of some things I’ve had in the back of my head. I will pull out Beautiful Girlhood and use it as a read-aloud with my girls. Thanks!
I’m in the process of planning my year as well. I’ll post on my blog when I finish. I’m using My Father’s World for the first time since we’ve completed our 4 year history cycle with Story of the World. I was ready for something different. MFW begins their cycle with a year of world geography. I’m excited to get started.
Wow, looks like we use many of the same things (although I like the way you’ve blocked yours together more…it just looks less intimidating somehow.)
Can I copy your composer schedule?? I’m an art-addict, but I tend to neglect music (which is why I’m just paying for piano this year!)
First time here – though I recognize you from the CC blog. You have a ton of resources here. Wow. your blog is a great record keeper for HS stuff.
Thanks for joining in on the NBTS Blog Hop!
Your artist/composer list interests me… can you tell me how you will do this?
your homeschool curriculum sounds like sonlight in alot of ways, charlotte mason, unit studies and books, books, books! i use sonlight and love it!
Hi Kristal!
It’s really very easy. I have one day a week dedicated to nature study, artist study and composer study (along with math and language.) I focus on one artist and composer a month. For the artist, each week we might read a book about the artist, study at least one piece of his/her art in detail and try our hand at replicating their art or doing something of a similar style. For the composer, each week we might read a book about him/her and listen to their music online or on CD. We often listen as we work on our art. It’s nothing fancy! Hope this helps!
Thank you for sharing on the Blog Hop. Please, if you find the Bible game online, pop me an email with the link. It sounds very interesting and I’m trying to add more games to our schooling.
How do you conduct your artist/composer study? I would like to start including it in our day, but I am not sure where to start.