2012-2013 Fall/Winter School Plans

While other parents and kids completed their first week of school last week, we finished our summer school.  This is our week off, when we have a few fun things planned:  We'll watch too many movies; eat too much junk food; make a few day trips; go swimming; stuff like that.

Next week we begin fall/winter school.

As I enter my fourth year of h/schooling (now that's hard to believe), this will be the first time that I will introduce a regular schedule to the process.  The past year has seen a degree of patterning to our days, but this fall will mark the first with a fairly regular schedule.  There's one main reason for this:  trying to h/school three kids (I don't know how parents manage with more than three kids at different stages - I'm finding this a big enough challenge).

Despite how easy scheduling might seem (or might actually be for some people), it's been very tough for me to come up with one.  I'm trying to accommodate several factors: I have two early risers and one night owl who likes to sleep in; I have kids who are at very different stages in their learning and who learn very differently from one another; I have one child who is more 'advanced' academically at this point than her brother two years older than her; none of the kids are able to learn independently; and we're juggling school work with the extra-curricular activities that threatened to take over much of our schedule until I began pulling out of things two weeks ago.  I don't know if the new schedule will work as is, but we'll give it a try and then tweak or change things as needed.

Focus for All Three Kids as a Group:

• Bible Stories/Study
• Story of the World (History)
• FIAR (Five in A Row) - a literature-based unity study curriculum.
• Copy Work/Printing/etc
• (Me) Reading out Loud

Matthew's Additional Focus:

• Grade 3 Curriculum ("Curr"): Math; English; Social Studies; Science.  He will need to complete 2-3 lessons/week in order to finish the curriculum by sometime in spring.
• Math U See
• Dolche Words
• Reading Out Loud
• Art Class
• Gym Class
• Skating
• Swimming
• Piano

Seth's Additional Focus:

• Smart Start Program from Gindis Institute
• Letter Recognition and Phonics
• Number Recognition and Writing Numbers (pre- Math U See)
• Me reading out loud
• Gym Class
• Skating
• Swimming
• Music Class
• ? Indoor Soccer

Lizzie's Additional Focus:

I don't have a need for Lizzie to do school this year yet.  I would be very comfortable waiting with most things for another year.  I'm a firm believer in kids playing at her age, and think that play is the learning that is most important for her at this point.  But she so badly wants to do school...she's the driver of my decision to prepare work for her.  Quite simply, she loves going to school.  So I have things prepared for her, but there will be no pressure on her whatsoever to complete them - we'll go at her pace.  

• Smart Start Program (oriented towards Seth, but she will particpate)
• Letter Recognition and Phonics
• Number Recognition and Writing Numbers
• Me reading out loud
• 100 Easy Lessons to Teach Your Child to Read book.
• Skating
• Swimming
• Music Class

In a moment, I'll post the draft schedule I've come up with.  Here are a few things to note about it:

• Because Matthew likes to sleep in in the mornings, I've decided to maximize that time by working with Seth and Lizzie.  In addition to reading out loud to them, I'll be using that time to continue to work with Seth on the Smart Start that I purchased from the Gindis Institute for his particular language/learning issues.  It's already made a difference and I think that a regular time of focus will prove even more fruitful.  Though Lizzie is not really in need of this kind of work, I will be including her in my work with Seth...because it surely can't hurt!

• I've prepared three book lists for the upcoming year, all of which I'll be reading out loud to the kids: one list is books that I'll read out loud to Seth and Lizzie in the mornings; a second list are books that I'll read out loud to all three kids during our scheduled time of the school day; and the third list (which had some input from Matthew) is for reading out loud to Matthew after the younger kids have gone to bed.

• Our broader schedule will be a rotation this year:  three weeks of curriculum-based studies; then one week of unity study based on subjects that I've mostly identified already.  We will repeat this four week cycle and then take a week's vacation, so that we will have a week off every eight weeks.  I'm looking forward to trying out this cycle, and I think the kids will do well with it.

• I've identified eight unit studies so far, based on some input from the kids and my own thoughts about what I think they'd find interesting and useful.  Those unit studies are:  

• Intro to the Human Body; 
• Canadian Wildlife; 
• Christmas; 
• Intro to Aboriginal Studies; 
• Dinosaurs; 
• Easter; 
• Plant Life Cycle; and 
• Intro to Canadian Geography.

• Though the schedule below appears to have us 'doing' school well into the afternoon, realistically this will not happen very often.  There are at least a few days every week when we'll be able to add our History and FIAR curriculum into the morning routine, simply because on most days the morning work happens fairly quickly...I'm just not assuming it, so I've scheduled some of this work for the afternoon just in case.  On those days when we do spill over into the afternoon, I'm also ok cancelling subjects like History and FIAR (which I see as being electives) in order to participate in play dates or whatever else comes along that sounds better than doing school work!  I actually envision that most of our afternoons will be pretty free (particularly after about 1:30) to play, be outside, meet with friends, etc.

• Some things have not made the schedule despite being regularly-occurring events:  a variety of field trips that I've signed us up for; swimming lessons; skating lessons; music classes (S&L) and piano (Matt); etc

So here's what our schedule is going to look like:

		Monday		Tuesday		Wednesday		Thursday		Friday
Pre-Breakfast (7-8:15am)	S&L M	Smart Start Mom reads out loud  Sleeping!	All	Chores: clean-up teeth/face/dress tidy bed/room	S&L M	Smart Start Mom reads out loud  Sleeping!	S&L M	Smart Start Mom reads out loud  Sleeping!	S&L M	Smart Start Mom reads out loud  Sleeping!
Breakfast		Breakfast		Breakfast		Breakfast		Breakfast		Breakfast
9:00-lunch	All	Chores: clean-up teeth/face tidy bed/room get dressed	S&L M	9:00 Wee College RV Mon.Math M reads aloud Curr.#3 Eng.	All	Chores: clean-up teeth/face tidy bed/room get dressed	All	Chores: clean-up teeth/face tidy bed/room get dressed	All	Chores: clean-up teeth/face tidy bed/room get dressed
	All	Bible, Memory, Prayer		“    “   “	All	BIble, Memory, Prayer	All	Bible, Memory, Prayer	All	Bible, Memory, Prayer
	All	Printing/Copywork		“    “   “		Printing/Copywork	All	Printing/Copywork	All	Printing/Copywork
	M S&L	Curr.#1 Math Lesson Curr.#2 S.Studies Letter #1: (3-4 activities from list below)	All	Errand or play time	M S&L	Math U See: DVD and workbook pages Letter #1: (3-4 activities from list below)	M S&L	Curr.#4 Math or English (or do practice sheets) Letter #2: (3-4 activities from list below)	M S&L	Curr.#4/5 Science RV Math & English for the week Letter #2: (3-4 activities from list below)
Lunch		Lunch		Lunch		Early Lunch		Lunch		Lunch
	All	Mom reads aloud	All	Mom reads aloud	All	Drive to gym	All	Mom reads aloud	All	Drive to Art class
	M	Piano Practice	M	Piano Practice	M&S	1:00 Gym. Home 2:30		Piano Practice	M	1:30 Art Class. Home 3:45.
	All	History	All	Bible, Memory, Prayer	M	Piano Practice	All	History	M	Piano Practice
			All	FIAR	All	FIAR			All	FIAR  (Art Day)
Evening	M	M reads out loud parent reads out loud	M	M reads out loud parent reads out loud	M	M reads out loud parent reads out loud	M	M reads out loud parent reads out loud	M	M reads out loud parent reads out loud

Letter Activities for S&L:
colouring uppercase and lowercase letters
letter puzzle
poke page
playdough letters onto mat
Do-A-Dot pages
lacing letters (uppercase and lowercase) - from COAH
letter collage ideas: cheerios, cotton balls, macaroni, oats, etc etc (depending on the letter of the week - eg. C for cotton balls)
pre-writing pages - from COAH
matching uppercase and lowercase laminated letters
colouring pages and worksheets - eg. http://www.tlsbooks.com/kindergartenworksheets.htm  and http://www.tlsbooks.com/preschoolworksheets.htm  
ABC ‘puzzle’ stickers; ABC foam stickers
ABC stamps
ABC beading
cut and paste pages for each letter, using sounds.