Back To School–Curriculum Week

   Curriculum Week

Planning for our 2015/16 school year is complete -

Each year as I am planning a new school year I review, update and remind myself of why we are homeschooling through our Touchstones.

This helps me to get focused and has become a great tool in curriculum selecting for me.

We have been homeschooling for almost 20 years and graduated 4 children, and have 3 more to go. We have 8 children in all ages 11 – 26 but our 5th child – our special guy attends a special needs program.

I have used the Unit Study approach for most of our homeschool years with the elementary & middle school aged children. As they reach High School we transition them into independent learning, were I would set up their courses and they would either learn on their own with these resources, attend outside classes taught by myself and/or other homeschool parents or take Jr. College classes. This would be different each year for each child – tailored made to fit their bents, talents and the direction we felt God was leading them for their futures. When people would ask or comment “you homeschool them all through High School,” I would joke – “well they kind of homeschool themselves.” I was slightly embarrassed to admit this,  but I realized, that for us, this was one of  the goals we have for them – to become independent learners.

I will be teaching a 10th grader, 9th grader and 6th grader this year. In an effort to move my girlie girls into more of an independent mode we will be using Time 4 Learning for our core subjects of Math, Language Arts/English, Social Studies & Science. We started Time 4 Learning  in May to get a feel for it and to see if it would be a good fit for us. And it was.

I have placed them each in the grade level best suited for them and we are all working on US History this year – and Nature of  Science and Earth & Space Science. This makes adding supplements for those subjects much easier.

Time 4 Learning Goals:

2015/16	Audriona – Golden Girl	Angelina- Angel Girl	Shekinah – Little One
English	English 8	English I	Language Arts  6th
Math	English 8	Algebra	6th Grade
History	US History	US History I	US History - 6th
Science	Nature of Science Earth-Space Science	Nature of Science Earth-Space Science	Nature of Science Earth-Space Science
Art	Art Program	Art Program	Art Program

We will be adding 4 Units of History Readers – One for each quarter of the school year.  Our quarters are broken down into seasons:

Thematic Units -  Historical Novels  - US History I

Summer - Colonial America Serpent Never Sleeps	Autumn - Revolutionary War Johnny Tremain The Fighting Ground
Winter - Civil War Behind Enemy Lines Charley Skedaddle	Spring - Industrial Revolution Lyddi Breaker

         

We will be using the Teacher Created Thematic Units to go with these Readers. I love these because I can tailor use these for each girl and it gives us a good way to not only reinforce some of the History facts but to do it through living books.

For Bible we will be continuing our 3 year journey through the Bible –

We will be using our own Family Motto & Habits Curriculum and the What’s In The Bible Video series – my girls may seem too old for these videos, but I think that Phil Vischer is the best at teaching Bible Theology for children.  Even my older children love these videos and honestly we all learn new things from them. We will also be using a Youth Walk Devotion series that brings you through an overview of  each book of the Bible along with Picture It – the new version is called Picture Smart Bible.  I have created our own devotion sheets and worksheet to go with these resources.

We will be adding Fine Arts and Enrichment Classes along with some Personal Development Elective courses. I will be touching on all of these more in a future post.

I am excited for the direction we are moving in and for the new year ahead.