aaak! School!

School. I'm so excited. Who is ever excited about school?

On January 4, Emma will be starting the most real-ish school she's ever attended. This is a step beyond "activities" (which we use to refer to anything that mommy plans). This is real books, and curriculum and worksheets and maps and charts and all that fun et cetera.

Over the last year, I've discovered an important nugget of truth about my personality: if I plan well, I will follow through with my plans. If I do not plan well, I get bowled over with how much there is to do and I don't follow through with my plans. Instead, I eat chocolate donuts and let my kids run wild. For the most part.

That being the case, I've wanted to make sure that I have planned well. I want to make sure I have a clear idea of what I'm hoping to accomplish and how it will happen. I feel so thankful that I have the opportunity and support to be able to homeschool my children, and I want to take full advantage of both, not wasting anything. [Plus, I just really like my kids! I like watching them, learning with them, listening to their thoughts. It's...fun!]

So here are some of my plans.

Issue #1 - I have NO wall space. And I like to make big, visual representations of things to assist in learning. My solution is a set of little hooks that will hang multiple layers of things.

Layer 1 - on the top and bottom - is maps.

Layer 2 on the bottom is a white board, for...all those white-boardish things that teachers need.

The outer layer on top and bottom are "bulletin boards" I've made for the different subjects we'll be studying.
I found some great books to use for our Music class and I'm super excited about them. This bulletin board has space for us to hear the music of about 15 different composers and to hear the different instruments of the orchestra. We'll add pictures of the composers and pictures of the orchestra instruments as the weeks pass. [Note: my goal for nearly all these subject this year is NOT mastery. In fact, my only goal (except for reading and math) is to develop a broad base of familiarity with things. I want them to hear the words "composer" and "photosynthesis" and have a general idea of what that means. I'm not looking for a dissertation on composers of the Baroque period or diagrams of photosynthesis.]
This will be our main book - a truly fun and fabulous book:
It has fun, child-appropriate information about composers, engaging pictures, and great fonts. I love fonts!
It says in one spot that if the String Bass was a food, it would be chocolate. See what I mean? That's my kind of book.
These are a series of books by Anna Harwell Calenza that highlight a specific work by a composer. Each book tells the true story behind how or why that specific piece was created. They are fascinating stories that bring life to the music! We'll intersperse these with The Story of the Orchestra book.
Art - the subject I have the least confidence to teach. But I'm still excited. In that nervous-hand-wringing sort of way.
We'll be using this book - which teaches children how to draw in a low-pressure, fun way. I'm all about fun, can't you tell?
Also these two books give children things to look for in famous works of art and questions for thinking more deeply about the art. I think it will be interesting to do this with the girls. I personally feel that I have a very low level of appreciation for art, so maybe I'll pick some up along the way as well.
Our science bulletin board will help us track the results from projects we're doing...
...from these Usborne books of Science activities. For example, did you know that if you put a stalk of celery in a glass of colored water and wait several hours, when you cut open the celery, you will see the colored water all in its stems? AND its leaves will be colored as well? How cool is that? We'll also be doing the classic bean-growing activity.
Even though this bulletin board says "Welcome to First Grade", don't get too worked up! Emma's not REALLY in First Grade, we'll just be using First Grade Reading and Phonics curriculum, everything else is more suited to her age level. Her reading level is really solid and she loves reading, so it seemed pointless to me to put her in a Kindergarten level that wants to teach her letter names and sounds. So - first grade it is!

The pictures on this bulletin board are Phonics characters from the Bob Jones University 1st grade curriculum - Mr. and Mrs. Short, Miss Long, Silent E, etc.

I decided that for Phonics and Reading, I wasn't so comfortable as the fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-and-make-it-up-as-I-go method that I'm pretty comfortable using in general. Especially since we're functioning in two languages in our home, I want her foundation in English and Phonics to be solid. I felt like the BJU Phonics and Reading curriculum provided me a good and stable curriculum for the next several years.
Our Bible component is coming from Children Desiring God resources. It's their Kindergarten level study, Jesus, What a Savior! As I've read through it and seen how thorough and fun it is, I'm so excited to start! It comes with workbooks, full-color resource pages and verse cards. (I love verse cards! In high school, I could have lived off of verse cards!)
We also use Right Start Mathematics, but for some reason, the picture didn't upload and I'm too lazy to go back and do it now (again - the planning issue coming up!) But it's a super fun math program that uses lots and lots of manipulatives. That's not really a new subject for us, since we've been doing it already for several months, but it still counts as "school" for Emma, so I'm including it in here.

I live around several organized and experienced moms and teachers, so I've been able to glean lots of good ideas from them. We're using this "First Grade Folder" for Emma's schoolwork and reading assignments. She was excited that she got to decorate herself and seriously went crazy with the stickers.

All the pockets inside are labelled with the days of the week, and each pocket has that day's work inside.
Here's the back of that folder. If you can suppress a smile after looking at this, there's just something wrong with you.
So, school starts on the 4th! Samantha will be doing all the classes with us except for Math and Reading/Phonics and we're all excited about doing fun stuff together! I definitely am not the kind of parent that thinks kids need to be in all sorts of classes and be ahead of their grade level and yadee yadee yadee, but I think that the timing is good for us to start now. My girls are eager and excited learners. I think I've chosen books and material that will enhance their desire to learn, not just stick them in front of a pile or worksheets and textbooks.

I'm looking forward to listening to music with them, to seeing how the figure skater on the ice is represented by the violin in the background...to finding out how many ways you can use coins to make 15 cents...to measuring bean sprouts...and finding out what happens if you take a "dead" tree branch in the winter and bring it into your warm house...to using our magnifying glasses to see detail in leaves...to learning about how everything God does shows how special He is...to memorizing His word together and singing songs that proclaim His faithfulness to our family...

To me, it doesn't seem too early to start.