thought it might be of interest to some of you, you know, to be in on what curriculum I am using at the school here.
Map 3 is split grade 7/8
Sonlight, Eastern Hemisphere, Core 5
~ we finished Pacific Islands and Australia and are beginning New Zealand Monday
we obviously knew a lot about the Pacific Islands!
Spelling (ugh) I am supposed to use Abeka with them. I am refusing. Instead, I check their journals once a week and correct spelling, insisting they make a list of mispelled words. I am going to test them every couple of weeks.
I would like to figure out how to use Spelling Power.
Vocabulary. I do not like the words Sonlight picks out of the Readers or Read Alouds. I feel that many of them are based on the native language of the group of people currently being studied and are hard to pronounce and even more difficult to use in regular speaking so I need to come up with a cool word for the day and write it on the board and encourage the students to use it as often as possibe that day (without getting irritating, of course). This will also give me some sanity.
Language. I do not care for the grammar that Sonlight has for its worksheets so I am using Easy Grammar and I really truly like this program. I highly recommend it even though we have only just begun implementing it, really. It is easy to follow and simple to comprehend. We have memorized 53 prepositions (they earned a Solo for that) and have moved on to recognizing prepositional phrases, all without tears.
Creative Writing. Man, my kids can write! I enjoyed the Sonlight suggestion to write about a piece of toast. As I have time, I would like to post all eleven pieces I heard from this class. It was good stuff. I thought the lesson was well thought out and really asked the right questions to get my students thinking about, well ... toast. Their writing speaks for itself.
Music. Ok, once upon a time, b and I actually thought maybe the Lord was calling us to teach music to our homeschool co-op. I won't speak for her, since her talents know no bounds, but as for me? totally suck. I hate this class. We are trying to learn Jennifer Knapp's Sing Alleluia ... a duet with Mac Powell. The class thinks I play too slowly. whatever.
Map 4/5 is split grades 9-12
Spelling. not gunna do it. don't care what they say. Iffen the don't knowed it yet, it ain't gonna come.
Vocabulary. ok. I decided to, instead, give them an SAT question of the day since the person who put together my curriclum thinks spelling is part of the SAT. One of my students said it isn't. Me no save.
Learn to Write the Novel Way, the crux of my learning for them. I think it is going well so far, but I sure wish it was just homeschooling. I utilize Writer's Inc as much as possible and really love this book. I want to buy one for myself.
Neal has taken over the Art since I was going batty trying to fit it all in while also figuring out how to simply cook in this country. Not an easy task in the beginning, let me assure you.
tasol!
1 comment:
I think you should have titled this "My Coarse Load" as it sounds very abrasive indeed. I keep trying to imagine what that would be like. I know at home here every August I plan my schedule for the fall and I always have about 12 subjects I want to cover, or 15 extra units/lapbooks I want to do. As I try to squish it all in I realize this is all futile because a) I won't do it. I'll just get paralyzed with the overwhelmingness of it all b) the kids will resent it and learn for the 'test' only c) it just doesn't all need to get covered! So we don't. I always think "next year I'll look at that again" and then the same scenario happens next August. Will they give you that kind of freedom there? Can you come up with what you would have done with your boys with those resources and do that with the classes there? Somehow it must lighten up. Still you can do it! Papa bilong yu will take care of the details (was that pisin even close?) Hang in there! You are a teacher through and through. There is a way. He will show you.
Post a Comment