Today is our last day of "spring break".
I wanted to give both me and the kids time to get ready for schooling at home so this week they mostly did lots of fun projects, spent time together playing, etc. etc. etc. It's actually been a really nice, peaceful week... but here comes Monday!
My main goal for our homeschooling time right now is 75% fun 25% work. I don't consider this time "just for fun" at all though, that's not what I'm saying. I just want to keep it lighthearted and stress free.
I get an additional challenge of making this all work for literally all levels of learning since I have grades preschool through 9th grade. That being said, most of my hands on work is going to be geared towards 1st - 4th grade since my 6th, 8th, and 9th grader are more self reliant and HOPEFULLY will also be self motivated.
But these are just my best intentions. We'll see what actually happens once it's pen to paper.
Alright enough disclaimers!
The first thing I did was look up which subjects our state (Washington) requires us to teach.
This was what I found:
"Your home school curriculum must include occupational education, science, math, language, social studies, history, health, reading, writing, spelling, and the development of an appreciation of art and music."
Now, this doesn't say I have to sit down and teach each one individually. You can mix them up, you can teach them however you see fit. Cooking, for instance, can cover reading, math, and science. As long as you address what is happening; "When you cream sugar with butter, the water in the butter starts to dissolve the sugar while air is trapped as tiny bubbles in the fat."
I mean, that's really cool.
So just take that with a grain of salt. Make it what you want it to be.
Now that I've picked out the subjects, next thing I'm going to do is decide what I want to teach. The greatest part of all this is that the school has given some work or recommendations for the kids to do and websites for the kids to work on, so I'm not having to come up with everything on my own.
Calendar: I think it's important to start our day off "together". We'll all sit down at the same time and talk about the Month and date, season, and what the weather will be. We'll also discuss what our plans for the day are, maaaaaaaaybe share a news article, then we'll do our writing prompt which I found on lakeshore learning website. As for spelling, I decided to order 'Spectrum spelling' work books. .They were $7- $10 each.
I'll have to the kids jump right into math at that point. I decided to do math next because I know it can be really frustrating and I want to just get it out of the way. The elementary kids are using Zern, assigned by their teachers and the High schooler and middle schoolers are using Khan academy. My goal is 30 minute increments. I'll have the little girls on the counter with their tablets and the big kids on laptops at the table.
After that we'll do something different depending on the day. Library, meaning update their books and looking at their reading logs. A fun art project, check in on music practice, go out hiking, or a hands on outdoor project.
Every other day we'll do social studies and science.
Science is the one subject I'm nervous for. I'm going to attempt to have a theme for each month and then each week learn a different aspect of that theme. The first month we're doing "The recipe for me". I know, it's corny. I jut love labeling things. We'll start with blood. What is blood? What is blood made up of? How much blood do we have? Why do we need blood? What does it do?
I'll have a few hands on activities, some work sheets, and some youtube videos. 2nd week is organs, 3rd week is skeletons, 4th week is skin. Pinterest has TONS of ideas about these.
Social Studies is going to be every other day. I think we're going to do the Story of the World. We've used it before and enjoyed the reading and then I'll try to have the kids do something while I'm reading. maybe a coloring sheet or something. I'm not sure exactly.
Lunch will be at noon, tidy time (cleaning up after our morning), quiet time (1-3), tea time (snack), and then the kids will be doing some sort of exercise. I have a sheet of exercises the kids will work on daily, competing against themselves. It asks how many pushups, crunches, and back savers you can do in 30 seconds, how long it takes to run a mile, etc. we'll document it and then the next day they'll do it again.
That's about it. I'm letting them use their tablets for reading in their room.
Here's the kids' daily rhythm I came up with. I have in my back pocket the times I wanted to assign for these tasks, so I can try to keep the kids on task a bit but the kids don't need to worry about that. I believe this will keep, at least my kids, more relaxed and not stressed to get stuff done.
I wanted to give both me and the kids time to get ready for schooling at home so this week they mostly did lots of fun projects, spent time together playing, etc. etc. etc. It's actually been a really nice, peaceful week... but here comes Monday!
My main goal for our homeschooling time right now is 75% fun 25% work. I don't consider this time "just for fun" at all though, that's not what I'm saying. I just want to keep it lighthearted and stress free.
I get an additional challenge of making this all work for literally all levels of learning since I have grades preschool through 9th grade. That being said, most of my hands on work is going to be geared towards 1st - 4th grade since my 6th, 8th, and 9th grader are more self reliant and HOPEFULLY will also be self motivated.
But these are just my best intentions. We'll see what actually happens once it's pen to paper.
Alright enough disclaimers!
The first thing I did was look up which subjects our state (Washington) requires us to teach.
This was what I found:
"Your home school curriculum must include occupational education, science, math, language, social studies, history, health, reading, writing, spelling, and the development of an appreciation of art and music."
Now, this doesn't say I have to sit down and teach each one individually. You can mix them up, you can teach them however you see fit. Cooking, for instance, can cover reading, math, and science. As long as you address what is happening; "When you cream sugar with butter, the water in the butter starts to dissolve the sugar while air is trapped as tiny bubbles in the fat."
I mean, that's really cool.
So just take that with a grain of salt. Make it what you want it to be.
Now that I've picked out the subjects, next thing I'm going to do is decide what I want to teach. The greatest part of all this is that the school has given some work or recommendations for the kids to do and websites for the kids to work on, so I'm not having to come up with everything on my own.
Calendar: I think it's important to start our day off "together". We'll all sit down at the same time and talk about the Month and date, season, and what the weather will be. We'll also discuss what our plans for the day are, maaaaaaaaybe share a news article, then we'll do our writing prompt which I found on lakeshore learning website. As for spelling, I decided to order 'Spectrum spelling' work books. .They were $7- $10 each.
I'll have to the kids jump right into math at that point. I decided to do math next because I know it can be really frustrating and I want to just get it out of the way. The elementary kids are using Zern, assigned by their teachers and the High schooler and middle schoolers are using Khan academy. My goal is 30 minute increments. I'll have the little girls on the counter with their tablets and the big kids on laptops at the table.
After that we'll do something different depending on the day. Library, meaning update their books and looking at their reading logs. A fun art project, check in on music practice, go out hiking, or a hands on outdoor project.
Every other day we'll do social studies and science.
Science is the one subject I'm nervous for. I'm going to attempt to have a theme for each month and then each week learn a different aspect of that theme. The first month we're doing "The recipe for me". I know, it's corny. I jut love labeling things. We'll start with blood. What is blood? What is blood made up of? How much blood do we have? Why do we need blood? What does it do?
I'll have a few hands on activities, some work sheets, and some youtube videos. 2nd week is organs, 3rd week is skeletons, 4th week is skin. Pinterest has TONS of ideas about these.
Social Studies is going to be every other day. I think we're going to do the Story of the World. We've used it before and enjoyed the reading and then I'll try to have the kids do something while I'm reading. maybe a coloring sheet or something. I'm not sure exactly.
Lunch will be at noon, tidy time (cleaning up after our morning), quiet time (1-3), tea time (snack), and then the kids will be doing some sort of exercise. I have a sheet of exercises the kids will work on daily, competing against themselves. It asks how many pushups, crunches, and back savers you can do in 30 seconds, how long it takes to run a mile, etc. we'll document it and then the next day they'll do it again.
That's about it. I'm letting them use their tablets for reading in their room.
Here's the kids' daily rhythm I came up with. I have in my back pocket the times I wanted to assign for these tasks, so I can try to keep the kids on task a bit but the kids don't need to worry about that. I believe this will keep, at least my kids, more relaxed and not stressed to get stuff done.
Comments
Post a Comment