In March, I reacted. Pulled my 9 year old treasure (an amazing gift, who stretches me more than I thought possible) out of the world I had misgivings about sending her to in the first place, and declared I would homeschool this one while we decided what to do next.
Now, I purpose. This week I become the full time teacher of the 9 year old and of her 6 year old brother. We will study the Mystery of History together, beginning at the beginning and working our way through the Resurrection of Christ. 2 year old baby will be coloring a lot of printables this year, I think.
We will study biology together, using a handful of books and a house full of odds and ends for experimenting and learning about classification of living things; move into the human body after Christmas; and finish with botany and ecology by the end of the year.
The 4th grader will work her way through Teaching Textbooks for math, while I play counting, calendar, money, and other math games with the 1st grader. What math does a 6 year old need to know, anyway? Adding? Story problems? Parts of a pie? I think we'll do okay.
We will all do a little First Language Lessons and Spelling Power, and I intend to get my writing-resistant daughter to develop handwriting and composition skills by narrating and documenting the things we study in all the other areas.
If I am totally awesome, we will listen to classical music each Thursday while alternating art studies between drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, and collage. And studying art styles & artists, musicians & music history. We might even learn a Latin prayer by the end of the year.
Oh, and I have a subject this year, too: Cleaning the house, 5 days a week. I'll be using Sarah Mae's 31 Days to Clean. Best $5 investment I have made in a long time. I hope it helps bring some peace to our home, because summer has been way too chaotic and disorganized.
I honestly don't know how I will be able to accomplish an entire year of homeschool to my personal satisfaction. But I do know that the discipleship of my children is my primary responsibility, and this is the way I choose to do it right now.
I also know I don't do it alone. Jehovah Shammah, The Lord my companion, stands by my side.
What are you attempting this week, that can only happen with the Lord Your Companion?
When I write curriculum for Spanish K-6, it has to tie in with all the other subjects, so I am basing my next paragraph off what we do in Massachusetts in first grade math.
ReplyDeleteAll the things you listed are right on (especially games!), plus telling time (analog), addition and subtraction facts (think flashcards and memorizing, so math problems go faster in the future) through 20, and those operations through all the double digits. There is also skip counting by 2s, 5s and 10s, estimating, sorting by type and pattern-making, and ordering groups of objects and numbers themselves by size. I think they also introduce the number line. Also, bar graphs of data and drawing conclusions from them. Our kids took a bunch of polls about favorites, etc.
Definite yes on the story problems--solving and writing. They'll be simple and related to your other subjects, but the important part is making the connection that words match up to operation symbols. We encourage drawing pictures first to show the thinking, then writing the "math sentence."
I was never into math as a student or a teacher at first, but going through the K-6 curriculum really opened my eyes to how much you can do, and how easy math skills are to mix in with everything else.
Hmm...this had made me think about work, so I will stop now. I still have 32 days of summer to go!