Almost done
I've spent the weekend working nearly non-stop on planning the school year. I have made significant progress and feel as though I can think about other things again. It's kind of a relief.
I'm pleased with how the year fell into place. As I've mentioned before, we'll be doing Ancient Greece and chemistry for our unit studies this year. Greece was fairly straightforward as I've taught it before. Since I don't have any really young children this year, just middle school-age students, I can do things a bit more in-depth and cover things that wouldn't necessarily work with younger students listening as well. While I always aim at the oldest student when I'm planning, this is really the first year that I haven't had to worry about what the younger ones will be doing as well.
So for Greece, we'll be doing the usual things... basic history starting with Minoan and Mycenaean culture, Homer and Greek myths, Sparta, everyday life, form of government, art and architecture, drama, philosophy and science, Persian wars focusing on the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis, the Greek language, the Peloponnesian War, and Alexander the Great. I'm pretty sure I'm missing some of the things we'll be covering. This year I've decided to have everyone document their learning by making a lapbook. We haven't done this for four years, so it seems as though it's time to do this again. Y. is excited because the last time we made lapbooks, she and R. had just come home and landed right in the middle of our unit study about birds. She remembers being absolutely baffled as to what we were doing and wants to be able to enjoy making a lapbook this time around.
And then there was chemistry. What took so long is that I felt I needed to essentially work through the book I am using to be sure I understood what we were going to be doing. This also allowed me to have some idea as to how to work other extra chemistry-related activities into a pretty straight-forward curriculum. You know what? Chemistry is actually pretty darn interesting, and I'm excited about sharing it with my children. The curriculum we'll be using has an experiment or other hands-on activity for every single lesson which are then tied back into what is happening on a molecular level. I think everyone is going to really enjoy it.
Because we are using a curriculum for chemistry, as good as it is, it is not interdisciplinary, which I think is the great strength of homeschooling... the ability to tie lots of different aspects of learning together. Figuring out how to do this with chemistry was a good chunk of the weekend. I've managed to add in food, art, and poetry into what we will be doing. The art portion I'm totally making up, so I hope it works.
I discovered as I was matching lesson plans to days on the calendar, that all of this gets us through spring break. This meant that I needed something fairly contained and light (because... spring) to finish off the year with. I first thought about doing the seven wonders of the ancient world because that ties so nicely in with Greece, doing some research on that led down other rabbit holes until I realized what I really wanted to do was architecture. We'll start with the ancient wonders, but then quickly move on to other significant buildings, what architecture is and what an architect does, ending up with famous architects and buildings right here in Chicago. This is something that we've never done before and I think that K. in particular is going to love it. Plus, spring sounds like the perfect time of year to go around the city looking at buildings. Fun, huh? I'm looking forward to it.
If I needed to, I could start school tomorrow, that is how organized I am feeling. There are some odds and ends to take care of, lots of books to put away, and some copies to make, but I'm feeling in pretty good shape. I am so happy. It was beginning to feel as though I absolutely couldn't think about anything else, and it is good to have it all out of my brain and into my spiral notebook. (I'm very high-tech over here. I used to scrawl my notes long-hand, then type them into the computer and print out the nice clean plans. A few years ago (I must have been running behind), I never got to the typing and printing part, instead sticking to the scrawled notes. I've never looked back as it took significant time to transcribe it all. Now I just write a little neater.
I'm pleased with how the year fell into place. As I've mentioned before, we'll be doing Ancient Greece and chemistry for our unit studies this year. Greece was fairly straightforward as I've taught it before. Since I don't have any really young children this year, just middle school-age students, I can do things a bit more in-depth and cover things that wouldn't necessarily work with younger students listening as well. While I always aim at the oldest student when I'm planning, this is really the first year that I haven't had to worry about what the younger ones will be doing as well.
So for Greece, we'll be doing the usual things... basic history starting with Minoan and Mycenaean culture, Homer and Greek myths, Sparta, everyday life, form of government, art and architecture, drama, philosophy and science, Persian wars focusing on the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis, the Greek language, the Peloponnesian War, and Alexander the Great. I'm pretty sure I'm missing some of the things we'll be covering. This year I've decided to have everyone document their learning by making a lapbook. We haven't done this for four years, so it seems as though it's time to do this again. Y. is excited because the last time we made lapbooks, she and R. had just come home and landed right in the middle of our unit study about birds. She remembers being absolutely baffled as to what we were doing and wants to be able to enjoy making a lapbook this time around.
And then there was chemistry. What took so long is that I felt I needed to essentially work through the book I am using to be sure I understood what we were going to be doing. This also allowed me to have some idea as to how to work other extra chemistry-related activities into a pretty straight-forward curriculum. You know what? Chemistry is actually pretty darn interesting, and I'm excited about sharing it with my children. The curriculum we'll be using has an experiment or other hands-on activity for every single lesson which are then tied back into what is happening on a molecular level. I think everyone is going to really enjoy it.
Because we are using a curriculum for chemistry, as good as it is, it is not interdisciplinary, which I think is the great strength of homeschooling... the ability to tie lots of different aspects of learning together. Figuring out how to do this with chemistry was a good chunk of the weekend. I've managed to add in food, art, and poetry into what we will be doing. The art portion I'm totally making up, so I hope it works.
I discovered as I was matching lesson plans to days on the calendar, that all of this gets us through spring break. This meant that I needed something fairly contained and light (because... spring) to finish off the year with. I first thought about doing the seven wonders of the ancient world because that ties so nicely in with Greece, doing some research on that led down other rabbit holes until I realized what I really wanted to do was architecture. We'll start with the ancient wonders, but then quickly move on to other significant buildings, what architecture is and what an architect does, ending up with famous architects and buildings right here in Chicago. This is something that we've never done before and I think that K. in particular is going to love it. Plus, spring sounds like the perfect time of year to go around the city looking at buildings. Fun, huh? I'm looking forward to it.
If I needed to, I could start school tomorrow, that is how organized I am feeling. There are some odds and ends to take care of, lots of books to put away, and some copies to make, but I'm feeling in pretty good shape. I am so happy. It was beginning to feel as though I absolutely couldn't think about anything else, and it is good to have it all out of my brain and into my spiral notebook. (I'm very high-tech over here. I used to scrawl my notes long-hand, then type them into the computer and print out the nice clean plans. A few years ago (I must have been running behind), I never got to the typing and printing part, instead sticking to the scrawled notes. I've never looked back as it took significant time to transcribe it all. Now I just write a little neater.
Comments