As I do every year, I sat down with my daughter this summer to talk about her goals and what topics she wants to cover next school year. She asked to learn about birds, electricity, space, pioneers, and forensic science. She also asked to learn some sign language, learn to write in cursive, and said she wants to finish at least 10 chapter books this year. I think she picked some fun topics and set some excellent goals for herself.
Our Plan For The Year:
Something new we've decided to try this year, is incorporating more free choice interest led learning. Instead of having some formal lessons 5 days a week, we're going to try doing formal lessons just 3 days a week, and dedicating the other 2 days to whatever happens to interest her that day. My 8 year old is extremely independent and very much a free thinker. Too much structure is frustrating for her, but if I completely hand the reigns over to her, she tends to get lazy and doesn't want to do anything, so I'm hoping this will be a good happy medium.
My plan is to do formal lessons on Mondays, Wednesdays, and a short day on Fridays. Tuesdays and Thursdays will be her days to pursue whatever she wants. My only requirement is that she do at least 15 minutes of reading, and that she spend time working on something educational. She can do an activity from one of her science kits, research something she finds interesting, work on writing a story, work in her nature journal, watch documentaries, pretty much whatever she wants, as long as it's something she can learn from.
Our Topic And Curriculum Choices:
For her favorite subject, science, we're going to be covering birds, forensic science, electricity, and we're going to revisit a favorite topic, space. So far we're already working on some really awesome electrical and mechanical engineering kits from EEME. I'm also planning on ordering an electrical circuit kit, probably this one.
For studying birds, I ordered a couple pairs of binoculars and a bird guide from National Geographic to do some backyard bird watching with. We're lucky enough to live near a wild life reserve with a lot of birds, so I'm thinking we'll take several field trips out there this year, and research the birds that we see.
I"m still shopping around for a good forensic science kit, please let me know if you know of a good one!
Even though we've covered space before, it's a favorite topic in our household, so we're going to explore it further this year. I'm looking into maybe trying a really neat looking art science fusion kit about space from The Young Scientists Club, and building on that.
For history this year, we're planning on mostly focusing on westward expansion. We may reread a couple of our favorite Little House books and will be doing the Moving West History Pockets from Evan Moor. We've used several of their History Pockets in the past and have enjoyed them. And I have lots of fun hands on projects planned like making butter, building mini log cabins, and mapping the travels of some famous pioneers.
We started working on U.S. geography last year, and plan on continuing where we left off. We are slowly working on taking a virtual tour of each of the 50 states. As we go, we are making a binder full of information, with a section for each state.
If your interested in hearing more about how we're studying U.S. geography without a curriculum or text books, check out this post: How We Teach Geography Without A Curriculum.
For math we will be doing a lot of work with multiplication and division facts this year. We will also be doing some practice with money and fractions. We will be using a variety of printable worksheets, math apps, flashcards, and hands on activities.
I plan on keeping most of our reading and writing free choice. We take weekly trips to the library, so we always have fresh reading material to choose from. For writing, I just bought a cool looking blank journal for her to do her free writing and occasional writing prompts in. She loves writing her own stories, so I'm mostly just going to let her keep doing what she's doing.
As far as learning cursive goes, I found several sites with free printable worksheets she can work through at her own pace. And I found a couple YouTube series that teach some basic sign language. If she really gets in to it, I will look into ordering something more complete in the spring.
Other than that, we'll still be doing our usual nature journaling, and pursuing any interesting topics we happen to stumble upon!
If you enjoyed this post, check out:
-Homeschool Curriculum and Resources: My Top Picks
-Homeschooling on a Budget
Follow me on:
Facebook
Pinterest
Instagram
Our Plan For The Year:
Something new we've decided to try this year, is incorporating more free choice interest led learning. Instead of having some formal lessons 5 days a week, we're going to try doing formal lessons just 3 days a week, and dedicating the other 2 days to whatever happens to interest her that day. My 8 year old is extremely independent and very much a free thinker. Too much structure is frustrating for her, but if I completely hand the reigns over to her, she tends to get lazy and doesn't want to do anything, so I'm hoping this will be a good happy medium.
My plan is to do formal lessons on Mondays, Wednesdays, and a short day on Fridays. Tuesdays and Thursdays will be her days to pursue whatever she wants. My only requirement is that she do at least 15 minutes of reading, and that she spend time working on something educational. She can do an activity from one of her science kits, research something she finds interesting, work on writing a story, work in her nature journal, watch documentaries, pretty much whatever she wants, as long as it's something she can learn from.
Our Topic And Curriculum Choices:
For her favorite subject, science, we're going to be covering birds, forensic science, electricity, and we're going to revisit a favorite topic, space. So far we're already working on some really awesome electrical and mechanical engineering kits from EEME. I'm also planning on ordering an electrical circuit kit, probably this one.
For studying birds, I ordered a couple pairs of binoculars and a bird guide from National Geographic to do some backyard bird watching with. We're lucky enough to live near a wild life reserve with a lot of birds, so I'm thinking we'll take several field trips out there this year, and research the birds that we see.
I"m still shopping around for a good forensic science kit, please let me know if you know of a good one!
Even though we've covered space before, it's a favorite topic in our household, so we're going to explore it further this year. I'm looking into maybe trying a really neat looking art science fusion kit about space from The Young Scientists Club, and building on that.
We started working on U.S. geography last year, and plan on continuing where we left off. We are slowly working on taking a virtual tour of each of the 50 states. As we go, we are making a binder full of information, with a section for each state.
If your interested in hearing more about how we're studying U.S. geography without a curriculum or text books, check out this post: How We Teach Geography Without A Curriculum.
For math we will be doing a lot of work with multiplication and division facts this year. We will also be doing some practice with money and fractions. We will be using a variety of printable worksheets, math apps, flashcards, and hands on activities.
I plan on keeping most of our reading and writing free choice. We take weekly trips to the library, so we always have fresh reading material to choose from. For writing, I just bought a cool looking blank journal for her to do her free writing and occasional writing prompts in. She loves writing her own stories, so I'm mostly just going to let her keep doing what she's doing.
As far as learning cursive goes, I found several sites with free printable worksheets she can work through at her own pace. And I found a couple YouTube series that teach some basic sign language. If she really gets in to it, I will look into ordering something more complete in the spring.
Other than that, we'll still be doing our usual nature journaling, and pursuing any interesting topics we happen to stumble upon!
If you enjoyed this post, check out:
-Homeschool Curriculum and Resources: My Top Picks
-Homeschooling on a Budget
Follow me on:
Comments
Post a Comment