Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Next Year's Plans

After a lot of consideration, we've finally nailed down our school plans for next year.  Most of it is just a continuation of what we've already been doing.  In language arts, we are just moving up to the next level.  Writing is a continuation of this year's curricula that we didn't finish, followed by more practice for Sam and moving up to the next level for Mikaela.  Math is moving up to the next level for Mikaela while Sam moves on to a non-standard topic in a more difficult program.  History is continuing with our three year plan covering early modern and modern world history with added emphasis on US History.  My science choices reflect what the kids expressed an interest in learning and the depth/difficult level at which they want to learn it.  They will continue where they left off in their foreign language studies.  I also need to consider Sam's request to learn Latin.  He wants to but I feel our schedule is already full enough. For art, we'll continue what we are doing this year.


Mikaela - 7th grade

Spelling - Webster's Speller (PDF)

Grammar - Magic Lens 1 & 4Practice 1

Vocabulary - Word Within the Word 1

Poetry - Poetry and Humanity

Writing - US History-Based Writing Lessons Volume 1 followed by Volume 2

Math - Math-U-See PreAlgebra

History - Finishing Story of the World Volume 3 then beginning History Odyssey Modern Times Level 2

Science - Apologia Astronomy with labs from TOPScience #40 and #41, The Geology Book with labs from TOPScience #23, JetStream

Spanish - Rosetta Stone Spanish Level 2 (25% done already) and Level 3

Art - Art Projects for Kids and Draw Squad

Literature will be based on our history studies.  Most of Mikaela's are assigned in her history curricula.  Her literature will include  The Breadwinner, No Promises in the Wind, Chinese Cinderella (which she already read), To Kill a Mockingbird, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Animal Farm, The Red Badge of Courage, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Red Baron, The Jungle Book, Things Fall Apart, and Around the World in Eighty Days.  Some of these are towards the end of History Odyssey, which we won't do until her 8th grade year.  My plan is to finish modern history the first semester of 8th grade.


Samuel - 5th grade

Spelling - Webster's Speller (PDF)

Grammar - Grammar Voyage & Practice Voyage

Vocabulary - Caesar's English 2

Poetry - A World of Poetry

Writing - US History-Based Writing Lessons Volume 1 & American History-Based Writing Source Texts

Math - Introduction to Counting and Probability

History - Finishing Story of the World Volume 3 then beginning Story of the World Volume 4

Science - Astronomy: Self-Teaching Guide with labs from TOPScience #40 and #41, The Geology Book with labs from TOPScience #23, JetStream

Korean - Rosetta  Stone Korean Level 1 (65% done) and Level 2

Art - Art Projects for Kids and Draw Squad

Literature for Sam is also based on our history studies.  He'll read some of the same books as Mikaela, but not all of them.  His selections are The Great Turkey Walk, The Breadwinner, Twenty and Ten, Across Five Aprils, No Promises in the Wind, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Jungle Book.  He, too, won't finish all of modern history and the related literature until the year after next.  Until we get to the end of next year, I won't know, exactly, where we'll stop for the year.

Number the Stars will be one of our family read alouds. The rest I'll pick after I've seen the Story of the World Volume 4 Activity Guide and pick from there or pick non-history related classics to read.

I'm still working on deciding what I'll be doing with Joshua.  He will work primarily on phonics and math with some fun social studies, science, and art thrown in.

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2 Comments:

Pam-NH said...

In my search for reviews of TOPScience, I came across your blog. As a user of TOPS, do you think it's possible to use it as a stand-alone versus a supplement? My son is going into 7th grade and has not enjoyed science in the past because of all the reading, memorizing, etc., and experiments that just take too long and don't get the required results! I would love to try this as our sole science this upcoming year, but most of what I have read are of people using TOPS as a supplement. My fear is that we will not cover all that is required for his grade level!

Thank you!

JoAnn said...

I haven't actually used TOPScience before but I just received my order yesterday. I can say that the tasks and activities look really good, but I don't think they can stand alone as a full middle school curriculum. The Rocks and Minerals module, for example, has 36 tasks that you can expect to take about an hour each. Perhaps you can mix reading with more experiments?