Our first official day of the new school year is Thursday. Of course, for us that just means a fun day with homemade pancakes (I think I’m going to try tic-tac-toe pancakes this year!), front porch pictures, annual interviews, and ice cream for dinner.
Because we do school all year long, I’m constantly tweaking, and we won’t be making a lot of changes to our curriculum with the start of a new school year. We will, however, be adding Classical Conversations memory work and Essentials assignments back in, and I’m going to try switching the big girls from Teaching Textbooks to Saxon when they finish Teaching Textbooks 5 at the end of this month since they’re working out of their textbook and not using the computer program anyway!
I also switched our kindergartener to Explode the Code online. I haven’t been super consistent with her school time, which is okay because we do two years of kindergarten with our fall babies anyway, but this year that consistency is going to be more important, and Explode the Code online helps her work a little more independently (and stay motivated to want to do it!).
The addition of spiral notebooks to our routine earlier this summer has made me feel like we’ve really found our groove, so I’m not messing with a system that works!
Language Arts
kindergartener:
2nd grader:
- Explode the Code
- First Language Lessons (Level 2)
- Rhythm of Handwriting Cursive
- Spelling Plus (using Spelling City for practice and testing)
4th & 5th graders:
- CC Essentials (for English grammar and writing)
- Spelling Plus (using Spelling City for practice and testing)
Math
kindergartener:
2nd grader:
4th & 5th grader:
History
2nd, 4th & 5th graders:
- Story of the World (Volume 4)
everybody:
- CC memory work and related books
Science
2nd & 4th graders:
- Apologia Land Animals
5th grader:
- Apologia Chemistry
everybody:
- CC memory work and related books
Geography
4th & 5th graders:
- The Complete Book of Maps and Geography
- map games on the computer
Languages
Language learning was one of the things we dropped last year when we were having trouble with our internet connection supporting my work time online, but the big girls are itching to get back to DuoLingo, so we’ll probably add that back in in a month or two after we figure out the Essentials work load.
Bible
2nd, 4th & 5th graders:
- Daily Bible readings and SOAPing in their journals
Extracurriculars
2nd, 4th & 5th graders:
- KidZone Worship team at church
everybody:
- biweekly piano lessons
- poetry tea times (with and without tea)
- books, books & more books
For the Toddler
For the first time, I have a toddler with four school-age kids. The girls are so close in age that it was a lot easier to juggle the needs of a 1st grader and toddler, but now we need to make sure we’re keeping Jack occupied while giving the girls the attention and time they need for school work. And with Sean starting a painting business, this juggling act is getting a little bit tougher.
I’m in the process of setting up toddler trays and activity boxes for him, and I’m hoping that by regularly rotating those, we’ll be able to keep him out of trouble most of the time!
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One thing I know for sure is that we’ll continue to tweak and adjust during the school year, but for now it feels good to have a stress-free plan in place!
