2013-2014 School Year... What Does It Have in Store?

We’ve planned our first semester for the school year for this year with a little more classes and a little less planning. Here are some of the things we’ll be doing:

Language Arts will consist of reading, writing, and grammar.  I’m not sure where public speaking fits in, so I put it with Language Arts. We found some great books at their levels and they will read one or two of those each month.  August’s books were Series of Unfortunate Events (Book 1) for Signa and Frannie K. Stein for Will.  September for Signa is Diary of a Young Girl (did you know that that is the real name of Diary of Anne Frank?  I didn’t…).  William will read Captain Underpants.  For writing, each day they will add to a story and each month they will write a paper of some theme.  They will also be part of a writing club where all writing is tracked and they learn new writing techniques and ideas.  For grammar, they will continue learning (and re-learning the Latin and Greek roots, as well as work through Warner’s grammar with me.  Signa needs to finish her grammar book from last year and Will can work on Study Island’s language arts for practice and filler.  For public speaking, they will do their book club report (first one was today) and take the presentation project for 4-H (Will is technically too young for it, but I’m going to have him secretly accidentally learn from it).  They will both give 4-H presentations at Presentation Day.

Math will be online programs this year for the children.  They are self-correcting and let you move on when you are done or slow down when you need more help.  That was an issue with the books we used last year--- too much repetition when they already “got it.”  So Aleks math for Signa for this year and William will do 2^nd grade math in August and September (he got halfway through most of 2^nd grade math last year) and start Aleks math for 3^rd grade in October (or earlier if I find he’s ready).

Science is chemistry this year with Jenny, our homeschooling hero.  Jenny has a lot on the agenda:  Matter, Properties of Matter, Physical and Chemical Properties, Pure Substances & Mixtures, States of Matter and Changes of State, Intro to Energy, Temperature, Thermal Energy and Heat, Atom, Periodic Table, Electron and Chemical Bonding, Bonding, Chemical Reactions, Organic Chemistry, Nuclear Reactions, Solutions, Acids, Bases and Salts, and pH.  For science they will also be in small animals class and Signa will be teaching a class about insects.

History will continue Story of the World, but Marc is going to take the topic and go with items about that, rather than reading the text.  So if the topic is Cleopatra, for instance, they will watch Brainpop, movies, and explore that topic, rather than reading the (boring at times) text.  They will also do family history which will introduce timelines of history and other events in history to learn about. 

Art is different this year as, for the first time in over 5 years, they will not go to Angela’s art class.  We decided that William really needs to be in karate.  He’s watched it all these years and loves it.  The expense, though, was just too much.  So this year we decided to stop art and give karate to William.  To make up for this, we will do a lot of crafts and also introduce the production of art cards, especially for the reading they do.  They made them for book club today and I think we can have fun with these.  They will also continue with guitar lessons (Signa) and piano lessons (Will).  Signa will be taking a movie making class on Saturday mornings and both kids are taking an introduction to theater class.  So hopefully they won’t miss art class too much.

Physical Education is easy this year.  Karate for both and swimming for both.  William also wants to do Little League this year, so we’ll try to squeeze that in!

So there you have it.  Mascot Manor Academy for the first semester of the 2013-2014 school year. I’m going to try to keep better tabs for you all here on Mascot Manor of what we do each week.  We have to document it all for the charter school we work through so may as well document for all of us!