Daily Scheduling

I've been busy, busy, busy.  Printing things for school, making wish lists for when we attend the HEAV Convention, and about to print more blank weekly lesson sheets.  Yes, it may be a bit early, but given we will have a couple weeks of school in June, I want to get an idea of how school may look with some of the new subjects we are adding this year.

For 2011/2012 school year, I am hoping to add:

• typing
• Spanish vocabulary using Rosetta Stone Latin America
• Phys. Ed.
• Nature Studies (been meaning to do this and have neglected it greatly)
• more art, but through our Unit Studies, Geography, and History
• A Child's Geography written by Ann Voskamp

 Most of these may only be 2 or 3 days a week and may need to be shuffled some once we have fall activities figured out.  This is in addition to Five in a Row, Beyond Five in a Row, Amanda Bennett's Unit Studies,  Mystery of History, Math-U-See, and Language Lessons from Queens Homeschool Supplies.  These we've used in the past few years with a lot of success, so we're continuing with them.

What do you think?

Okay, so I'm full of questions today!  This time it's "What do you think of my new blog header?" (the previous post was about lunches).

For a very long while I've wanted to name our little school, tried a number of variations of names and things, all with no appealing luck.  A couple months ago, thought about Brock Academy, but again, it just doesn't make any bells whistle for me.  Had always wanted Oak in the name, because for awhile we actually had a oak tree in our front yard.  Finally, it dawned on me that our little cluster of streets is called "Oak Creek"  and sticking academy after it sounded right.

Of course, then, I wanted to create a new blog for school and even started working on it.  But I'm not so sure I can keep up yet another blog, just for school stuff as school and life have become so intertwined.  Decided to leave the current URL the same and just tweak the header.

So I leave you with the question again, what do you think?

School lunches?

May be an odd question given that we home school and we've finished the 2010/2011 school year.  Seriously though, there are times I just have a blocked brain for new and different things for lunch.    Our boys get a bit bored with the same thing everyday and so do I.  Here are some of our favorites:

• Popcorn chicken
• English Muffin Pizza's
• Meatball subs
• Grilled Cheese
• Grilled Peanut Butter & Cheese
• Sliced apples, cheese, & crackers

Can you share some of your favorites (in the comments if you don't mind, so I can come back and look)?

More Planning!

Planning for this coming school year has begun; a tentative schedule for when we'll school, titles for unit studies, coming up with fun things to do.

I love finding books that both boys can be engaged in, have loved reading (or being read to), and the ability to take it a bit deeper.  With all the planning thus far and knowing that our summer weeks are a bit scattered over June, July, and August, I wasn't so sure that I wanted our boys using different books for the summer session.  This reminded me how much they enjoyed "The Magician's Nephew" last summer.

Now, I am off on a gathering expedition for "Voyage of the Dawn Treader".  So far, I've found a few sites that have some good things and have a few resources at home.  Part of our study will be to cover the discrepancies from the book to the movie.

Ideas so far:

• listen to Focus on the Family Radio Theatre version
• read the book
• build some boats
• go to creek to see how boats float
• visit some real boats

Coffe gone WRONG!!!!!

When you find a bunch of grounds at the bottom of your coffee cup (or in my case coffee glass as I like it iced), it makes you look at the bucket where the grounds go.

AH!  This would explain why coffee this morning didn't taste all that great.

Which leads to:

a second filtering of the coffee.  At least this go around

tasted much better.

Planners

We've finished four years of homeschooling and I have yet to find a planner that I like.  Well, the first year we used Sonlight and their Instructors Guide has just about everything laid out.  When we switched to Five in a Row, I began fumbling around for forms that would work for us.  Hoping this year, I've found a collection of forms that will work for me.

Quick glance of the whole year June 2011/May 2012.  Pink are

holidays/vacations I know we'll take.  Yellow are my review and testing week.  I've

already started noting things in pencil to get a feel of the year.

This form is for our unit study titles.  I have the weeks listed

along the left side, starting on Monday.  With this, if I have seasonal studies

I want to put in, I can, then fill in with other titles.  I also note weeks

off and holidays here too.

 

 My colorful, seasonally designed, home made,

monthly calendar.  I have one for each month so I can note things

like co-op, ortho appointments, sports, and other things.

 Here is my "Extras for the Year" form.  Something new for me as

I want to intentionally add some fun things to the school year and can plan 

ahead as I find stuff or make a notes to call about an event.

"Books we've read, videos we've watched, field trips" with a space

at the top for title of book, author, and illustrator for the book we're doing

a unit study on.  I'm hoping to use this as a way to figure out what books we'd

like to find at the library and then include it in the boys notebooks.

Here is my modified (I used a smaller version last year) weekly calendar.

The top line says "week of:" followed by two bigger blocks for the boys individual

unit studies.  I'll write the title of the book in the gray shaded line and then the

topic to be studied by the letter M, T, W, T, or F.  I'm using two blocks because the boys

are not always doing the same unit study.  The remaining boxes are for

grammar, MoH, MuS, geography, spelling.  Some of these we'll do together, others

that are separated just take a note of lesson number and I'll code those lines with colored pencils.

As for keeping it all together ~ 3 ring binder.  In the front will be my over view pages (Year at a Glance, Unit Studies Overview, and Extras), then behind monthly tabs will be the monthly calendar and relevant weekly lesson plan.

Now it's time to pull it all together, sharpen the colored pencils, and write some things out.  At least after my geography book comes in.

School's Out for 2010/2011

and as I posted on facebook yesterday (or something close to it), "My first free afternoon and I wander Staples looking for supplies for next year!"  After mulling over the selections of colored pens and pencil holders, I left empty handed. LOL

The boys were in Tae Kwon Do, at the time, so I headed back to that neck of the woods.  All was not lost for 2011/2012 as I'd brought with me the starts of my planner, a Beyond Five in a Row manual, and my laptop (fully charged).  After getting comfy in the van and finding someones unsecured wi-fi I created a few more planner pages.  I'm really enjoying the planning aspect this go around!

Hats off to the beginning of our 5th year of homeschooling in June (I still have a few big projects around the house I want to get to).

Dreaming

of next school year, the school books, the new crayons, the new pencils, the new ~ wait a minute we homeschool there aren't always new crayons or pencils when we have a bazillion collected over the last few years (thanks Grandpa and Grandma for the LARGE donation to each boy a few Christmas' ago).

I am dreaming of texts books and planners and field trips and art projects and getting out more and making school so much fun.

What do YOU do to make school fun?  What kinds of tricks do you keep up your sleeve?  I need help with getting "the fun on" for next year.

Here are some of my ideas thus far:

• hoping for a field trip a month, possibly themed around month, season, or unit study
• designing school logo for t-shirt, sweat shirts, pj bottoms (for the all important pj school days)
• more art & science because the boys love that stuff
• having FuN fRiDaYs by cooking, exploring, science, art
• during the winter, more stay at home days with a fire going (will have to see how Speech and O/T fit into that)

Please leave some suggestions in the comments so I can come back and get inspired.

Thanks!