Plans for January

You would think with two weeks off I would have great plans made for January. Instead I used my holiday as just that a holiday. I didn't do any planning or gathering of projects so that when we started again in January we would get off to a good start. So yesterday we jumped back into school work a little half heartedly. But that is no surprise. It always takes a awhile to really get back into the schedule of things. But I did spend a bit of time mulling over a real plan for the month.

History: We get to study about China again and then we get to look at life in Russia which is something Sophie will be happy about. Ever since rowing Another Celebrated Dancing Bear years ago she has a special affinity for Russia.

Science: Only 2 more biomes to study so we will give two weeks to each. First we are going to look at marine ecosystems and then finish our biome study with Rainforests. Each of these are things we have studied before. I need to do something different this time.... I will have to think about it a little more. My creativity is at a all time low so we will see what I come up with. Or we may not push science too much because we have a lot of other things going on at the same time. But Sophie is already excited to study about the ocean again. It is one of her favorite subjects.

Music: I decided when we study Russia in history I will introduce the new composer Modest Mussorgsky. We will focus just on Pictures at an Exhibition. There aren't any books on Mussorgsky in the library so we will have to look him up online. At least I found a few good copies of the music at the library and wikkipedia actually has the pictures that the piece is based on so we will take a look at those.

Language Arts and our Artist for the month: For our artist this month I picked Wilson Bentley or Snowflake Bentley. I thought it would be fun to look at him and his photographs of snowflakes. Snowflake Bentley is a FIAR book but in Vol. 4 which I don't have, but I will try to make this into a fun biography/snow unit by reading snow books and some snow poetry to go along with our study of Bentley. I have seen a few blogs that list fun activities to go along with this book and topic. Here is Melissa's post and Candace too listed a bunch of fun things that she is planning to do. I think we may try to do a lapbook to focus our studies. There are lots of opportunities for writing and art projects so we should have fun doing this.

Math: Sophie had a really hard time staying focused on Math yesterday. She saved a review to do the first day back and she seemed to have forgotten how to do everything. I had to sit by her side and walk her through each problem. I don't know if it was because she really couldn't remember how to do them or if she just couldn't settle her brain enough to think through them. We may need to go back and review some more.

That about sums up my plans. Not very specific yet. I really should get into the details of these things but I never seem to and yet somehow things end up working out.

Lets hope most of these things happen this month.