Quarterly Curriculum: May - July 2014

Out with the old, in with the new on their curriculum pages...

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee:

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

Subjects:

Math - Time & money for the whole quarter. 
Days - Everyday
Textbooks - The Complete Book of Time & Money Grades K-3 (American Education Publishing)
Number of Pages - 2

English - Large focus on reading comprehension.  I'm still waiting on our books, once I get them I'll let you know.
Days - Everyday
Textbooks - 
Number of Pages - 2

Spelling Review - A review of the spelling words & units from the entire school year.
Days - Everyday
Textbooks - None, just loose worksheets.
Number of Pages - 1 1/2

Concept - A three month long Concept Unit that focuses completely on dinosaurs.
Days - Everyday
Textbooks - Science Essentials Dinosaurs Grades 1-3 (School Specialty Publishing), DK Eyewitness Books Dinosaurs (DK Publishing)
Number of Pages - Varies day-to-day

Other "Subjects":

Reading - Reading simple storybooks on their own.

Sign Language - Learning basic sign language to help Scooby-Doo communicate better, and to help us communicate better with him.

Some final notes:

• Summer here is June & July, however since we do quarters May gets lumped into summer for us.  So they will have a nice easy schedule for May, which, I won't lie, is a huge relief for me.
• Subjects dropped for the summer?  Handwriting, Science, Spanish, History/Geography, and Logic.  Yes, even the beloved Logic has been dropped.
• Spelling has been turned into Spelling Review.  What does this mean, exactly?  We will review their old spelling words.  I was going to do a whole new set of units, however I realized the other day that I would serve them better by reviewing the words they never got down.  If they get them down, then we'll have some new units.  We'll see.
• Scooby-Doo will not be doing speech therapy during the summer, but he will for May (this really applies to the other schedule).
• We're trying out a new thing for Concept Weeks this quarter.  Instead it will be a "Concept Quarter" with the theme going on for the whole quarter.  I'm going to play around with the Concept Weeks next school year, so this is a prelude to that.
• I've added Sign Language on for the summer.  We're retiring Spanish until third grade rolls around, but we're doing sign language for Scooby-Doo, to help with his speech therapy.
• Baseball will still be going on for May, followed by the pool in the park for June & July.
• Reading Comprehension will still be lumped in with English.  It might stay like this for good, not sure.
• Learning to read will still be our main focus.  
• This (learning to read) is part of the reason for the half days.  The other reason?  It's summer!  My kids should be more worried about having fun.  We are doing schoolwork because my kids like to brain dump, because their schedule is pretty easy in general through the school year, and because (no lie) they get antsy if we take too much time off from schoolwork.  They like taking an extra day off here and there, but when it goes on for more than four days or so they start whining.  

Final, final note?  This is the last quarter that Optimus Prime and Bumblebee are on the exact same schedule.  Next quarter they will have different ones.

Scooby-Doo:

Curriculum May-July 2014

Scooby-Doo STILL isn't preschool age yet (he won't be for more than a year), but he loves doing his schoolwork and it's starting to help his speech so we're going to keep at it.  This quarter we're going to have an actual schedule with actual curriculum which we will try to stick to.

The goal was schoolwork on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, & Friday with Wednesday & Saturday off. The reality averaged out to every other day that his brothers did schoolwork.

Subjects:

Numbers - Reviewing the numbers 1-10, reviewing counting, each day will have it's own number that we focus on.
Days - Everyday.
Textbooks -
Number of Pages - 2

Letters - Reviewing the alphabet, each day will have it's own letter that we focus on.
Days - Everyday
Textbooks -
Number of Pages - 2

Logic - Reviewing Colors & Shapes, learning Same or Different and other similar concepts.
Days - Everyday
Textbooks -
Number of Pages - 2

Art - Coloring and painting.
Days - Everyday
Textbooks - Coloring books.
Number of Pages - 2

Other "Subjects":

Story Time - Reading a book every afternoon, even on days off.

Words Review - Going over simple words with him to help his speech.  This will be everyday, even on days off.

Sign Language - Learning basic sign language everyday, even days off.

Final Notes:

• Scooby-Doo will not have speech therapy this summer.  He will resume in August/September.  To make up for this we will work on his speech therapy at home the best we can.
• We will try our hand at sign language this summer to help his communication.

Quarterly Curriculum: February - April 2014

Ahhhh, here it is, our curriculum again.  Posted so I can start getting ready for next quarter.

There was panic this quarter.  The schedule I had written was thrown out when Scooby-Doo started speech therapy every day for two hours a day.  Driving the half hour there, spending the two hours there, and then driving the half hour home was too much for us so we shelved most of our schoolwork for about a month and just focused on reading until we got our stride down.  Then we had to go back and cover all that lost ground.

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee:

So, our schedule was schoolwork Monday-Friday with Saturday & Sunday off.  I was not happy about this, but I had to work with what I was given...

Handwriting - Practicing handwriting (mainly numbers and letters), some counting, some letter sounds, etc.
Days - Monday & Wednesday
Textbooks - Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade K (American Education Publishing), Brain Quest Workbook: Kindergarten (Workman Publishing Company).
Number of Pages - 3

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

History/Geography - Map reading, directions, land-forms, continents, etc.
Days - Tuesday & Thursday
Textbooks - Scholastic Success With 1st Grade Workbook (Scholastic Teaching Resources), World Countries, 50 States (both of these workbook were from Target's dollar section) .
Number of Pages - 2

Art - Painting, other activities, etc.
Days - Friday
Textbooks - None.  Just a weekly project
Number of Pages - N/A

Logic - Same/different, patterns, opposites, mazes, dot-to-dots, word searches, crosswords, etc.
Days - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Textbooks - Big Puzzle Play (School Zone).
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Math - Addition, subtraction, fractions, counting by 5's & 10's, time, money, etc. 
Days - Monday - Friday
Textbooks - 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, reading comprehension, etc.
Days - Monday - Friday
Textbooks - Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), Scholastic Success With 1st Grade Workbook (Scholastic Teaching Resources).
Number of Pages - 2

Spelling - Spelling words & units
Days - Monday - Friday
Textbooks - None, just loose worksheets.
Number of Pages - 1 1/2

Some final notes:

• The schedule had to get slimmed down a bit since Scooby-Doo is starting speech therapy.
• 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.  
• Baseball in March and April!
• Sight Words has been dropped.  I only intended to do it for one quarter.  This semester most of our spelling words will be sight words.
• Art will just be once a week, and it will be a project.  No more coloring books (for now, at least)!
• Letter & Number Practice has been combined into just Handwriting.
• Reading Comprehension has been dropped.  I'm not too happy about this, but I had to slim down our schedule so it was combined with English.  We'll have to see if we like this or not as time goes by.
• Since our schedule has been slimmed down so much we're going to use what (little) extra time we have learning how to read.  We'll be spending A LOT of time on one-on-one reading to make up for the very basic schedule.

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.  This quarter we have a "real" schedule written up, but if we don't stick to it, I'm not going to worry.

• First off, we are dropping our book goal.  He just hasn't been interested this past month, so there is no point in setting a goal he has no desire to meet.
• We have the goal of 1 page (front & back) a day in a Colors & Shapes workbook.  He finally getting his shapes down and he's trying to figure out his colors.
• We have the goal of 1 page (front & back) a day in an Alphabet workbook.  He's starting to recognize letters so I don't want to stop!
• We have the goal of 1 page (front & back) a day in a Counting workbook.  I'm excited over this, since he already knows how to count to 10.  I thought about dropping the alphabet books to do this, but since he's starting to get that I don't want to.  So we'll just do both!
• Lastly, Scooby-Doo is currently doing speech therapy.

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.

Quarterly Curriculum August-October 2013

I completely forgot to post this after I was finally done updating (back in September) so now I'm stuck posting it today since I want to start updating the Optimus Prime & Bumblebee and Scooby-Doo pages.

First, Optimus Prime & Bumblebee's curriculum for the past thee months:

School on Friday & Saturday, off on Sunday, school on Monday & Tuesday, weekly quizzes and review on Wednesday, off on Thursday.

Letter Practice - Practicing handwriting, reviewing the alphabet, etc.
Days - Friday & Monday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - Total Reading Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), character and generic letters and/or words workbooks from the dollar section of Target and/or the dollar store.
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Number Practice - Practicing handwriting, working on counting to 100, etc.
Days - Saturday & Tuesday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - Total Math Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), character and generic numbers workbooks from the dollar section of Target and/or the dollar store.
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Spanish - Practicing Spanish vocabulary (broken into different units) and comprehension.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - The Complete Book of Starter Spanish Grades PK-1 (American Education Publishing)
Number of Pages - 2

Science - Learning about different animals (broken into units) with some reading comprehension thrown into the mix.
Days - Friday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - The Complete Book of Animals Grades 1-3 (American Education Publishing)
Number of Pages - 1

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
Quizzes - Every Wednesday
Textbooks - English Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), Total Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), Scholastic Success With 1st Grade Workbook (Scholastic Teaching Resources)
Number of Pages - 2

Math - Addition, subtraction, time, measuring, fractions, etc.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - Every Wednesday
Textbooks - Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing), Spectrum Math Grade 1 (Spectrum)
Number of Pages - 2

History/Geography - Map reading, directions, land-forms, continents, etc.
Days - Saturday & Monday
Quizzes - The Wednesday after the unit ends
Textbooks - Beginning Geography Grades K-2 (Evan-Moor)
Number of Pages - 1

Reading & Reading Comprehension - Learning to read level 1 books, as well as some reading comprehension & activities with some short stories.
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - A book report due every Wednesday
Textbooks - Listen, Read, & Learn Grade 1 (American Education Publishing) for the reading comprehension stories and activities, Step Into Reading Level 1 books for learning how to read.
Number of Pages - Will vary from day to day.

Spelling - Spelling words & units
Days - Friday, Saturday, Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - Every Wednesday
Textbooks - No set textbook, however Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Grade 1 (American Education Publishing) has a spelling unit section that I will be pulling pages from and Brain Quest Workbook: Kindergarten (Brain Quest) has a spelling section that I plan on using.  I have also printed up sheets from education.com and schoolexpress.com to go along with the spelling units.
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Logic - Same/different, patterns, opposites, mazes, dot-to-dots, etc.
Days - Friday, Saturday (twice), Monday & Tuesday
Quizzes - None
Textbooks - Total Reading Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), generic 1st grade logic workbooks
Number of Pages - 2 1/2

Art - Coloring, painting, activities in coloring books, etc.
Days - Saturday & Monday
Quizzes - None
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

Why are all subjects not covered everyday?  Why are some subjects skipped?

• I don't want to overload them their first quarter.  They're going to have enough on their plate as it is.
• Also, do we really need to cover some of these subjects everyday?  And I'm not just talking about Logic and Art.  Our Science book is neat, and it talks about a different animal on every page, but do we really need to learn about a new animal everyday?  Or should we take some time to make sure they have some other concepts down?  Their Geography book is neat, and doing more would of been nice, however it's a short book and I'm not sure how well they will understand it at first.  To even things out and because of the lack of pages in the book it just made sense to only cover this subject twice a week.
• Why is there no gym?  Someone asked me this the other day so here's my response: they already get plenty of exercise!  They play sports, they do yoga, we go to the pool, we take walks, we are signing them up for football soon - why on earth do we need a gym class?!?
• No mythology still?  Too true.  I'm working on this problem.  I'm having a hard time finding stuff for 1st graders.  I might just have to make something myself.
• Where did Arts & Crafts Day go?  Well, this isn't kindergarten anymore!  I'm not saying we will never do arts & crafts again, but we won't have a whole day dedicated to it anymore.  We needed to make room for all of the quizzes that they will be doing, and a day to write up and review their book reports.  I'm hoping that their book reports will help them learn how to read and right now reading is my biggest priority, more than anything else.  
• Where did Magazine Day go?  It also got tossed.  Like I said, this isn't kindergarten anymore.  We'll still read the magazines and do the activities in them, it just won't be for school anymore.

Scooby-Doo's original post about our goals for the past three months:

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 "Colors & Shapes" workbooks that I picked up for him at the dollar store.  I figure we'll tackle however many pages he wants each day, whether it is zero pages or ten pages.

I also set a book goal for us.  We read everyday as a family (see our Reading List page) and I'll read any book to them that they bring me, but I decided that Scooby Doo needs some more "us time" to read more board books together so that is one of our goals for the next three months.  We'll set aside time everyday to read three books together, without his brothers.

Average for everyday of the past three months:

• 1 page from a "Colors & Shapes" workbook (Dora, Care Bears, Minnie Mouse, and generic).
• 3 pages (front and back) coloring books.
• 3 board books a day

*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.