Homeschool Planning My rough ideas for next year

 A rough sketch of my school plans for next year; just want to get it out of my head and onto paper:

1. Spelling tone it down a bit. Give the list each Monday, help them with it as they ask. Do all reference pages together instead of separately as we did this year. Possibly have them help each other with lists.(This has been a year of pretty intense language arts for all of us.)

2. Writing have them each do an IEW course, combine as much as possible. Possibly do a one week intensive and invite other kids to join us. That would be fun and get that out of the way.

3. Writing if we do a one week intensive for IEW then that frees up time to have writing assignments throughout the year based on their studies. (I know we can do this even while doing the IEW program, but I thought it would be easier this way for everyone.)

4. Reading continue to have everyone (big ones and little ones) read to me out loud. Little ones will read daily, big kids weekly.

5. Handwriting Have the little kids practice daily learning cursive as quickly as possible with a sentence that uses all of the letters. Reinforce with daily practice. Also have them practice their print.

6. Math Hmmm...tough one not sure yet. Two of them can maybe skip a level, oldest does she need Alg II or can she do a consumer math? Youngest maybe switch to a different book?

7. History Use movies and audio books to learn as much history as possible. Make sure to prepare 2 portfolio samples per month based on what we are learning in case we dont have written work. (Im excited to find some great resources that we can all enjoy.) Oh! And geography weve got to do some geography somehow.

8. Science require at least one science project (not per kid but just one for us all to work on). Make sure to have 2 portfolio samples per month based either on what we are doing or our Science Encyclopedia

I interrupt this list to say that I am so excited about this plan, especially for History and Science. This year, even with my best of intentions, History really didnt happen much and (formal) science only happened for my oldest two. With this plan we will ALL be involved, it is simple so it wont be put off and having the portfolio samples will save me a ton of headaches around this time next year. Also, even if we dont end up doing as much History or Science as I would like each time they create a written sample for the portfolio they are doing those subjects and learning. Yay!

9. And my favorite part of the plan: PROJECTS. I am so excited to make room in our lives to live, to work on projects that the children and I will be excited about. No more saying no we dont have time for that. I plan to make my childrens interests and home life part of our school day. A schedule will be very important in this since I have  children with different interests and my own project ideas as well. I expect to change the schedule every time a project is completed. Project Oriented Homeshooling. Sounds so great to me! And portfolio samples arent worrying me. Ill take pictures, possibly have them write up a paragraph or so about their project, Im sure well figure something out.
I dont mean to be completely child-led. I have so many things in mind that Id like to work on. Things that I have pushed aside. Discipline Biblical character training. Housecleaning. Gardening. Physical exercise (boy do we need that!) Those are my projects, but the kids will have theirs as well. I can imagine my oldest stepdaughter wanting to live in the kitchen. My son wanting to learn computer programming much faster than he is learning now. My youngest 2 will probably go from one craft project to another.

                     

Ahhhhh.how sweet it is to dream of next year. What do you want to do differently next year?