Does anyone remember what movie that is from? (yes, this is a purposeful typo)
Sergeant Bilko-the funniest Steve Martin movie out there. And it is clean. (If my memory is serving me right.)
Well, school is starting up in just over a month (where has the summer gone???), half of which said month, I will be out of town.
So, on Sunday, my planning brain kicked into high gear, as I was driving around with Mr. Hippie. And this is a snapshot-literally-of what I came up with.
Now, in case you aren't familiar with the Barefoot Hippie Girl homeschooling philosophy you can find it here.
There is some things that worked really well for us last year that I am going to keep the same. There is a few things that I am going to tweak.
-I want to starting emphasizing a bit of poetry. This is not my strong suit. But, I have found a lot of poems lately that I've enjoyed. My goal is to have the boys memorize a poem every 2-3 weeks, do a poet profile, and we will tie in art with the poem.
For example: if we were to take up the Road Less Travelled by Robert Frost, we will memorize it, look into his life, and draw or paint or sculpt something that depicts what this poem is about.
This will accomplish two things-purposeful art, and poetic appreciation.
I haven't decided if we will do this on Thursday afternoons (art day last year) or link it with "fun school" on Fridays.
-For geography, we are going to keep on with our country per month plan. That worked really well last year. We will cover Sweden, Spain, Indonesia, Great Britain, Peru, China and India.
-History will see the completion of the presidential time line from September into November. We will then visit the Henry Ford Museum again, and cover their Liberty exhibit as a precursor to our embarking on the Civil War. We will spend the rest of the year on the Civil war.
-I am going to continue literary lunches, as it has been such fun. We will give HP a rest. Instead, we are going to read Team of Rivals, that huge book on Lincoln that I just finished. It has great back ground about Lincoln, the Civil War, and the whole concept of liberty from our country's inception.
We will do this reading time for half an hour right after lunch. Then we will have QT, and I will write my blog post for the day.
-Something I am going to tweak is our 30 minutes of reading in the morning. Right after devotions I have had BMV read to the others every day for 30 minutes. This year he is going to read on his own. Mr. Hippie and I are coming up with a list of classics for him to read-set in the Civil War period. This will include Red Badge of Courage and Huck Finn.
Freckles and LC need some bro/sis bonding time. To facilitate this, I will be having Freckles read to LC during this 30 minute period. I have old BJU texts that I am going to have him work through, as well as the Little House on the Prairie books.
-LC will be in kindergarten this year. Big change. I haven't decided on her schedule yet. She goes to a Bible Study on Thursday mornings, so we may just do her books Monday through Wednesday, and see how it goes. If we need more time, we will add more time. My emphasis with her will be getting her well on her way in reading before the end of the school year.
-We will continue to do history, geography, and science on Fridays. It just was a great finish to the week last year.
-Late September and October will be a huge art emphasis month, visiting the Art Festival/Competition downtown, and culminating in another home school art day.
-I am planning to do BJU for grammar, math and spelling, once again.
-I will continue to incorporate writing projects on a daily/weekly basis. Though BMV's projects are going to be more step by step, as I require longer and more detailed papers from him.
-I already have some science experiments to try-like dying carnations. We will continue to answer our three questions:
What did we use?
What did we do?
What did we learn form what happened?
-I am also thinking of having BMV start formal piano lessons. He has a good ear for music, but we both need the accountability of paying for lessons (me) to require practice (him).
-Nutshelled-My goal for
LC is a good grasp on reading, as well as some basic math.
Freckles-improving writing skills, and continuing on in reading and math. Emphasizing his interests in bugs and flight.
BMV-taking his writing up a notch, continuing to progress in the other fundamentals, and challenging his music/piano bent.
So, that is what my 2012-2013 school year is looking like. And I am excited! I will order books when we get back from our trip.
Our Meijer already has all the school supplies in big bins. I will be watching for 5 cent boxes of crayons and 10 cent notebooks.
How about you? Have you begun planning? Have you bought any school supplies yet? Are you getting excited? What are your goals for the year?
