today i was able to spend a few hours going through all the curriculum and plan our first few weeks of school. benny will be starting 3rd grade and june will begin preschool.
i plan to keep things light and fun for june but still introduce her to some early learning skills. she wants to do “school” too, so i am just taking her lead on this. for june i plan on doing the all about pre-reading program and the before five and a row for literature. we will also do some early math activities but i do not have curriculum for this but will use manipulatives and a few other resources i have collected over the years. we will also be working on fine motor activities that keep her busy as i work with benny and will help her in the future when she begins handwriting.
benny will be doing very similar work as he did at the classical academy where he attended the last three years. i have been very happy with the curriculum so far so i decided to keep everything and just go up in the next level. i am making a few adjustments along the way. we will be keeping a history journal that will act as a time-line and keep literature art and copy work/narrations separate. in the past he had a journal for both and i found it to be over-flowing and unorganized by mid year. we will do an art assignment with liquid watercolor with every literature book we read but will be doing a time-line piece for each chapter in story of the world with colored pencil. he will continue with all about spelling, and finish up some grammar from last year from first language lessons. i will be including his grammar and writing lessons with his narrations as i found a lot of over-lapping in the past and would love to teach multiple topics at once if possible. i purchased the writer’s jungle from the brave writer and have yet to finish it but i am so excited of what i have read so far. i plan to introduce more writing as we get comfortable in the year and feel like we have a routine and this book will act as an excellent guide. he will also be learning cursive this year, which he requested. math will be done monday-wednesday at home and science will be done on thursday and friday when we head outdoors for the day. i plan to read aloud a ton and i look forward to days where we do just that and set the other stuff aside.
i have spent the last few months getting the school room ready, purchasing curriculum, reading and listening to audio books and podcast and i am so excited for this new adventure. we just have to wait one more week! we are all very eager to start. especially this one…
