Went to the homeschool parents meeting a few evenings ago and now I’m all pumped up for the year ahead! Tons of topic ideas are spinning. I like to focus on a topic each week (or sometimes for two weeks). This week we are talking about sharing (any guesses why I picked this one?). Each week we pull scripture about our topic and dig out some related craft projects from our Bible activity books. On Monday we talked about the little boy who shared his bread and fish and how Jesus used it to share lunch with the entire crowd. We also (very creatively) incorporate our science lessons into our theme. Since we are learning about plants and how they grow this week, Grandma is going to share a clipping from one of her plants with us that we will plant in some soil and attempt to nurture and grow. Then, on Friday we will make thank you cards to Grandma for sharing with us, getting in a bit of art and creative writing too. We take field trips every Friday. Sometimes we’ll simply head to the to the park and other times we’ll travel out of town for an exciting new adventure. This week we will picnic at the park and each of the boys will have just one part (ingredient) of lunch in their sacks and will hopefully realize that we will all need to share. We go to the library each week as well and seek out books about our topic that we read throughout the week. And when possible, our math and reading/writing work and our vocabulary words incorporate bits of our theme too.
This last month I planned each week of August in advance. Last week we discussed babies and since our science lessons were on animals we incorporated lessons and projects on baby animals too. The highlights of last weeks topic include visiting the hospital nursery (where our newest addition will soon be born) and learning about how we use animals for food (we made our own butter), clothes and work. Planning the month in advance worked out great, so I think I’ll take some time this weekend to plan out all of September. I created a topic planning worksheet, a field trip planner and a weekly lesson plan to help me with my curriculum planning, which you are welcome to download for personal use.
Tiffanie
To discuss more about Creative Schooling, please visit the Homemade Homeschoolers Forum.
