Every summer I sit down with my daughter and we talk about what she wants to learn about during the next school year and any goals she has. We tend to take a pretty relaxed, student led approach to learning in our household, but I do like to do some formal lessons too. This year is going to be a little different than past years for us. My middle daughter is now preschool aged and is showing an interest in participating in some of our learning, so I am trying to plan some unit studies that can accommodate both a 5th grader and a preschooler. Here's a look at what I have in mind so far.
Science
Science is always a favorite subject in our household, so we tend to gravitate toward a lot of science topics naturally, without any real planning or curriculum. We are constantly researching new plants and animals we come across on our outdoor adventures and my kids watch a lot of nature documentaries all on their own. In addition to following any interesting rabbit trails that pique our interest this year, we're also planning on doing a unit about prehistoric animals, and we want to get to a forensic science kit we ordered last year, but didn't end up having time for.
For our prehistoric animal study, I am putting together my own curriculum pretty much from scratch. I am planning on splitting it up into 3 parts, the Paleozoic era (early mollusks, fish, and amphibians), the Mesozoic era (dinosaurs and early birds), and the Cenozoic era (the age of mammals, we will cover lots of ice age animals in this section). I'm planning to have my 5th grader make lap books for each of the 3 eras. If my preschooler wants to make a lap book, I will help her put together something simple about dinosaurs.
Social Studies
This year we are planning on doing world geography and some basic world history together. We are picking several countries from each region of the world and will spend several weeks studying the geography, culture, and history of each country. I ordered a couple world geography coloring books, a world map, and a cook book with traditional recipes from all over the world. I am really excited for some fun cooking projects! I also downloaded the World Geography app from Atom Games Entertainment, which has lots of information and quizzes about different countries and regions of the world.
Math
My 5th grader is still working on mastering multiplication and division this year. While she's a good mathematician, it's a subject she finds boring and tends to avoid as much as possible. I found a really fun looking workbook from Funschooling called Multiplication Games , with all sorts of multiplication games and puzzles. Hopefully it will hold her attention better than typical math workbooks. I also made her an account on the free Kahn Academy site, so she has an opportunity to practice other math skills a couple times a week.
My preschooler will continue to learn math skills just through living life and playing games with me and her sisters. Lately we've been practicing recognizing numbers in the elevator in our apartment building and practicing her counting skills by just counting random things while we're out exploring or playing. Today we counted stairs in the park, and acorns we collected.
English
We're sticking with the same pretty informal approach to English skills that we took last year. We will have a set reading time everyday, but it will be completely free choice when it comes to what my 5th grader is reading. She'll probably start the year with the Judy Moody books she just picked out at Barnes and Noble.
For my 5th grader, writing practice will be mixed in with our science and geography units, and we will do some free creative writing a few times a week. She loves writing her own stories, so I'm going to let her run with that. Right now she's writing a book about ghosts.
My preschooler will continue developing pre writing and reading skills by coloring, playing with playdough, and other activities that focus on fine motor skills, and lots of listening to me read aloud to her. I downloaded a couple fun apps for her to play when she feels like it that focus on letter recognition and early math skills. Her favorites currently are the Starfall app and the ABC Kids app.
We will also continue with our family read aloud time everyday. We're currently working on book 2 of the His Dark Materials series and have book 3 ordered. After we're finished with those, my 5th grader has requested that we pick up where we left off in the Harry Potter series last year.
Other Subjects and Topics
We are planning on continuing to learn American Sign Language as a family. We started at the beginning of last year, but got busy with other stuff and kind of neglected it towards the end of the year. I am hoping to find more time to dedicate to it this year.
My 5th grader wants to continue learning to sew and both girls want to spend more time in the kitchen learning to bake and cook.
We will also continue with our weekly nature hikes. There is an amazing park nearby with dozens of hiking trails we haven't explored yet. And we're planning on doing some kid friendly yoga once or twice a week. We're not taking a formal class anywhere, just watching and following YouTube videos at home.
What grades or ages are you homeschooling this year? What topics do you have planned?
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My kids love the Starfall site/app. Even though we only have the free version right now, they always find something fun to do on it. I credit it with their math skills as so many of the math games helped them think about things in new ways.
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