Planning 2008

This week I have begun thinking about the coming school year, what topics we might cover and what resources we will use, and discussing the possibilities with the children.

I think our core subjects will be:

• Maths, geometry


• Language


• Science


• History, geography, people


• Latin or German


• Critical thinking


• Cooking

At the end of last year I had the kids fill out a survey form to identify what they had enjoyed most about last year and what they would like to do this year. Josiah asked to do more algebra and identified grammar as what he enjoys most about our language work and Latin work. Tessa wants to do algebra too, wants to study animals, enjoyed language and Latin work and would like to learn German, loved our history work and is looking forward to reading more about the Middle Ages, and would like to do more critical thinking activities. With all this in mind, I've come up with a list of the preparation I need to do before "school" starts:

Maths

Tessa

I'll have to look at what Tessa was doing at the end of the year - I can't remember! I have a feeling she was not quite at the end of a sequence of geometry activities and also that I had a couple of presentations planned on negative numbers following up on some introductory work she did. Unfortunate that we left off in the middle of things. It probably is worth finishing those sequences off - won't take long - before starting a new topic ... which will be algebra. I'll hunt out the sequence of activities I used to introduce Josiah to algebra.

Lately, we have practised times tables in the car. This seems to be an effective way to memorise the tables so we'll continue with this.

Josiah

... wants to do algebra. I'll have a look at the Montessori Research and Development maths manual I am working through with him to see if and when algebra comes into it.

Last year, Josiah learned to perform large multiplication and division of decimal numbers. But not having practised that work since, he would probably struggle if asked to perform a complex calculation now. I need to work out a way to make sure both children practise large calculations from time to time. Tessa isn't working with decimal numbers yet but is in the same situation as Josiah in that she has learned to perform large multiplication, addition and subtraction problems, and division of large numbers by a single digit number, but doesn't practise these calculations often enough to be confident every time.

Science

Tessa

... hasn't decided yet whether or not she will do a project for the science fair. I've told her that she must decide before the start of term. We will do any science fair project right away at the start of the year. I'm determined to have the work for the science fair out of the way within a month or two of the start of the year, rather than the science fair dominating our science time for the whole first half of the year as it has in previous years.

Tessa wants to learn about animals this year after learning about plants last year, so we'll be working through the relevant sections in How Nature Works by David Burnie.

Josiah

... is planning a follow up project to his entry in a previous science fair, further investigating how fast bananas ripen in different environments. When that is done, we will likely spend most of the year studying chemistry. I have purchased Real Science 4 Kids Chemistry Level II for Josiah and it looks great. I am a little nervous that Josiah would prefer to study some other area of science this year ... Josiah was deeply interested in chemistry about two years ago and thoroughly enjoyed exploring chemistry at that time. We moved on to other topics (physics and then onto phylogenetics or cladistics) but I think the interest in Chemistry is still there and that this is a good point to follow it up further.

Language

There are two Montessori Research and Development manuals that we have yet to look at: Volume 4: Capitalisation and Punctuation and Volume 5, which looks to be grammar. But before we start on either of those, I think the kids would enjoy finishing the manual on Word Study. A couple of years ago, we did the activities on compound words, suffixes and prefixes but for some reason we stopped there. The manual also has activities on antonyms, synonyms, homophones, homonyms and homographs. I don't know what homophones or homographs are so it will be one of those cases of learning with the children

I also plan to ask Josiah to come up with some language or writing goals for the year. He doesn't yet write easily and he would like to be able to - he recognises how useful that will be to him in the future. I think it could help to have some specific goals; we could then come up with a plan of activities that will enable the goals to be achieved.

Latin / German

Tessa would like to learn German but I don't think we have time for two foreign languages. So my plan is to finish Latina Christiana Book I, which we started last year. That will probably take till the middle of the year, then we'll switch to German. Much as we are enjoying discovering the connections between English and Latin, I think completing Latina Christiana I will be taking Latin as far as any of us want to take it at this stage.

So then, come the middle of the year, I will be faced with the same problem I've faced every other time I've looked into teaching the kids a foreign language: the most recommended language curriculum I know of, Power Glide, is very expensive. Although most of the teach-yourself-a-foreign-language books available are aimed at tourists and don't have strong writing and grammar components, the Hugo books look pretty thorough to me, and are a lot cheaper than Power Glide but they are aimed at adults and I'm not sure how much fun Tessa would have with it.

Critical thinking

Time to start the book I bought last year: Critical Thinking Book I by Anita Harnadek.

History, Geography, People

Kingfisher History Encyclopedia plus library books and activities.

Starting with the Middle Ages.

Cooking

One evening a week, kids to alternate.