Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Weekly Wrap Up (or should I say Monthly now??)

Well things have been nuts lately!!!  We were scheduled to finish our green book in Pathways this week, which is the last of the 1st grade program, but the stomach bug has hit our house and has brought everything to a complete stop!  Seth was throwing up during the night last night and Aaron started throwing up this morning.  I am sure Alyssa will begin it soon!  UGH!!  I am just praying that Daniel and I don't get sick...or if we do that we are well by Friday because we are suppose to be flying away to Portland for a romantic getaway weekend!

Seth will hopefully be finishing up most of 1st Grade in the next few weeks!  We are planning on continuing to do school through the summer though.  Of course it will be light...but just enough to keep us on a routine when we are home :-)  We will be working through the "Learning Through Sounds" portion of Pathways and we will be finishing up the 1st Grade Climbing to Good English.   We will also be playing math games so Seth can have continued practice on his math skills.

We are also going to be doing a Summer Reading Challenge.  We will be turning in our book records for the summer reading program at the Library...but I am making ours a bit more fun this year!  I am coming up with incentives for Seth to work towards when he reads so many books.   His two major incentives will be to get Season Two and Season 3 of Star Wars Clone Wars series, but he will be earning smaller prizes along the way to his big prizes.  I am still trying to think of a final major prize at the end of the summer as well!  Some of the smaller incentives will be ice cream treats, $ to buy a toy, a pet frog, etc...

I am making my own progress charts that he will be able to add stickers to as he finishes reading a book.  Of course the charts will be Star Wars themed :-)  And I have found some good reading lists online for his grade level that I have printed off and we will use to determine what books to read :-)

I am also doing a reading progress chart for Aaron even though it will be books that I read to him.  I will be coming up with incentives for him as well.

Well this past weekend I went to the Homeschool Book Fair and have purchased all my curriculum for next year!!  Here is what we will be doing:

Seth's 2nd Grade Year:

Reading - Pathways 2nd grade readers and workbooks, we will also continue the Explode the Code workbooks as well
English - Climbing to Good English 2nd Grade workbook
Mathematics - We will be doing Singapore Math this year!  After reviewing several of them I decided this was the best choice for us!  We will be doing workbooks 1B and 2A (per advice from the lady at the MFW booth at the fair since Seth did the math program that was part of MFW 1st grade).
Spelling - Christian Liberty Spelling Level 1
History  - My Father's World Adventures History Portion
Science - I am going to do some of the science stuff in the My Father's World Adventure program, as well as doing the Magic School Bus Science Kits (will be looking at spending a month or two on each kit)  I have already ordered the microscope lab and I am so excited!!  We will be doing this with a friend of ours, which will make it doubly fun!!!
Bible - our main bible focus will be Grapevine Studies New Testament Overview, but we will also be doing some of the activities in MFW Adventures as well.
Manners and Etiquette - I purchased the board game from The Etiquette Factory that we are going to have fun playing as we learn manners and etiquette rules.

Aaron (Kindergarten) and Alyssa (preschool)

I will be doing the Heart of Dakota 'Little Hands To Heaven' with both of them. Aaron will also be doing the Rod & Staff 4&5 year old program and Alyssa will do the Rod & Staff 3&4 year old program (both programs are super sweet workbooks)

I think that covers it!!  I am super excited about our next year!!  I think we are going to have a really fun year!

Until next time,
Kellie