Quarterly Curriculum May - July 2016

I had to do a bit of reshuffling this quarter to the schedule I had initially written up to ensure that we finished certain workbooks we had started before our move. I did not include page numbers because they varied day by day to ensure we finished our started workbooks.

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee:

Schoolwork on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, & Friday

Subjects:

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

Art/Logic - Painting, other activities, etc.
Days - Every other day.
Textbooks - None.

Math - Addition, subtraction, fractions, counting by 5's & 10's, time, money, etc. 
Days - Every day.
Textbooks - ARandom started books.

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 - Every day.
Textbooks - Random started books.

Reading - Reading books.
Days - Every day.
Textbooks - Story books.

Scooby-Doo:

Schoolwork on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, & Friday

Subjects:

Magazine - His fun character magazines that cover letter sounds, counting, picture finds, etc.
Days - Every Sunday.
Textbooks - Character Magazines.

Art/Logic - Painting, other activities, etc.
Days - Every day.
Textbooks - None.

Math - Basic introduction to math concepts like addition, money, time, etc. 
Days - Every day.
Textbooks - Random started books.

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 - Every day.
Textbooks - Random started books.

Reading - Every day together.

Final Notes:

• This is our final quarter of homeschooling finishing up our final school year.
• There were only 4 subjects for Optimus Prime & Bumblebee
• I dropped Spelling for our final quarter and we just did reading.
• Science and Art were alternated between

Quarterly Curriculum: May - July 2015

This quarter we pretty much took it off. I was really upset about it but we had too much going on in our lives and we were getting ready to finally, officially, move. It was a very stressful summer and taking it off was the best choice for all involved. I was very upset about it but in the end it was for the best. Even if I STILL feel guilty about it all these months later. However, all was not lost. Optimus Prime started to seriously excel in his reading and we read an INSANE number of library books. Anyway, here's our meager curriculum for that quarter:

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee:

Schoolwork on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, & Friday.

Spelling - Spelling words & units
Days - Everyday
Textbooks - None, just loose worksheets.
Number of Pages - 1

Handwriting - Cursive handwriting
Days - Everyday
Textbooks - Brain Quest Workbook: Second Grade (Workman Publishing).
Number of Pages - 2

Other "Subjects":

Reading - Reading simple storybooks on their own.

Some final notes:

• After JUST dropping Handwriting it was reintroduced this quarter in the form of cursive. 
• We alternated each week between Spelling and Cursive since I didn't have a full unit for either of these.
• Reading was done every day, including Week 13 a.k.a. the week off.
• Sign Language was dropped for this quarter. There was just too much going on.

Scooby-Doo: 

No schoolwork at all.

Some final notes: 

• He did not do speech therapy during the summer.
• This was his last quarter of pre-k. It would have been his 8th quarter of it. Next quarter he'll start with kindergarten. 

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 May-July 2013

Sunday/Monday/Wednesday/Thursday:
Numbers & Math - Reviewing numbers, practicing handwriting, basic addition problems, beginning the concept of subtraction, numerical order (first, second, third, etc)
Textbooks - Total Math Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), character and generic number workbooks from the dollar section of Target and/or the dollar store
Number of Pages* - We used to do 5 pages a day, then we were doing 10, but now we are up to 15

Letters & Words - Reviewing letters, practicing handwriting, working on words that all start with the same letter, words that rhyme
Textbooks - Total Reading Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills 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* - We used to do 5 pages a day, then we were doing 10, but now we are up to 15

Spelling - 5 word units of words that are all related.  For example, some of our units have been "Family Members," "Animals," "B Words," "-am Words," etc.  We used to spend two weeks on a unit but I've recently shortened it to one week to see how that works.
Textbooks - None, right now I'm just writing the words on blank paper and having them write them a few times everyday
Number of Pages* - 2, one page of practicing the words, another with an activity

Logic - Same/different, greater than/less than, patterns, practicing drawing shapes (they know their shapes, they just aren't very neat about it), opposites, mazes, numerical and alphabetical dot-to-dots, etc.
Textbooks - Total Math Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), Total Reading Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills (American Education Publishing), character and generic logic, shapes and/or skills workbooks from the dollar section of Target and/or the dollar store
Number of Pages* - We used to do 5 pages, then we were doing 10, but now we are up to 15

Art - coloring and painting
Textbooks - Cheap coloring books from the dollar store of their favorite cartoon characters, as well as cheap paint with water books
Number of Pages* - 6 pages, any more and they get bored

Tuesday/Saturday:
Off

First and Third Friday:
Arts & Crafts Day - No set curriculum for this day.  We paint statues from craft stores, build paper pirate ship kits, do sand art pictures, etc.  For two months we even worked on growing seeds inside to plant in our vegetable garden.  Basically anything goes so long as it's fun.

Second and Forth Friday:
Magazine Day - We have subscriptions to magazines like Highlights, Scooby-Doo, Thomas, etc.  These are the days I pull out the magazines we received over the month.  We read the stories in them, do the activities in them (like hidden pictures), bake the recipes in them, do the letter and number worksheets in them, etc.

Every Friday:
Spelling - Every Friday we have a spelling test of 10 words plus one Bonus Word.  The first five words are words from previous units that they still do not have down.  The next 5 words are the words from our current unit.  Lastly there is a "Bonus Word" for extra credit.  The Bonus Word is a word that is harder than their normal words.

Subjects we no longer cover:

• Reading Comprehension - We used to do this.  I'd get a book, write up about 20 or so questions for it, then read them the book and ask the questions.  It was getting to the point where they would answer every question correctly in one sitting.
• Mythology - I really wanted to do this, they really wanted to do this, it just didn't work.  They were always asking me mythology questions so it just seemed logical to do this.  However all of it went completely over their heads.  It got to the point where none of us wanted to do this anymore.   

* One page refers to just the front, two refers to the front and back.