Since it is summer, the kids are playing and relaxing while I figure out what we're doing this fall. I thought I'd share what I've figured out so far, since I have a lot in my mind and I need to straighten it all out.
History this year we are going to use "Story Of The World Volume 2" to cover world history from Rome to the Renaissance (or somewhere around there). I was gifted all the materials for this level (book, activity guide, EVERYTHING except the extra books like a world history encyclopedia) so this costs me almost nothing to do (just printer paper to make copies of activity pages for the girls to all do). I can do this with all 4 girls together at the same time, making my life easier.
I'm also going to dust off All About Spelling for Lydia to do, she is having a lot of trouble with her spelling so I think we need to run through levels 1 and 2 with her (and Missa too but we'll see how that goes, I'll order more levels as needed for them). Hopefully it does enough that I'm not spending three times as long as I should to read her written work. I'm surprised that the school allowed her to have such horrible spelling without any intervention at all the first half of the school year, it is truly scary sad.
We also will read lots of great literature from the list for Sonlight cores B and C that go well with the history that we're doing this year. I also plan to tie in art and music by teaching about different styles of art (and for some of it, recreating copies of that art ourselves) and learning about instruments that were popular during that time (maybe try to make a few of our own if we feel a desire to do so).
I'm also going to do some US geography as we continue our 50 states study. We school 6 days a week during the busy time at Scott's work (back to school season is KILLER for us, he pulls 70 hour weeks easily from the beginning of August usually until around Thanksgiving or so) and most of the chapters in our history curriculum will only take 3 days a week to do. I'll use the other days each week to do a state with the kids, learning some stuff about each one and finding them on a map. This was the big thing I found out when we started our 50 states study, it only takes 2-3 days to cover most states the way I'm aiming to do them.
We are also going to learn sign language more deliberately. I did some searching on YouTube last night and found a channel called "Sign Language 101" that is nothing but videos to teach it, so I'm going to start on it tonight and just sign/speak together all the time as I learn more sign and then this fall I'll start enforcing with the kids that they sign when they speak while they learn new signs. The Signing Time dvd set will continue to be watched a couple times a week, but most of their learning will happen through immersion. It is the most effective way to learn a language, and will serve us well. I also plan on getting plugged into the local deaf community through a lovely lady I know who has a deaf son, to expand our opportunities to practice signing.
Math will continue as planned. The oldest 2 girls are plugging along in Math-U-See and doing well, while I plan to have the younger girls do Math Mammoth. I was gifted the books for the younger girls, so I don't have any out of pocket expense for them at this time. I just have to keep up with buying student books for the older girls, which I already have the books they need for this year.
Science is one area I've not really done a lot with yet. Right now we're going to breeze through our Real Science 4 Kids biology book, then I was thinking we'd do some animal studies. I would ideally like to purchase Winter Promise's Equine Science curriculum, but I don't know that we'll have the funds for that so I'm gathering up free resources as I find them to cover animal science.
We also are looking into the local American Heritage Girls troop for all the girls, and seriously considering it for "social skills" and any other area that it could cross over into. We'd do Girl Scouts, but quite frankly I'd weigh 500lbs if I had them selling cookies so they aren't doing that. Plus, AHG includes a lot of the values that we feel are important but Girl Scouts doesn't do. Yup, we chose the conservative Christian group that emphasizes traditional family values instead of the liberal group sponsored by Planned Parenthood that promotes a lot of things I won't be going into here (I have friends who love Girl Scouts, and am trying to respect their decision in this area without being insulting)
That is about all I've figured out at this point in time, I'm still working on the final plans and getting everything ready to go for us to start in August. Of course, I still have to give the girls their standardized tests to finish the year for reporting, and we'll be ordering those tests this weekend.
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