Monday, June 2, 2008

Our Summer Plans and Looking Ahead

Ok, I've received some calls about the infrequency of my recent posts (READ: Aunt Tre Tre has called about the infrequency of my recent posts), so I feel a need to defend myself. LOL
I have been working very hard planning the children's summer activities and our 1st/2nd grade curriculum. My hubby can vouch for me, I was up all night the other night on a bagillion (Is that a word?) websites trying to find the best deals on stuff. So sad, I know!

Academic-wise, I'm using this summer to work mainly on readin', writin', and 'rithmetic. I want to basically be sure the twins have mastered all our kindergarten material and are truly ready for 1st grade. The only thing that stands out to me is reading and number sense, but they are progressing beautifully. So we'll keep reading, learning sight words, and practicing phonics with the Explode the Code series. Number sense, to me, is getting comfortable using and manipulating numbers. We recently started counting to a hundred with the help of learning place value via Math U See. Since we started copywork, I've seen the children's handwriting improve by leaps and bounds. The way I'm doing our copybooks now is that each day I write 5 to 6 words of the prayer we are learning on a page. They copy what I wrote underneath it. I can't tell you how this has helped. Oh yeah, also we've discovered that the Princess is a lefty! Bless her heart, I had her all mixed up.

For fun this summer, we signed up for a 10 week movie summer program at the theater close by. So far we've seen The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything and TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the oldheads). This is a really fun and cool way to get out of the house. And by cool, I do mean temperature-wise, ya'll know it gets hot in the desert. We are also going to participate in the public library programs again this year. It was really fun last year.

Because of the heat, I've pulled together about 3 pages of indoor activities to do this summer. We also purchased an indoor trampoline from Goodwill. I believe it will be my lifesaver on those many days when going outside to play will be out of the question.

As far as our 1st/2nd year, boy have I had my work cut out for me. I am a very hands-on teacher and my children learn best that way, so a box curriculum would put the "B" in boring for us. I really don't care for a lot of workbooks either so so far I'm only using 2 total for all of our subjects. As you may know, I'm with Team Charlotte Mason (and a new member of Team Montessori), so it's living books all the way. I plan to wear out the public library.

I'm really trying to go into this year with everything well planned and thought out. Jessica at Trivium Academy is my organization muse. She has those spreadsheets down to a science, and I'm right on her heels. Well, I'm close to completing all I can do now. I'll post my complete plans later.

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