Working a New Plan
School has been very simple here of late. We have transferred out of Montessori work almost completely. Pup still does a bit here and there, like the hundreds board or the golden bead…..but really just to illustrate a point in the book we are learning from. She is as happy as can be learning Math from a book and so far she is doing amazingly! I am keeping a close eye on how well she is grasping the concepts, but so far she picking them up and able to use them at any moment! I am using the Orange Book from the Miquon Math series for her. Plus we have our large assortment of Cusinarie Rods that she uses daily with that. This year Pup is learning to read and with Bunny having such a hard time, I decided that I needed to have a program for Pup. We started All About Reading level 1 with her and she is doing great! She loves the readers and the games, an I am loving the short sweet lessons! 🙂 Another thing that we are doing this year is some at home religion instruction. For pup we are using the Image of God series book for Kindergarten. She loves it, I love it……what else can I say! 😉 Science has been a bit of an issue for me. I cant find a program that I really like and so far we are hanging in limbo. Right now our science is all about watching the monarch caterplillars we have turn into butterflies! Super cool and super fun, but we are just about done there. After that I am not quite sure yet!
Bunny’s work is much the same as last years. We are using First Language Lessons for grammar and this year we are in the third grade book. She doesn’t love it and she doesn’t hate it……for grammar its good! I like that it focuses on the parts of a sentence much like the Montessori grammar boxes…..but without all the cutting. 🙂 For math she will be finishing up the Miquon Series. We are in the green book now, and she still loves it! She was able to pick it right back up after a summer off and keep going! She has a good head for math and this program allows that to shine. I got her a reading program this year as well. All About Reading Level 2 was supposed to be summer work, but we didn’t get to it! lol. So instead we are doing it now. This summer was epic because she started reading for real! She can read books on her own and I couldn’t be happier. If you have followed along here for a while you know that this has been a struggle years in the process! So the reading program is easy for here, but the tools they teach is worth going through for her. Spelling is All About Spelling level 2 (and hopefully 3) this year. We are moving ahead with that and it is working out……if its not broke don’t fix it right!?! History is Story of the World 2. She loves reading this and I love she is into history. I got the activity book, but aside from coloring pages, we don’t get to much of it. However, she is retaining it and loving it. Pup joins in on this too. Religion for Bunny is Faith and Life Series for third grade. We just read and discuss. She seems to like it and it does get us talking about stuff we may not have other wise gotten to, like prophets or angels. Science wise I am in the same boat as with Pup. Nothing is really jumping out as something that will work for us. I don’t want to focus on just one thing the whole year ( I think that they will hate it) so I am looking for something that touches on some of the main areas of science (chemistry, physics, geology, etc). I am will keep looking, but until then there is butterflies! 🙂
So there you have it! Simple, Sweet, Effective. This is our plan for the year! We are doing an art class with our homeschool group once a month and things like that, so there is other add ons, but this is the spine of our work this year! SO share some thoughts. What you doing? Did you stick to your stuff from last year or change it all up? I would love to hear what you are doing (especially for science)! 🙂
September 20, 2014 @ 3:34 pm
Greetings! For science, if you are looking for something that covers a variety of topics, is easy to use with minimal materials, is multi-age and can totally follow your family’s interests, you may want to consider Dr Nebel’s Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding. There are three levels that each cover 3-4 years of study in a variety of science threads. Those using the full Montessori elementary geography and biology albums find they still help with the “conversation” as well as with providing more than the keys – to follow particular interests.
🙂
September 20, 2014 @ 7:06 pm
So good to see you all back at it! 🙂 I can’t believe how fast your girls are growing up! I am glad you have found something good to settle in to – we are still loving our Montessori, but in the next year or two my oldest will be (gasp!) in seventh grade, so I am already looking ahead to what we can move to that will encourage the parts of Montessori that she loves the most. For science, we use BFSU (http://www.amazon.com/Building-Foundations-Scientific-Understanding-Curriculum/dp/1432706101/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411239886&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+fundamentals+of+scientific+understanding) – there are books that go all the way to sixth grade. Since we just started last year, I am still in the K-2 book for all the kids, but find ways of bringing in more mature language for the older ones. 🙂 Glad to see you all doing well!