This year we have a 4th grader and a 1st grader!!! Can you believe it?! So exciting! I have, literally, been on my knees for the last 8 months praying for this year of learning! I have prayed for the Lord to give me a passion for teaching my girls, I've prayed for Him to show me what HE wants my kids to learn first and for most, and I've prayed for endurance to stay steadfast throughout the whole year! And He has been soooo good! I haven't shared much about our educating up until this point because I feel weak and embarassed of how short I will fall in my attempts to obey the Lord in this area. More than anyone I am aware of how poorly equipped I am to do this. Which only keeps me falling at the Lord's feet begging for help, so I'm counting my weakness as good! I will boast in my weakness instead of pridefully trying to hide it. So, one of the ways I hope to stay steadfast is by doing a weekly posting about what we did in educating each week. If I know I will have family and friends reading about our progress and projects then it will keep me accountable to keep begging the Lord and working hard with the Holy Spirits power! So here, in this post, I will outline a few goals and our plans for this year of learning! Curriculum: I bought two this year. One for writing and one for Math. The girls have a real interest in writing so we are going to lean further toward learning how to write proper stories and essays and such than a language subject. Just for this year to see how it goes. For Math I chose a thorough workbook for Hurricane and Teaching Textbooks for Tender. Teaching Textbooks is a computer program where Tender will do everything! It's easier for Mama and more educational for her. Reading: I am writing lessons from a book called A Basket of Flowers by Christoph von Schmidt. http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1442167122 It is very old and written in Old English language. It will be challenging! I have pulled out vocab/spelling words for each girl from each chapter and they are doosies! Along with extra learning from the Word concerning whatever trial the characters are facing. While the book is a children's book it was written at a time when children were just better educated and well read so it's harder to read similar to how it's harder for the average woman to read Jane Austen as opposed to Nicholas Sparks! The Lord really lead me to this book as Robert and I were praying about how to prepare our children to be able to read deeper books as adults. Robert has his doctorate but still has a really hard time reading Johnathan Edwards! We want our girls to be able to read the puritans and other classics with ease! Everything else: The Bible will be our starting point with every other subject. Each morning we will have our Bible lessons (this will be the only lessons I will require The Boy to be present for). We are starting in Genesis and working our way through. We will hustle through Genesis though because we have studied it a lot lately and I don't want to bore the girls. I will incorporate free lessons, lap books, reading books, videos, films, and informational websites along with whatever we are studying that particular day. I'm breaking things up into (roughly) six week unit studies. The first unit will carry us all the way to the story of Joseph. A couple weeks into unit two will put us into Exodus. At the end of each unit Tender will chose one person and event and do a study on each while Hurricane gets a breather before we start the next unit.
Geography, History, and Science will all come out of the Bible. For instance, when we get to the Tower of Babel we will start our History unit on Ancient Civilizations. We will study the Egyptians further(mainly their gods) when we get to the Passover story. We were going to start our Solar System unit with creation but I wanted to be able to do star gazing with a borrowed telescope and so we will wait until later in the year when the sun goes down earlier to do that unit. But we will do our Living Things unit for Science during the creation story. Basically these three subjects will spider web out of the the core source of the Bible. For each of these subjects there will be lap books, lessons I find online, websites, videos, songs, books from the library and anything else I can get my hands on for free! We will also incorporate copy work and diction from these subjects occasionally. Tender will do Typing twice a week, time allowing! This I will just be using websites that help teach typing for free! I read about something for the Littles called Morning Room Time. I latched onto the idea and just two weeks ago Robert and I finished up the video for the boys' Morning Room Time. We are using the concept a little differently. I went on YouTube and found several short videos that my kids love that also help them learn/memorize important things. Shapes, counting, abcs, books of the bible, fruit of the spirit, ten commandments, that sort of thing. Each morning after Bible, chores, and breakfast, I will put the boys in the guest bedroom with some toys and my laptop so they can watch/ listen to the short video and play so I can only concentrate on the girls. It will give us a for sure 30 minutes a day without them under foot. And they play pretty well anyway and I will have preschoolish stuff out for them the rest of the day. I will likely start this routine a week before we start school so that I can stay in there and supervise them so they know the rules and what to expect. That way when we start the girls' lessons I will be able to leave them alone (kinda). How I'm staying organized: About 6 months ago I looked up what 4th and 1st graders need to learn. I made tabs for each goal in a big three ring binder with plenty of paper in each section for idea writing. I then put a page protector in each section. When I print off a lesson or whatever from the computer I slip it into the page protector for that lesson. I have two page protectors in the Bible lesson section because I am furthest in my planning in that subject and they are filling up fast. I'm also using Pinterest for organizing ideas and websites. It's is a huge time and space saver!! I'm currently organizing my big "Homeschooing" board into several smaller boards, "Math lessons", "Ancient Civilizations", "Solar System", and so on and so forth! Well! That about covers it! I mean, without going into a huge amount of detail! Right now we are planning on starting up all this learning on August 5th! Pray for me to boast in my weaknesses and lean on the Lord!
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