Quarterly Curriculum November 2013 - January 2014

It's that time of year again where I start working on next quarters curriculum.  So I repost this quarters as a post for my records so I can move on and clean up the "Optimus Prime & Bumblebee" page (and, ultimately the "Scooby-Doo" page as well) to get it ready for next quarter.

This quarter's schedule worked out real well.  I really liked the layout, I liked not having 9 classes a day, I liked not covering everything everyday.  I almost feel like I struck gold.  I only have one (minor) complaint.

Just to give you some background, we always tackle three subjects at once.  When we covered nine subjects that meant three at a time, three times a day.  Now that we are doing seven a day I figured we could do three then four and just do two schoolwork chunks.  No, my kids were not having it.  Three is their magic number.  So, that's the one complaint.  We would do three subjects then our snack, followed by three more subjects and lunch, followed by three subjects - with lots of playtime thrown in to really break up the schedule.  Now we do three subjects then our snack, followed by three more subjects and lunch, followed by one subject... then nothing but lots of complaining because they had to stop playing just to do Spelling.

So, I'm thinking next quarter will be almost the same, but I'm going to have to figure out some nine and six subject days.  So, just a bit of tweaking, that's all.

We'll also stick to just one Concept Week a month, for the first week of the month.  I was thinking about doing Concept Weeks ever other week, but not for this quarter I think.  Maybe next one.

Anyway, here is our current schedule along with all of my observations and notes (half of which somehow got listed above).

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee:

Schoolwork Friday & Saturday, Sunday off, schoolwork on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Thursday off.

Letter Practice - Practicing handwriting, reviewing the alphabet, etc.
Days - Friday & Monday
Textbooks - Total Reading Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade K (American Education Publishing).
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Number Practice - Practicing handwriting, working on counting to 100, etc.
Days - Saturday & Tuesday
Textbooks - Total Math Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade K (American Education Publishing.
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Science - Learning about different animals (broken into units) with some reading comprehension thrown into the mix.
Days - Friday & Tuesday
Textbooks - The Complete Book of Animals Grades 1-3 (American Education Publishing).
Number of Pages - 1

Spanish - Practicing Spanish vocabulary (broken into different units) and comprehension.
Days - Monday & Wednesday
Textbooks - The Complete Book of Starter Spanish Grades PK-1 (American Education Publishing).
Number of Pages - 2

History/Geography - Map reading, directions, land-forms, continents, etc.
Days - Saturday & Tuesday
Textbooks - Beginning Geography Grades K-2 (Evan-Moor), Scholastic Success With 1st Grade Workbook (Scholastic Teaching Resources).
Number of Pages - 2

Art - Coloring, painting, activities in coloring books, etc.
Days - Monday & Wednesday
Textbooks - Cheap coloring books from the dollar store of their favorite cartoon characters, as well as cheap paint with water books.
Number of Pages - 2

Sight Words - Learning the sight words to help with solo reading.
Days - Friday & Tuesday
Textbooks - Sight Word Fun Grade 1 (School Zone).
Number or Pages - 1

Reading Comprehension - Learning to read, as well as some reading comprehension & activities with some short stories.
Days - Saturday & Wednesday
Textbooks - Listen, Read, & Learn Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), Total Reading Kindergarten (American Education Publishing).
Number of Pages - Will vary from day to day.

Logic - Same/different, patterns, opposites, mazes, dot-to-dots, word searches, crosswords, etc.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Wednesday
Textbooks - Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade K (American Education Publishing), generic 1st grade logic workbooks.
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Math - Addition, subtraction, fractions, etc with a big emphasis on time and money.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday
Textbooks - Spectrum Math Grade 1 (Spectrum), Total Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), quite a few Addition, Subtraction, and Time & Money books from Dollar General and Target.
Number of Pages - 2

English - Learning the difference between vowels and consonants, learning how to sound words out, synonyms, antonyms, compound words, rhyming words, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, sentences, punctuation marks, etc.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday
Textbooks - Scholastic Success With 1st Grade Workbook (Scholastic Teaching Resources), Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade K (American Education Publishing), and some English workbooks from Target & Dollar General.
Number of Pages - 2

Spelling - Spelling words & units
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday
Textbooks - Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), Total Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing).
Number of Pages - 1

Some final notes:

• Why the schedule shake-up?  We don't want this to be boring, here.  Homeschooling is supposed to be fun - not stagnant and boring - and varying the schedule helps keep it that way.
• No more quizzes, book reports, or Quiz Days; Wednesdays will now be a regular schoolwork day.  This stuff may all come back, it may never come back, or maybe part of it will come back - who knows.  I wrote up the schedule deciding that we needed a break from this stuff and didn't tell my kids.  Then on our second to last Quiz Day Bumblebee had a freak out because he "doesn't want to do quizzes anymore."  I was surprised - he usually gets 100% (which just goes to show that he really didn't need it anymore) and the quizzes don't stress him out or anything.  So I told him he only had 2 more days of quizzes then we would be done.  He was relived, and I was glad I had already decided to drop them.
• The first week of each month will just be our "core" subjects (Logic, Math, English & Spelling) and our Concept Week.  Trying to tackle "core" classes, "secondary" classes, and a Concept Week all in one week was too much.  When they were in kindergarten it was no big deal to add on a Concept Week since they only had 4 subjects a day, so every day was a half day and asking them to do a little extra was no big deal.  But we have 12 subjects (granted, not all are covered everyday), and tacking on an extra class with a book and a project was too much. 
• Still no gym class!  Football is going on right now, they are still worried about catching butterflies and beetles in the backyard, and once our obligatory one day of snow comes along they'll be out there making snowballs.  No gym class, just fresh air.
• I came to a decision about mythology during our last Concept Week (Ancient Egypt).  The last thing we need is class #13, so instead we'll just tackle some mythology each quarter in one of our Concept Weeks.  I'm thinking Norse mythology this class.  We'll see.
• I'll start doing one-on-one time to help Optimus Prime & Bumblebee out with learning how to read and anything else that they need help with.  I wanted to start it last quarter but our schedule was too packed.  That's another part of the reason for our current slim-down.

Scooby-Doo:

Scooby Doo isn't preschool age yet, but he loves watching his older brothers do their schoolwork, and he likes to feel involved so I decided to start doing schoolwork fairly regularly with him.  When Optimus Prime & Bumblebee were three we did one page (front and back) of schoolwork everyday.  Since Scooby Doo isn't three yet I'm not going to go with such a set schedule but I do have some rough goals for us to work towards (but not necessarily meet).

• We'll keep doing "Colors & Shapes" workbooks.  We have a rough goal of one page (front and back) everyday.
• We're going to start some "Alphabet" workbooks with the same rough goal of one page (front and back) everyday.  We'll also work on him learning his alphabet song.
• The other day he surprised me by counting to 11.  I was surprised since numbers is something we've never really worked on before.  He further surprised me by pointing to the correct numbers as he was counting.  That might of been a coincidence, but it might not.  I had already decided to do the alphabet with him, and had unpacked those workbooks instead of numbers, so I went through a big internal debate over what to do.  I didn't want to do numbers and letters at the same time when we were already working on getting our colors down (and shapes too, as a secondary goal) so should I repack the alphabet workbooks and pull out the numbers ones?  In the end I decided to stick with the initial plan of working on our alphabet, but we'll also work on counting to twelve everyday.  Then thirteen, then fourteen, etc.
• We'll keep coloring in our coloring books.  Some days he love it, some days he doesn't.  But like I said, these are rough goals.
• Doing three board books with him a day was a big success.  He loved getting read books his level instead of books like The Berenstain Bears all the time, and he loved the "us time."  But lately he's been bringing me harder and harder books to read to him.  Books like Dr. Seuss, Scooby-Doo Readers, The Berenstain Bears, etc. so I'm thinking our new goal will be to read one of those a day instead.

*all page number refer to the front and back of one page.  Example, 1 page means the front and back of one page, 1/2 page means just the front (or just the back) of a page, etc.