Our Curriculum Plans for 2012-13


Our Family Background: 
This Fall we begin our 14th year of homeschooling! I am continually thankful and amazed at the grace and provision of the Lord which has allowed us to travel down this grand adventure. Our oldest daughter Shaiya has finished her first year of college and is preparing to begin her second year. Our youngest daughter Briyah is ten and is in approximately 6th grade this Fall.

Our Homeschooling Methods:
Our primary structure for our curriculum is a Christian classical model. We are part of a Classical Conversations community and attend classes once weekly with other home educated students. We are fond of Charlotte Mason's educational philosophies and embrace living books, nature study, historical biographies, and timeline studies. With an eclectic flair, we also utilize traditional texts, notebooking, unit studies, lapbooking, and a myriad of other diverse home education resources.

Disclaimer:
Our daughter is an accelerated student (Gifted/ADHD), and our curriculum plans are academically rigorous due to her own learning style, preferences, and needs. What we plan to cover this year is not a typical homeschool program of study. Briyah is very involved in her curriculum selection and the pace that she completes in her studies. At this season in her studies, she is academically geared and enjoys learning at an accelerated pace. We are a geeky bookish family and this is the culture of our home. Academics are quite fun to us!

This school term, beginning August 20th, we are starting a whole new year of studies. We have spent the summer months considering our future plans, and we are eager to get started. In all of our plans and goals, our hope is to grow closer to the Lord and as a family.

Many are the plans in the mind of a man,
but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. ~Proverbs 19:21

Our hope and prayer is that we can glorify God through all of our plans and studies. Here is an overview of our curriculum selections for 2012-13.

Organization:
The Ultimate Homeschool Planner by Debra Bell
The Schoolhouse Planner

I have selected a new planner this year for our overall homeschooling organization. I love planners, planning systems, and I am really an organizational geek at heart. Just recently, I ordered The Ultimate Homeschool Planner by Debra Bell, which is published by Apologia. My favorite feature of this planner is the weekly overview planning pages, where you can pray and log your weekly Bible Plan, Battle Plan, Prayers, Hospitality/Outreach, Memorable Moments, Achievements, and Evidences of God's Grace. This weekly overview page appears before the weekly planning page to log academic plans. I know that this planner will provide plenty of journaling space/inspiration to log our yearly plans and progress, while keeping our focus on God's guiding hand in our home education. You can check out the sample to see an overview of this great planner.

I am also going to use The Schoolhouse Planner (800 pages) for additional planning. What I love about this planner is that I can print the forms I need for our school and home. This extensive resource includes a ton of handy forms, which I will use in my overall filing system and household notebook.

Classical Conversations Foundations:

Foundations Curriculum Guide

This Fall we begin our second year in the Classical Conversations Foundations program. The Foundations Curriculum Guide is our core structure for our weekly studies. This guide covers memory work in Geography, History, Latin, Math, Science, English Grammar, and Historical Timeline Events. It also provides additional studies in Science Projects and Fine Arts.

Classical Conversations Essentials / Language Arts Studies:
Classical Conversations Foundations: Verbs and Prepositions
Teaching Writing: Structure and Style (IEW)
EEL Trivium Tables
Quid et Quo Chart

Each week at Classical Conversations, Briyah attends the afternoon Essentials program which covers English Grammar, Writing, and Math Games.
Briyah loves the worldview series by Apologia and she is excited to begin the Who Am I? study. She enjoys the colorful text, notebook journal, and coloring book. It is such a great resource to start each day of our studies.

Math:

Classical Conversations Foundations: Memory Work
A+ Tutorsoft
Saxon 65

Briyah's least favorite subject is math. She would rather spend her entire day focusing on literature and history, so we complete math tasks early in the day. We are using the A+ Tutorsoft as our core math program, as Briyah enjoys working on math with her computer. The A+ Tutorsoft program presents math in an interactive way and it is easily digestible by our daughter, who experiences math anxiety when given a math textbook. We are going to use the Saxon 65 text as a supplement this year. This will give Briyah a friendly introduction to the Saxon program, which she will be using in the Challenge level of Classical Conversations in the future.

Science:
Classical Conversations Foundations: Biology, Earth Science, Projects and Experiments
Classical Acts and Facts Science Cards: Biology and Geology
Signs and Seasons - Classical Astronomy
Exploring Creation with Astronomy

I originally planned to focus on Biology this year for science, as this fits in well with our studies at Classical Conversations. Briyah asked if she could spend an entire year focusing on Astronomy, which she thought would correlate with our studies in Ancient History. We are going to use Signs and Seasons by Classical Astronomy as a core text. Last week, Briyah convinced me that we needed to order Exploring Creation with Astronomy by Apologia. She really enjoyed Exploring Creation with Anatomy and Physiology this past school year, and wanted to continue studying the Apologia elementary series in addition to Signs and Seasons.

A few of the hands-on projects we plan to do throughout the year:
~Astronomy notebook
~Astronomy lapbooks
~Field trip to area Planetariums
~Field journal of observations

Latin:

Classical Conversations Foundations: Declensions
Trivium Tables Latin
First Form Latin by Memoria Press

Each week at Classical Conversations Foundations, we study Latin memory work. After spending one year in Classical Conservations, we have decided to add a formal Latin program, to expand the memory work that we are covering in Foundations. We have went back and forth between Memoria Press and Classical Academic Press, trying to determine which formal Latin program to begin. It was a difficult decision as both companies have award-winning quality programs, and we decided to choose First Form Latin.

History, Geography, and Literature:

Classical Conversations Foundations: World, Historical Empires, Peoples, and Countries
Classical Conversations Timeline Foundations: Creation to Modern America
Classical Acts and Facts History Cards
Trivium Tables Geography
Homeschool in the Woods Timeline Figures
The Story of the World - Ancient Times, Volume 1
Famous Figures of Ancient Times
Map Trek by Knowledge Quest

We are studying Ancient History (5000 B.C. - A.D. 400) for our core studies in history, literature, and geography. Some of the fun projects we plan to do throughout the year include:

~history notebook
~timeline book
~lapbooks
~history pockets
~dioramas
~ancient feast celebrations

We are going to read a variety of historical fiction, non-fiction, and biography books in the Ancient History period. We have not compiled a full listing of our choices, as we choose them as we go along. We use several core reference resources to compile notebooks, timeline studies, and for general reading:
The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia
Usborne Encyclopedia of World History
Streams of Civilization
The Usborne Book of World History Dates
DK Smithsonian Timelines of History

I hope to add the following books to our collection this year. If you have a used copy for sell, please let me know in the comment section.
Mystery of History
A Child's History of the World by Calvert

Fine Arts:
Classical Conversations Foundations: Masters and Drawing
Anderson Area Children's Choir
A Christmas Carol at Madison Park Church 

A few of the hands-on projects we plan to do throughout the year:
~Fine Arts notebooks (Composers & Artists)
~Fine Arts lapbooks
~Field trips to area Art museums
~Field trips to area symphony performances
~Field trips to area theatre performances
 
A few of the hands-on projects we plan to do throughout the year:
~Nature Field journal/notebook
~Field trips to area nature preserves/habitats
~Create an outdoor classroom in the backyard
~Create raised bed gardens at our new house

Notebooking:
NotebookingPages.com
The Notebooking Fairy
DonnaYoung.org

We are creating notebooks on each core subject, so that Briyah can document her learning and compile all of the activities and projects that she creates.

Extra-curricular:

Anderson University Science
4-H

Fitness/Health:
Anderson University PE Class
Biking
Hiking
Swimming
Gardening

Service Projects:
Classical Conversations with First Presbyterian Church service projects
Madison Park Church small group service project
Do Something Anderson

I hope you enjoyed reading an overview of our plans for 2012-13. I would love to read what you have planned for your year if you will share a link to your blog in the comment section.

You can check out over 500 bloggers who have posted their curriculum plans at the Not Back to School blog hop hosted by iHomeschool Network. This week is a School Room hop and I can't wait to see all of the great photos!




Blessings and Happy Homeschooling!

Comments

RachelT said…
Hello! I am hopping over from the Trivium Tuesdays linkup. It looks like you have a full and fun year ahead of you! We are also looking forward to gathering with our CC community again. Blessings to you!
Lynette said…
Thanks for stopping by my blog. Your curriculum looks great. I am glad to hear you enjoy IEW, I am looking forward to using it this year!
Amy Maze said…
This looks great! We are studying ancient history this year too, and I'm planning on incorporating astronomy for science, but my children are younger than yours so it will look a bit different =) So happy to have you share with us at Trivium Tuesdays last week and I hope you come back and contribute again this week!

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