Thursday, June 26, 2008

Homeschool Planning

Im going to use this place to organize my thoughts and plans for the coming year.

We are plowing ahead in our study of US History currently. We have about 9 weeks left of Sonlight's Core 4. We are roaring through the '20s and we are about to become Depressed.

Our main text for the current time frame is Joy Hakim's History of Us, which has supplanted Landmark curently because Landmark (formerly fabulous) got sort of dull. Not sure why. Lack of detail mainly. Hakim gave us a chapter on jazz, baseball, and Hubble.

Sometimes more is more.


Next year is a challenge. Core 5 as written is a protestant missionary nightmare, Im afraid. Since Im both more secular in my focus and also a catholic its got to be changed, at least a little. The first change we'll make is to drop the 100 Gateway Cities book. We'll replace that with DK's Children Just Like Me. We will add Material World. Another resource we probably wont be using is the Unreached People DVD. I find it slightly irritating that Sapporo, Japan (home to a once thriving catholic population) is featured in the film. More than that, Im not interested in conversion, especially. If that means Im a bad christian so be it. I dont pray for conversion of people to my faith. Nor will my kids.

The meat of core 5 are the wonderful readers. Of all the years, Core 5 offers the most enjoyable selection of readers. Though my son typically dislikes the SL readers I don't think he will object to core 5. The read alouds are also excellent. Very excited about them!

The spine of Core 5 is the EHE- Eastern Hemisphere Explorer used with World Book's computer encyclopedia. To get the most of this I need to buy it new AND I'd need a brand new SL IG as well- those three resources alone would run me about $150. its been redone this year and improved. But unfortunately it sounds like its still not too great. People complain about the workload but for me, its the style of the work. Read the Encyclopedia and then answer the questions in the EHE.

I don't think that sounds particularly interesting. Nor is it feasible with 2 kids.

So we are going another route. I believe I will be purchasing core 5 used, from ebay, almost complete. If I can manage to get the core for about 375ish (its around 600 new) and I add Trailguides with most of the key resources AND I add my logic and visual perception stuff AND an art card game AND a math program for Calum and Easy Grammar and a few other things, I'll still be paying less than I would for Core 5 new with the EHE. As a bonus, I have a ten percent off coupon for ebay right now. The other stuff comes from Rainbow Resource.

Next year Calum will continue with Singapore Math 3A and B. We'll see how it goes. Long division is the stumbling block I foresee. Al will do Teaching Textbooks 5 at double time- 2 lessons a day. When he finishes, we'll buy TT6. He is currently on lesson 38 and there are a total of 114 lessons in TT5. Its going well and I love the program. He says its stupid but there is actually very little objection (relatively) when it comes to him actualy doing it. If TT 4 came out I would probably buy it for Calum now. TT is NOT challenging, but its comprehensive and frankly, math between 3rd and 6th grade is all review preparing you for the eventual jump to algebra. Hopefully by 7th grade my boys will be ready for pre algebra. They should do algebra in 8th grade.

Both boys will do Easy Grammar. Calum will start Just Write and Al will continue it.

Spelling is up in the air. Im using Sequential Spelling now. I like it. It is easy and cheap. Calum used Spellingtime.com this year but I am balking at the price now. It was free the first year, 28$ last year and is up to 35 or so now. Im looking seriously at All About Spelling or Spelling Power. AAS is Orton Gillingham based which sounds good. And Spelling Power is a one time 50$ lay out.

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