School Days

 

I’ve spent the last week cleaning out our school room, rearranging and planning for this year.

              

I love planning school… in my plans everyone gets along, no one argues or complains about doing school, and we have the best year ever… it’s nice to have dreams, isn’t it!!

Travis wanted a place to himself this year so his desk is in my sewing/storage room.

              

The past few years I have loosely followed the Well Trained Mind plan.  By loosely I mean I own the book and use a few of the curriculum recommendations.

This year I decided to follow it a little closer with Travis.  He’s going into 5th grade and I’d warned him the work was going to get a little harder… but, yikes!, even I’m feeling a little overwhelmed right now!!

Math won’t change… we’ve used Math-U-See for years and I’m still happy with it.  Jake is learning his addition and subtraction facts.  Cade’s working on his multiplication facts and then will start multiple digit multiplication and probable move on to division before the end of the year.  Travis is finishing up fractions and starting decimals and percents… next up for him… pre-algebra!  Double Yikes!!

We use Rod and Staff for phonics/spelling/english/science.  I love this program…. except for 2nd grade phonics.  2nd grade phonics is HARD when you speak with a Texas drawl!!  Thankfully, I don’t have a 2nd grader this year!

Jacob and Cade will also use Rod and Staff for reading.  Travis will be reading novels and non-fiction books that go along with our history studies for reading this year. 

I’m really excited about Travis’ science… we’re dissecting this year!!!  I’ve been waiting to dissect something since he was in kindergarten… and no, killing chickens to put in the freezer does not count as dissecting!!

For history we’re using The Story of the World.  Jacob and Cade will listen as I read from the book and then do activities and crafts that go along with each lesson. 

Travis will also read the corresponding section from our history encyclopedia and write an outline on that, read and summarize original source books from the time periods we study, and write reports on non-fiction books covering whatever we’re studying.

                                                                                                                                               All this will go in his history notebook.

For the last two years we’ve had a history timeline on the school room wall.  You can see it in the top picture on the far wall.  Starting this year, I’m also going to have Travis keep a notebook timeline so he can add more detail. 

                

We start tomorrow…. pray for us!!!!