Plans for Fall

I admit I am not the greatest of planners. I have tried to plan out my year week by week but something always came along and messed my carefully laid out schedule all out of whack. So I usually just plan subjects to study and when we get to them we get to them and I don't stress too much about the weeks and trying to keep to a certain schedule. Life gets in the way.

But I do have plans for the Fall and actually have already gotten started on some of it.

Sophie is going to be attending Williamsburg Intermediate for some of her subjects. This is an online project based school much like the classes she took through LEA. She is taking the Leadership and Humanities courses. She could also take the STEM class through them but I decided we would do Science and Math ourselves. She is looking forward to these classes. She has loved her online classes in the past and her cousins, which have attended Willamsburg, have only good things to say about the classes.These online classes should cover her writing, literature, language arts, art, history and what ever else comes up in their projects.


Math
Sophie is doing Saxon 8/7 for her math. She has already started this program and so far it has been a good change for her.

Ian is already working through Saxon 5/4 and finding it very easy. He may need to move him up to the next level.







Henry will be working through Singapore 3A and B.

Language Arts

I really need to focus on Language arts with both the boys so we will be starting Intermediate Language Lessons with Ian and Primary Language Lessons with Henry. They will also work their way through IEW's Student Writing intensive A.

Plus I am having them keep a History notebook and I need to figure out how we are going to fit some writing into science also.

Sophie's online classes should cover this subject. They will be learning through the projects they work on. She will also be working through IEW with her online classes as well.


Science

Science this year for us is going to be Chemistry. I am "winging it" as far as curriculum but have been looking at a lot of the literature based programs out there and think I can do it. I am tired of buying a curriculum and then doing my own things anyway. This Squidoo lens is very helpful! So we will see how this plays out.

Ian is signed up to take the Science Explorers class through LEA. He loves science! So this extra exposure of science is more for fun. He will still be doing Chemistry with the rest of us.




History

I am going to be winging things here too. Usually we just go with Story of the World and add in lots of go alongs which I collect from the library. But this time through this time period I wanted to spend more time on US history. So I want to somewhat ignore the rest of the world and focus only on our countries history.

I have all the books on the Early America Heritage History at my disposal as well as all sorts of books on my shelf and  of course all the books at the library. I am going to have to work in some projects or reports but we will see how much they really need.

Sophie will be doing history with her online school and they are studying South America and the Maya, Inca and Aztecs so that shouldn't be too much of a stretch. I fully expect her to sit in on what we are studying in addition to what she is doing for her class. I just won't expect any written work from her since she will be doing the other class and have assignments there already.

Latin

I still want to having my kids learn Latin but it is always the subject that gets lost in the shuffle when life gets in the way. I have Visual Latin, Getting Started with Latin, and Latin through Mythology and even English from the roots up.

I really need to make sure we fit it into our schedules.  It is hard to cram everything into the 4 days of our school week.

Extras

Henry will be doing gymnastics and piano

Ian will be doing choir, piano, and he is a part of a First Lego League and is soooo excited to build robots.

Sophie has choir and piano.

All the kids will also be attending our weekly co-op which takes up most of that 5th day of our week. The classes are more social but still somewhat academic.

I know there should be some Artist and Muscian Study and perhaps even Nature Study but at the moment I haven't made any plans for those. They are more of those subjects that just don't happen as often as I would like. But there is really only so much school my kids can do each day. They need lots of run around time and Molly does need some attention now and again. I haven't even planned anything for her either. I guess she should be doing some sort of preschool but I just can't bring myself to try to put more into our already busy schedules. She will gets lots of books read to her and she joins us for coloring and such. We will see how this all works out and see what more I can fit in.

I already am feeling a bit overwhelmed.