Planning, planning, and more planning…
31 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Curriculum, Our Progress, Schooling, Start Up Tags: co-op, curriculum, Field trips, History, Living History, planning, real science 4 kids, Science
It has been a very busy two weeks!! I’ve been buzzing around like a little worker bee, trying to get my hive all ready for the school year. It is amazing how much time and energy it takes to get this all together. But, it is SO worth it!! I am incredibly excited to get started with everything!
Ok, so we’ve gotten all of our curriculum now. Hooray for that!! Now, it’s lesson planning time! I was super happy to pick up a great lesson planning book at Target. It was just what I was looking for, and there it was for only one dollar!! So, the plan is to have all my lesson plans done, at least until we take our December break, before we start our school year in two weeks. Ideally, I’d like to get the whole year planned out, but we’ll just take one step at a time.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned before or not, but we are doing a little history and science co-op with another family. Kelly, the other mom, and I worked hard to select just the right program for science. After much research, deliberation, and prayer, we settled on Real Science 4 Kids. I was so excited when all the books came and I was not at all let down by the program! We will be starting with astronomy this year, which everyone is excited about. We’ve already got some great field trips planned. It really helps to have a planetarium close by! We also have an amazing resource with the Las Vegas Astronomical Society. My goal is to get the kids as much hands-on learning as possible. For history, Kelly found this amazing history program called Living History. I am blown away by the amount of good information contained in these books! Why did I not learn a lot of this information in school?? The answer, I’m afraid, is because history has been rewritten to fit the progressive agenda. I’m finding that as I am preparing to teach all this material, I am reading through these textbooks any time I can. I find it funny that I spent so much of my school time trying to avoid reading textbooks (mostly because they were totally dry and boring), and now I am looking forward, with great excitement, to reading these books! We are going to be doing US History this year, and next. We’ve got some super fun things planned already for the kids! I’m anxious to get started!
Now, I’ve just got to get our math and reading lessons planned out, and we’ll be all good to go!
It’s almost time for us to start our school year and I’m just giddy with excitement. I’m sure the kids don’t feel the same abundance of jubilation, but that’s alright. I know they are going to get a great education this year — and a ton of amazing experiences!! What an adventure we are about to embark on!!
Hey Mr. Postman, look and see. Is there a letter in your bag for me?…
17 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in Curriculum Tags: happiness, History, Living History, Math, Math-U-See
It’s here! It’s here!
Can you tell I’m excited??
Over the last couple days, I’ve gotten half of the curriculum materials I ordered! Woo-hoo! Now, I really feel like a kid at Christmas. It’s so fun to open up the boxes and check out all the new materials. Ok, I admit freely that I am a complete and total nerd, but I’m comfortable with my nerdiness and figure I might as well embrace it. So, with all my nerdy excitement, I opened up our math books and manipulative blocks. We also got a skip counting cd, which I promptly put into the computer to play, much to the chagrin of one of the kids. I just LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this math program!
All the little manipulative blocks are super fun, and besides using them for math, the kids love to build with them. So, when we got two new sets, we were all very excited! The new sets meant two things. First, I have a great deal more blocks to use and there shouldn’t be a problem having more than one child use the blocks at a time. Second, the kids can have the old set to just play with. I can assure you, they were very happy to hear about that! Now, of course, we also got the math books, which for me are just as exciting as the block. Not so much for the kiddos. However, I have to say, this truly is the best math program I have found, and that is because it is a multi-sensory approach to learning math. Not only does it appeal to different senses, but the program teaches the “whys”of math. For me, that was huge! I struggled with math for so long in school because I simply didn’t understand when to use what technique. It’s very frustrating to be able to do the math, but not grasp why you are doing it or when to use it. I like to call Math-U-See a common sense approach to math. Simply said: it rocks! I am thoroughly excited!
We got our math, with obviously was exciting on its own, but then hubby brought the mail in from the mailbox. (The math came via UPS.) Hooray hooray – another package for me!! Woo-hoo! And what was it?? History! Yea for history! Probably my most favorite subject! Oh yeah, let the nerdiness shine through! Seriously though, I think history is so very vital to know. How else are we to really understand what is happening in the world around us now? Cliche or not, history does, indeed, repeat itself. It is very cyclical and if one can see the patterns and pay attention to human behaviors, it becomes easy to make sense out of current events and even reasonably look ahead. I really truly believe if you learn history, you will learn most other subjects
along with it, by default. You have to read and write when learning history. In history you will learn about science, inventions, geography, geology, pop culture fads, philosophy, psychology, religion, critical thinking, and really much more. There is so much out there to absorb, all under the umbrella of history. Now, let me say, I was very very picky about what history program we used! I didn’t want anything with whitewashed history. I didn’t want any progressive rewrite of history. I wanted to make sure the history being taught wasn’t slanted to the liberal side of things. That being said, I also didn’t want something that was overly right-wing. My goal with history is to present it to the kids in as pure a form as possible and then let them draw their own conclusions. I want them to think for themselves and use reason. Unfortunately, there really isn’t a history program out there that is completely unbiased. But, I feel I’ve found a verygood program. My good friend, Kelly, actually found it for us. It’s simple and to the point. No flashiness. Just straightforward, concise, and pretty darn accurate. There is a lot of room in the Living History curriculum to bring in other sources – like say…the original sources. If you are learning about George Washington, for example, why not use his own words instead of the words of some scholar that probably just wrote the things that fit what he wanted. Let’s learn from the original words of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, etc. Let’s learn from Lewis and Clark and the Native Americans. Let’s learn from those who were actually there – not someone else trying to put their spin on the events. Also, with this history program, the kids will be making their own history book as we go. I’m very excited to get started with it! We will be doing history, as well as science, in our little co-op with Kelly and her family. Working in that group setting will allow the kids to bounce ideas off each other and learn from each other. It will allow for discussion and a good deal of critical thinking. It is going to be great! I can’t wait to get started!!
