our homeschool, year 5

Year 5?! Seriously, have I been doing this for FIVE years??!!

Yep I have. Lael is going into the 4th grade and Alyssa is going into 2nd grade. Lauren will be doing a bit more of a preschool lesson time this year. Since we're expecting Addie in late September, we've just sold our house and moved twice in 8 weeks and are now starting to work on details for building our dream house - okay seriously just typing all that made me tired - we're doing things a bit differently this year.

Both girls will be doing these free typing lessons as well as regular visits to the library for free reading books. Here is a brief overview of what each girl will be learning:

Lael
If you've never interacted with Lael, the first thing you need to know about her is that she's incredibly driven. She likes to do things her way and on her time (which is usually now!). Lael is also very diligent when her responsibilities are laid out in front of her. She is an excellent reader and a very smart girl. All these things combined with our life situation right now lead us to a curriculum that is very independent. We settled on Monarch. I don't have to worry about computers crashing and losing her schoolwork. She can customize it a bit and will have to answer to her dashboard for her daily assignments. The crazy girl is begging me to start school tomorrow. This will be balanced with written book reports on a regular basis as well as journaling and free reading.

Alyssa
For every bit of Lael that is driven and diligent, Alyssa is tenderhearted and kind. Making sure that Lauren has her favorite sippy cup and her Bitty Baby is much more important that reading or math to our sweet girl. Because that kindness (coupled with my laziness) lead to a lot of distraction last year, we knew it was a good year for me to spend some extra time with Alyssa on her school work. She learns well with repetition so we've switched curriculum with her also. After our success and enjoyment of Abeka phonics grade 1, we decided that it would be smart to continue the same program - both for budget (since I'd purchased every flash card, reader and review chart imaginable!) but also for continuity in Alyssa's learning. I happened upon an amazing deal here for grade 2 teacher's manuals in every single subject, we decided to just take the plunge and use Abeka for everything but math. Again, in the interest of continuity, we'll be using Singapore Math for 2nd grade. Regular journaling will work their way into book reports both for language practice but also handwriting review.

Lauren
Our little Lauren is growing up so quickly! It's hard to believe she'll be a big sister soon. She will be following in her big sisters' footsteps and starting preschool with workbooks from the dollar store. Intense, huh? ;-) I found a whole set of Sesame Street books last year and Lauren's looking forward to sitting at the table with Alyssa to do school.

Organization
Since we don't have all our bookshelves and an extra room dedicated to storing them in this house, things will be stored a little different this year. I've slowly been color coding the girls over the last few weeks. Water bottles, laundry hampers, coat hooks, toothbrushes, towels ... you name it. For Alyssa and Lauren they will each have a bin similar to this in their color, stored in the storage closet. In their bin will be all their school books as well as a pencil box with their crayons, pencils, glue and such. {The one great thing about the big W's "college" section is that everything is color coded! I love it! The bins we'll be getting are $3 each and in just the right colors.}

I will also be using the same planner I fell in love with last year. It's especially fantastic this year because a friend wound up with two copies rather than the one she paid for and gave the extra copy to me. The publisher had made a small error that I fixed in about 5 minutes, making me extremely happy and blessed! It is an excellent tool for not only homeschool planning, but general household planning, menus, shopping lists and extracurricular activities. I would highly recommend it for any homeschooling mom who is trying to keep her head on straight.

So that's everything! What are your homeschool plans for this year?

Comments

  1. We decided to try out Sonlight for Caedmon this year. I found some of the materials on Ebay, but it all still ended up costing quite a bit (I just tell myself that it, hopefully, can be used for multiple children). Beyond that, I have no plans...I am definitely not as organized as you. Though I definitely have opinions about what I like and don't like, I have a really difficult time tailoring my planning around those opinions. I did get that same planner this year (because I do feel like my head is NOT on straight much of the time), so I'm hoping it will help motivate me to be more organized and creative. We shall see!

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  2. Hey Jackie, great post! We are doing Abeka Kindergarten for Caleb this year. He is so excited to be officially homeschooling!! Joshua we have decided on doing a combo. We will for all intents and purposes be doing My Father's World second grade but also in the interest of continuity we bought the Abeka seatwork texts which he loved last year! On top of that both boys will continue in Math U See for math and for Art they will be doing the next step in the Barry Stebbing curriculum: http://www.howgreatthouart.com

    Any reason you went with Abeka over MFW that I should know? Or was it just expense??

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  3. @Randi - Actually, this has been our most expensive year to date. Our decision to switch to Abeka had more to do with ease of planning/daily responsibilities for me (with a new baby), extra practice and review for Alyssa and Lael needing a bit more independence. MFW was a bit too much for me to do each day, whereas with Abeka Alyssa will have her work for each day that I review with her and she then completes on her own in her workbooks.

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  4. Free Typing Lessons for year 5 home school of Lauren and Alyssa. Good luck in year 5 girls.

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