1) We begin our "school lessons" with Bible Time. Catherine Vos' The Child's Story Bible is my chosen read aloud, along with a psalm and proverb directly from the Word of God itself. We alternate between the NT and OT each day, and the children color a picture of the story as I read to them. I find our coloring pages here. After the reading, Princess dictates a narration to me, which I record on a "notebook" page from this site. She will often then illustrate the story. All these notebook pages go into her binder. I do not yet require Prince to do "formal" narrations this way.
2) Next comes "Circle Time". This is when we work on our memory work and recitation of scripture, poetry and our school mottoes. During circle time we also sing together and talk about character traits and good habits. Excellent resources for such "habit training" are Laying Down the Rails, For Instruction in Righteousness, A Child's Book of Character Building, Stepping Stones to Bigger Faith for Little People, Everyday Graces: A Child's Book of Good Manners, and A Child's Book of Virtues. Circle time is the time for our FIAR picture book reading and brief discussion/activity relating to it. Lastly, this is the time when we learn a bit of German through music and games, using the Teach Me German CD's.
3) Now it is time for Princess's phonics lessons. Last year, we began Alpha-Phonics and will continue through that book this year. Prince is free during her lessons. On Friday's she will read from her McGuffey readers instead of the usual phonics lessons.
4) Time to do some Kindergarten work with Prince. We read one of the little books from Beatrix Potter or a few fables from Aesop. Then he completes some "Letter of the Week" work (using the Explode the Code A, B, and C workbooks) along with ideas from other resources. While I am schooling Prince, Princess is sitting at the table with her copywork and math flashcards to keep her occupied.
5) Now it is snack time for the children. While they eat, I read aloud to them. Mondays we read a chapter from Our Island Story; Tuesdays a story about American History (utilizing the books listed on the sidebar under the said category); Wednesdays is half a chapter from The Little Duke; Thursdays we read a chapter from A Child's History of the World when it is scheduled (in the AO Year 2 schedule), or one of the Heroes for Young Readers books; and Friday's is either Parables From Nature or Tales From Shakespeare. The weeks that neither of those books is scheduled, we either finish the story from the previous Friday (many of them require two sittings to read through) or the time is open for more American History readings.
6) Time to do some brief language arts activities with Princess. My goal is no more than ten minutes. Following is what I have scheduled: Monday- Primary Language Lessons; Tuesday- Spelling By Sound and Structure 2; Wednesday- English for the Thoughtful Child; Thursday- Writing Strands 2. Nothing is scheduled for Fridays as they are our "Fine Art Fridays". More on that later. Prince is also free during this time, although I may give him educational toys/activities to play with.
7) At this time, I like to give the children ten or so minutes to get up and do a few exercises, short physical games or dancing.
8) Next I get Princess started on her math work with the Singapore and Miquon books. I need to explain things to her but then she is able to do most of the exercises herself. While she is at work with those, Prince and I do the second part of his schoolwork. We begin with a fingerplay and poem or nursery rhyme. Then it is time for some workbook pages in either the DEL workbooks or the ABC Series (see sidebar under Kindergarten curriculum for more info).
9) We conclude our morning reading with science/nature or geography readings. M, W and F are our science/nature days. We are using Exploring Creation With Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures of the 5th Day, learning about animals that live in water. This excellent text is the foundation of our science studies. It has 13 lessons, which are long and must be divided up. So we spend 2 weeks on each lesson, reading from the text twice a week. The third day of our science study is spent reading a story from one of the following books: Among the Pond People, Burgess Seashore Book, or By Pond and River. I choose a story that best goes with the lessons in our foundational text for that week. All the stories actually teach scientific truths through fiction. As can be seen, our scientific focus this year is water. I decided to study this topic because, well, we live in Florida. (And only God knows if we will live here next year!) Our studies will be enhanced through activities such as watching live tadpoles develop into frogs and trips to aquariums in our area. (I also own Considering God's Creation which I found at an awesome price and plan on including applicable parts with our science studies this year).
Tuesdays and Thursdays are devoted to geography readings. We are using A Child's Geography: Explore His Earth, The Seven Little Sisters Who Live On the Round Ball That Floats In the Air, and various books from Holling C. Holling, beginning with Tree in a Trail. So one day we read part 1 of our foundational text (A Child's Geography) and a Seven Sisters story and the second day we read part 2 and a chapter in the Holling book (all short chapters).
10) Each day we may, or may not, do an activity at this time (or we may wait until after lunch if our lessons took longer that day). The activity could be working on our history notebook pages/timeline, geography related activity, or science experiment.
**Tea time is a part of our day after afternoon "quiet time", usually around 4pm. During tea time, I read from our current literature read aloud, which are listed in the sidebar. Our current read aloud is Dangerous Journey, which we read from three days a week. The fourth day we read a chapter in Understood Betsy. Friday afternoons are open for outdoor activities and nature study.
Fridays are Fine Art Days. Instead of our usual math, language arts and kindergarten lesson, I have scheduled art, drawing, and music lessons; using Artistic Pursuits, various drawing books, Keyboard Capers, Nine Note Recorder lessons, and Color the Classics.
There it is, our plan for this school year!
0 comments:
Post a Comment