Back to the Books

Our June break is over and we have started our new homeschool year. We are starting our 6th year of homeschooling!!! Yay!!!! Mirror is in 6th and McGyver is in 4th.

Our homeschooling philosophy is still fairly relaxed. Our goal is for our children to be able to reason and express themselves clearly, rather than be able to recite a meaningless litany of dates and facts.

Here's the current plan for the 2009-2010 year.

Math- We're sticking with Saxon. Math 5/4 and Math 6/5. It works for us.
Reading/Language Arts- We've taken our sweet time working through English for the Thoughtful Child, vols. 1 and 2. Mirror will finally finish these books this year. I prefer to approach writing and grammar from a relaxed standpoint, teaching her how to express herself with writing without the grammar "drill and kill". If she reads and writes enough, she'll connect with the grammar along the way. I know, shocking talk from a former English teacher!

McGyver is still a struggling reader, we are working on improving his fluency. I am making an effort to find things for him to read that fit his current interests-- it seems to motivate him to keep working at his reading skills.
Spelling words and vocabulary will come from our reading. I have a few biographies and some historical stories planned, but we will also read as much non-fiction as possible. Most students do not read enough non-fiction, which is vital for college-bound students.

We had a hard time finishing our US history curriculum last year, so we'll finish that up and go back to Story of the World and get as much world history in as we can. We are keeping history notebooks that are a hybrid of notebooking and lapbooking.

Science is easy. With a year-round garden to tend, too many animals and two acres of bugs and creepy crawlies to collect, we can always find something to learn about and record in our nature notebooks. We are going to work on taking better observational notes and learn how to write science reports. To fill in the blank spots, I'm looking forward to using Energy and Simple Chemistry from this series . I'd really like to get the full set and go through all of the books this year.

We're going to start composer study to supplement the piano lessons that Mirror and McGyver are taking. Their piano teacher has given me a few composers she'd like to see them learn about. She is also going to work with them on a few hymns that they can eventually play at church.

Feels like we are just picking up where we left off at the end of May. Just sliding back into our school routine like putting on a pair of comfortable, broken-in shoes. This is the first time I've felt that way. I like it.