Last year I was pretty much a slacker with Lincoln. He would occasionally do work and then want to play. Coralee would get mad that he wasn't working as hard as she was but I told her that when she was his age, she just played. We didn't do anything formal. Well, now we're officially pre-K age and the only year Coralee went to "school". It's time to do something.
Here are my simple goals for him:
1) Write numbers
2) Write letters - upper & lower case
3) Read lots of books
I have tried to use Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. Coralee absolutely hated it. Still haven't figured that one out except maybe she knew what the sounds were and was miffed I thought she didn't. Lincoln & Lauramae had fun with the poems last year. I love the simple, classical approach but I really felt like he needed more. I also liked the idea of being able to plug through an actual, factual consumable book. So, in a moment of excitement at the 20% off sale at Mardel, I bought First Start Reading by Memoria Press. I think it might be a little much for him in the beginning but I still have the rest of the alphabet sheets I'd printed from education.com last year. I think we'll finish the rest of the alphabet (we ended on "N") and then move on to those books. I showed them to him a few days ago and he got the excited giggle about writing and reading. That did this Momma's heart good! I'm also planning to buy more of the BOB books to use with him.
For Math, we'll be picking and choosing things out of Saxon K. A wiser woman would just chunk the book, work on numbers and simple addition and be done with it. But I bought that book and by golly, we're going to attempt to use it.
He'll be in CC again this year. I hope that he will be sweet to his tutor. We were very blessed that he had Mrs. Cox who loved him in spite of his behavior. As I've told him since he was a baby, it's a good thing he's cute! Hopefully he has matured over the summer. I'm still a little scarred from being in his classroom for VBS in Boston a few weeks ago. But that's a blog post for another day. :-)
Friday, July 27, 2012
2nd Grade Curriculum - Coralee
How can my baby girl be a 2nd grader already?
Math - Saxon 3
Saxon is the one part of our curriculum that I've never felt the need to change. I'm so looking forward to 5/4 next year because I taught it years ago and loved it. I didn't feel like she was doing as well as I thought she should at the end of last year. Perfectionist Momma translation.... she didn't make a 100 on every worksheet like she did with Saxon 1. The benefit of Saxon is that the beginning of the year is all review. The math facts I was concerned about are coming back around and I'm hoping a summer's worth of maturity and growth will get them in her brain. I'm also hoping that fractions will click, too.
Reading
We're starting the year by reading D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. We'll keep it simple and read the stories and do an art activity to go with them. This will be all skate.... Lincoln & Lauramae will hopefully join us. I plan on us making Zeus's family tree and then making cards with pictures of everything else from the book (etc. Midas, Heracles, etc.). My general goal for her is to read lots of books and attempt book report type projects. Again, I'm trying to make this fun for her and she loves to make things & be creative. My only concern is comprehension and that will check the box for me. I tried pre-made curriculum with questions & vocabulary words but so many of the questions were way above her level of understanding and they took so long that it took the fun out of reading a book. I would love for my kids to actually enjoy reading good books and what we were doing wasn't helping. I also want to make sure to read higher level books aloud to them. Right now, I'm reading Little Women to Coralee and I'm not sure who's enjoying it more.
Greek
She loved Songschool Latin last year so we bought Songschool Greek. After slugging through some of Climbing Parnassus I decided that I would do Greek with her. We had ordered two books because the cd was damaged (by my sweet baby girl) in one of them. I'm a little overwhelmed by actually trying to read Greek. Sure I can recognize most of the letters but putting them together is altogether different. She's already learned the alphabet.... woohoo, she's ready to join a sorority.
Spelling
We'll continue using Spelling Plus. We'll just do fun things to practice the words. I found a lot of great ideas on Pinterest and they're already in her binder. I also want to make sure that we use the dictation sentences that go with it this year. I pretty much stunk at using those last year.
Handwriting
New American Cursive Workbook 2 from Memoria Press
I had bought Cursive First last year and really didn't care for it that much. This is a nice blend of instruction on how to make the letters, practice & room to write her own sentences, stories, etc. I'm just hoping she's ready to move on like that!
English
This will be the first thing to go. I bought a Bob Jones 2nd grade English workbook last year and we started on some of it. I'm trying to trust that CC has it all taken care of in Essentials but the fact of the matter is this doesn't take much time or effort on my part. That being said, it will be the first thing crossed off the to do list if we get overwhelmed.
Classical Conversations
This is truly my lifesaver. Instead of having to pour hours into science & history (as well as the other subjects), I'm able to focus on quick glimpses there. We'll try to add some projects to those two areas and will at least attempt to read some of Story of the World that coincides with our history sentences. I'm so excited about the new CC timeline cards and new song to go with them. Veritas was good but this seems to fit so much better with CC. I'd love to have Coralee be a Memory Master again this year but I'm going to try my best to keep up with things better this year. We'll plan to keep up with the memory work so it's truly in her brain instead of having to stuff it in later.
Other goals
Poetry - Memorize 1 poem/month; use as handwriting practice
Memorize Romans 1:18-23 - I think it coincides well with our study of Ancient History in CC. All of that points me back to Precept's Covenant study.
Math - Saxon 3
Saxon is the one part of our curriculum that I've never felt the need to change. I'm so looking forward to 5/4 next year because I taught it years ago and loved it. I didn't feel like she was doing as well as I thought she should at the end of last year. Perfectionist Momma translation.... she didn't make a 100 on every worksheet like she did with Saxon 1. The benefit of Saxon is that the beginning of the year is all review. The math facts I was concerned about are coming back around and I'm hoping a summer's worth of maturity and growth will get them in her brain. I'm also hoping that fractions will click, too.
Reading
We're starting the year by reading D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. We'll keep it simple and read the stories and do an art activity to go with them. This will be all skate.... Lincoln & Lauramae will hopefully join us. I plan on us making Zeus's family tree and then making cards with pictures of everything else from the book (etc. Midas, Heracles, etc.). My general goal for her is to read lots of books and attempt book report type projects. Again, I'm trying to make this fun for her and she loves to make things & be creative. My only concern is comprehension and that will check the box for me. I tried pre-made curriculum with questions & vocabulary words but so many of the questions were way above her level of understanding and they took so long that it took the fun out of reading a book. I would love for my kids to actually enjoy reading good books and what we were doing wasn't helping. I also want to make sure to read higher level books aloud to them. Right now, I'm reading Little Women to Coralee and I'm not sure who's enjoying it more.
Greek
She loved Songschool Latin last year so we bought Songschool Greek. After slugging through some of Climbing Parnassus I decided that I would do Greek with her. We had ordered two books because the cd was damaged (by my sweet baby girl) in one of them. I'm a little overwhelmed by actually trying to read Greek. Sure I can recognize most of the letters but putting them together is altogether different. She's already learned the alphabet.... woohoo, she's ready to join a sorority.
Spelling
We'll continue using Spelling Plus. We'll just do fun things to practice the words. I found a lot of great ideas on Pinterest and they're already in her binder. I also want to make sure that we use the dictation sentences that go with it this year. I pretty much stunk at using those last year.
Handwriting
New American Cursive Workbook 2 from Memoria Press
I had bought Cursive First last year and really didn't care for it that much. This is a nice blend of instruction on how to make the letters, practice & room to write her own sentences, stories, etc. I'm just hoping she's ready to move on like that!
English
This will be the first thing to go. I bought a Bob Jones 2nd grade English workbook last year and we started on some of it. I'm trying to trust that CC has it all taken care of in Essentials but the fact of the matter is this doesn't take much time or effort on my part. That being said, it will be the first thing crossed off the to do list if we get overwhelmed.
Classical Conversations
This is truly my lifesaver. Instead of having to pour hours into science & history (as well as the other subjects), I'm able to focus on quick glimpses there. We'll try to add some projects to those two areas and will at least attempt to read some of Story of the World that coincides with our history sentences. I'm so excited about the new CC timeline cards and new song to go with them. Veritas was good but this seems to fit so much better with CC. I'd love to have Coralee be a Memory Master again this year but I'm going to try my best to keep up with things better this year. We'll plan to keep up with the memory work so it's truly in her brain instead of having to stuff it in later.
Other goals
Poetry - Memorize 1 poem/month; use as handwriting practice
Memorize Romans 1:18-23 - I think it coincides well with our study of Ancient History in CC. All of that points me back to Precept's Covenant study.
Homeschool Planning
I wrote this a couple of months ago but never got around to posting it....
We were blessed to have a week without the kiddos. It was nice to be able to have uninterrupted conversation and get so much stuff around the house done. One of our conversations was about school and planning. I love planning. It makes me happy but it also makes me very unhappy when things don't go as I had planned. When I read what I had planned out for last year, it's a little frustrating to me because we missed the mark in so many ways. A friend of mine told me that as long as they get through 1st grade without eating paste, we're really doing well. I can check that box! Yay!
In all seriousness, we had a great discussion about how projects are planned at work and how to apply that to homeschooling. "Manager" Ken had some great insight to planning our year. He said that they start out planning which features they need in a product. That's the macro version, big picture. Then, they set up the smaller steps to accomplish that. There's a monthly plan but also quick weekly status meetings so the monthly plan can change as needed when the inevitable problem or difficulty arises. So, as I think through our school year, I'm trying to plan what we want to accomplish for the year but instead of trying to work out the entire year on a day to day basis, I'm going to plan the details in smaller chunks and try not to be frustrated when I don't get a checkmark for each subject each day. As a classroom teacher, that didn't happen so I don't know why I expect it to be different in schooling my kids at home.
I love that our CC practicum is at the beginning of the summer. I've had a little time without doing school work and I'm ready to think about the next school year. One of the subjects addressed was a Classical Christian Education Made Approachable. The speaker talked about how CC is meant to be simple. The Foundations program needs a reading & math curriculum added and that's all. As a homeschool Momma, I feel like I have to prove to everyone that we're doing "enough". I think about all the things kids do in a regular classroom and I'm scared there are areas where we lack. Then I have my kids recite the presidents and I feel better. ;-) The thing is that a Classical Christian education is a different animal from the way I was educated and the way I was taught to teach. So, this year I'm going to try to relax some and be confident in the choices we've made. I'm going to try to add more fun things (thank you Pinterest) so we can all enjoy it more! This Spring, Andrew Pudewa also came to speak and what he said about reading & writing really clicked. Good writers are well read was the basic idea. I wish I could say I've done everything he suggested but it gave us some good direction and confidence about keeping our reading curriculum simple.
We were blessed to have a week without the kiddos. It was nice to be able to have uninterrupted conversation and get so much stuff around the house done. One of our conversations was about school and planning. I love planning. It makes me happy but it also makes me very unhappy when things don't go as I had planned. When I read what I had planned out for last year, it's a little frustrating to me because we missed the mark in so many ways. A friend of mine told me that as long as they get through 1st grade without eating paste, we're really doing well. I can check that box! Yay!
In all seriousness, we had a great discussion about how projects are planned at work and how to apply that to homeschooling. "Manager" Ken had some great insight to planning our year. He said that they start out planning which features they need in a product. That's the macro version, big picture. Then, they set up the smaller steps to accomplish that. There's a monthly plan but also quick weekly status meetings so the monthly plan can change as needed when the inevitable problem or difficulty arises. So, as I think through our school year, I'm trying to plan what we want to accomplish for the year but instead of trying to work out the entire year on a day to day basis, I'm going to plan the details in smaller chunks and try not to be frustrated when I don't get a checkmark for each subject each day. As a classroom teacher, that didn't happen so I don't know why I expect it to be different in schooling my kids at home.
I love that our CC practicum is at the beginning of the summer. I've had a little time without doing school work and I'm ready to think about the next school year. One of the subjects addressed was a Classical Christian Education Made Approachable. The speaker talked about how CC is meant to be simple. The Foundations program needs a reading & math curriculum added and that's all. As a homeschool Momma, I feel like I have to prove to everyone that we're doing "enough". I think about all the things kids do in a regular classroom and I'm scared there are areas where we lack. Then I have my kids recite the presidents and I feel better. ;-) The thing is that a Classical Christian education is a different animal from the way I was educated and the way I was taught to teach. So, this year I'm going to try to relax some and be confident in the choices we've made. I'm going to try to add more fun things (thank you Pinterest) so we can all enjoy it more! This Spring, Andrew Pudewa also came to speak and what he said about reading & writing really clicked. Good writers are well read was the basic idea. I wish I could say I've done everything he suggested but it gave us some good direction and confidence about keeping our reading curriculum simple.
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