Homeschool plans...

So I wanted to get down what we are doing for school at the beginning of the year because I want to compare at the end of the year to see what we have changed and what works. 

I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure out what we were going to do for our curriculum. I was so excited once I figured that out and ordered. It was exciting for us to get it in the mail. Then this last week I have been trying to figure out how to organize it to motivate Mac and also to keep me organized. 

So I love the idea of the workbook system but I didn't want to do workboxes because they take a lot of work so I decided to take the idea of using tags to show what we need to do and what has been done. I came up with this on my own so I am not sure if it will work well but I am excited to try it out.

So we have daily and weekly tasks. When they are done the tag is moved from the green to the red. He has to do all he daily taske and Mac will get to choose what order he goes in. And he will choose one task per day from the weekly task. And yes I know there are six tags and only five days in the week. I am fine with not getting them all done in a week. 

This is what it looks like on the wall, but I ran out of Velcro.

So I found this reading chart at Walking By The Way and I really loved the idea. 

So although we haven't officially started school we have still been working on it this week. The idea is the repetition to help them be more confident in reading. When he has finished the chart I promised him I would take him to Jumpin Jax (which is a bounce house place) which he has been begging to do. 

I only had one of the books so I reserved and picked up the others at the library. 

For Math this year we are going to try Math U See. I love the idea of using video, hands-on and application all in the same curriculum to teach it. Mac loves math so I really want him to continue loving it. 

We will add in a Five In A Row lesson every day if we can. I don't have all the books so I will be getting those from the library also. 

For phonics we are going to try Explode The Code. I am not really sure where to start with this because Mac is kindof in the middle of his phonics learning and so I don't want to bore him with stuff he already knows. So we may just skip over some of the stuff . I still need to go through the books myself to get a plan for him. 

I really love this book for studying the scriptures with the kids. So we will do some out of this first thing every day. 

Mac never really took to this book, but I have started it with Oak and she can't get enough of it. 

My kids love calendar stuff so I got this and they have had fun with it. 

I also got a flag and we will be saying the Pledge of Allegiance when I remember to do it. 

Mac loves to write but does not love having his writing corrected to improve his skills.

So we are going to have to work on that. Some things we are going to do is write in a journal about something we have done during the week, write to penpals that live in Virgina and who also homeschool, write fun stories in our creative writing journal, and copy work (and memorization) of the articles of faith and scriptures. 

So this is also our own version of the workbox system. Just everything in one place where we can easily get to it. Hopefully it will work for us. 

And this is what our homeschool wall looks like. I wasn't really excited about taking up this space with school stuff. But now that I have it all organized I really love it!

We are excited to get started!!