Our Plans { 2014-2015 Term 1 }

Honestly, this has been a tough year to plan! Maybe that is because I had to plan for an eighth grader!(Oh, this is tough on a mama's heart!)

I'm listing just our first term books. Most of these will be used the whole year though. I'll have a new post at each new term with additional books we will be adding each term.

Our education philosophy is inspired by the Charlotte Mason philosophy of education and follows our Catholic faith.

All of our Morning Basket plans are listed here. Those are not included below. 


This year I will have a 10 years old (5th grade) and a 13 years old (8th grade).

For math we will continue using Math-U-See and Life of Fred. LOF is more for review and fun math reading.

For geography we are using the Map Skills Series and Visits to North America. 

Tyler (the 5th grader) will be reading for Ancient history The Cat of Bubastes: A Tale of Ancient Egypt by G.H. Henty and a few Usborne books: Time Traveler, Ancient Egypt, and Ancient World. For American History he will read (I have two books picked out for him to choose from, which he still needs to do) either Four Great Americans or America First 100 Stories from Our History by Lawton B. Evans.

Tyler, for science will be reading The Kid's Book of Weather Forecasting, The Story Book of Science and Health 5 from Seton. He will also be conducting his own experiments from Usborne 100 Science Experiments.

For religion, Tyler will be reading from the following: Faith and Life 5, The Book of Saints and Heroes by Andrew Lang (I'm not sure if this is the one I have, mine looks different), A Life of Our Lord for Children by Hunt, Saint Therese of Lisieux: The Way of Love by Glavich, and Old Testament stories from a Children's Bible.

In Language Arts, Tyler will be using IEW Fix It! Book 1 The Nose Tree and Intermediate Language Lessons. In writing Tyler will be working on written narrations in addition to oral narrations. And reading to mom using The Book of Gratitude (Faith and Freedom Reader) from Seton. (I'm not 100% on LA yet, so there may be some changes.)

Caleb (the 8th grader) will be reading for Ancient history Augustus Caeser's World by Foster, Hittite Warrior by Williamson, and the Usborne Ancient World book. For American History he will be reading American Gun: A History of the US in Ten Firearms by Kyle.

Caleb, for science, will be doing Memoria Press Book of Trees for Botany science.

For religion, Caleb will be reading Witness to the Faith from Seton (for Church history), Faith and Life 8 (for Catechism), Ablaze, Stories of Daring Teen Saints, The Virtue Tree Program written by Sandra Grant from CHC, and Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: Book of Genesis.

Caleb's big focus this year is Language Arts (some last minute instruction to have him ready for high school). There is a lot to cover, but I have a good plan in place and hope it all works out!
IEW Fix It! Robin Hood Book 2
Memoria Press Classical Composition I Fable Stage (see Afterthoughts on how to CM this program)
Literature reading The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien
Finish up Keyboarding Skill
Our Mother Tongue for grammar
Increase to two written narrations a week and daily oral narrations.

In math we will add in some Key To Series in addition to MUS.

Electives for Caleb include: The Fallacy Detective (Logic) and Roots of English (the closest I will get to teaching this boy Latin).

Zebra, who is unknown years old and whatever grade he chooses will be studying anything that moves this term! He is one curious cat!

Please share your plans for the upcoming year in the comments or link to your blog post in the comments!

7 Quick Takes Friday~Homeschool Edition~1/3/2014

Happy New Year!

Caleb

As our Christmas Break is coming to an end, I thought I would do a Quick Take Friday with changes to term 3 of our school year, which will start next week.

1) The schedule is one thing that HAD to change. We had too many brain draining subjects in the morning which really was messing up the whole day. Turns out that Caleb does better with math right after lunch. I've also decided that we need to do a better job of starting on time. I think getting myself going earlier in the morning will help with this too. Pray for me as I'm not much of a morning person!



2)I'm having Caleb go back to doing IEW Writing Intensive B that we got about six lessons through and put on hold around Thanksgiving. I like this program and Caleb likes the DVD, but we need to rework how we do it. I've got a plan now!

3) I'm going back to the original plans for Language Arts for Tyler. Dictation, copywork, freewriting (and other Brave Writer inspired writing), oral narrations, literature, and Intermediate Language Lessons. I'm stopping Winston Grammar with Tyler and will continue that next year. He got about 13 lessons into this book and hit a wall. We will work on the concepts learned so far through dictation and ILL.

Tyler

4)We got some new books for science! Originally I had Tyler doing a bird study and Caleb continuing along with Behold & See 6. Caleb will be doing Focus on Middle School Astronomy alone. Tyler will be using Sassafras Science Adventures Anatomy. Behold & See 4 was really boring for Tyler and retention was low. Both the boys did a physic unit (with books I already had and DVDs from the library) last term when the original science books weren't working for them. I still see us doing that bird unit in the fourth term. 

5) Latin . . . . well . . . . I see this being put off until term four. Honestly, Latina Christiana is just too hard much. I looked at Prima Latina and the amount of work is just more reasonable. It's completely understandable for Tyler not to be ready for LC, but I was stressing about Caleb not being able to handle it. But, I thought about it and he really isn't too interested in learning Latin and LC can be challenging. I'm sure he was just becoming overwhelmed with it. I know I was and it was something that went undone when time was short. I'm hoping a less intense introduction will be the answer to this. I'm waiting to start this new program until I have the money to purchase it. I did purchase a few new things for this term, but this was on the end of the list and money ran out before getting that far.

6) Term 3 will be all about training Caleb to work independently. He is very social so he prefers to work with someone most of the time. This will be a tough one! I've researched a great deal and got some wonderful advice from seasoned homeschool moms and I feel like we have a good plan to make this work. 

On the other hand, Tyler is all about wanting to work alone. I will be training him to do it properly. He is all about speed! This is one reason our routine must change. I needed the time to work on both of these task during the day and not feel rushed.

Hammy, the family pet and must adorable hamster ever, lol!

7) I made some small changed in history. I know I wrote about history not too long ago here. But, as in the subtitle of "what is working now" this isn't working for us anymore. I get bored with history very easily. I needed a change. Using living books is the best method for us, so that won't change. Caleb will continue along into the Renaissance era using The World's Story as recommended by Mater Amabilis. He will start in the book where we left off in history and not start from the beginning. I see us using this book next year too. I don't have this book yet, but I'm hoping it ships any day now. Caleb will read from this book twice a week. Once a week he will read about church history from The Story of the Church. I really don't know much about this book or even remember where I got the recommendation, but I hope to read a little ahead of Caleb. He is also reading from Ridge Runner Rescue which isn't that much history. It is more natural history, but we are marking it as US history. I bought two of these books in the series last summer and the boys enjoyed them. I'm having the boys now read the one they didn't last summer.

Tyler will be reading Eye of the Grizzly once a week; Don't Know Much About the 50 States twice a week; Stories of America Volume 2 once a week. No Renaissance books planned for Tyler, but I may add some to his reading basket and if I decided to read The World's Story out-loud to Caleb then Tyler will pick it up there. A state study and US history is what I originally had planned for Tyler anyway. I do have another book on hand that I may have him read instead of Stories of American and the 50 States books. I was going to let him pick and I've been putting that off because I'm afraid the reading level is just a little high for him to read alone and I really want him doing his history reading alone this term. We will see!

 

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Update to our Curriculum Choices

 
I really hate posting our curriculum choices because they will always change once we start working them. I guess we just need to try it out first. Of course I will still post them because us homeschoolers want to know what everyone else is using. You just never know where you will find inspiration.

Here is an updated list of what is working for us this year!

Dropped: Evan Moor Daily Math Word Problems, WordSmith (Caleb), and Little Latin Readers. 

The Math-U-See program has plenty of word problems and review so the EM workbook wasn't needed. WordSmith was fine . . . . but I've been thinking about IEW Student Writing Intensive for a long time and unexpectedly the funds became available to buy it so I did. We are just starting this now. I think this will be a great program and exactly what Caleb needs, but he isn't sure. 

After reading The Three Methods of Teaching Latin in the The Classical Teacher (late summer 2013) I decided against Little Latin Readers. We hadn't even started it yet so switching wasn't a big deal. We went with Latina Christiana I, of course (they did write the article). We started it last week and it's going well. It is easy to teach and the boys are liking it. Thank God for the CD!

Tweaked: Lighted Lanterns (Caleb), Math and history 

The Lighted Lanterns program is too easy for Caleb except for the dictation. So, we are just using the dictation for now and Tyler will use this book next year. I thought the grammar stuff would be good review for him but it's just too childish for him. No big deal and it saves us time (we needed to cut something out any way) and it turns out he doesn't need the review.

Tyler just wasn't as far along as I thought in his multiplication, so I ordered the Gamma level from MUS and we are working in that level for now. Just a little delay. Truly my fault for not allowing enough time for him to learn his facts. I should have known because it's not like he's my first.

History had some big changes. We are still doing the Middle Ages and many of the books I listed in the original post. We did drop the Dorothy Mills book. I don't have history lovers and Caleb still isn't ready for extreme detailed information. Instead we switched to The Middle Ages Project Pack from Home School in the Woods. We started this also last week. It's going well! Tyler is also doing this with Caleb now. I have officially given up on trying to teach history twice in a day. We should be ready for the Renaissance period in January. I plan to do what I had planned to do with Tyler with both boys next year (state study/continue American history). I guess you can say I have a head start on our books for next year! I will do a more detail post of history in the future.