We officially embarked on another glorious year in the Hansen Homeschool on Monday! I was ready, as were the kids (in my opinion). They were desperately needing something to DO…know what I mean? So, after a couple weeks of planning and messing with schedules, I have come up with a loose plan.
Social Studies: We are finishing up Time Travelers: The American Revolution by Homeschool in the Woods. This is a wonderful unit study that I would highly recommend. We supplement with lots of library books, episodes of Liberty’s Kids from Netflix, and Lessons from History-Art Part. I also throw in the study of various countries related to whichever artist or musician we are currently studying, plenty of map work, and GeoScribe lessons. My son has also specifically requested a unit study on Vikings, so we may fit that in before we advance to the 19th century.
Science: We have been using (for the last year plus) Considering God’s Creation. I like it very much, but do supplement quite extensively. This is MY subject, so it is easy for me to add to the lessons on the fly. We are studying scientific classification, which is a bit of review from our previous study of Carolus Linnaeus last year. After a couple more classes of vertebrates, we will delve into anatomy and physiology. This will be interesting since it is my absolute favorite subject, but my son has bemoaned “I’m going to faint a lot this year!” I will have to be wary of how in depth I get with him around!
Art: All three of my kids are avid artists. They spend a good amount of their own free time every day drawing. This being so, my art instruction is pretty relaxed. What we spend our time in school doing is biographies of famous artists and studies of their major works of art. This can and does spill over into other subjects as we study their countries and cultures as well. A great book that kick started us on this is Discovering Great Artists
Music: Since daddy is a musician, it will fall to him to teach piano, guitar, harmonica, and/or drums as needed. We also use our church songbook and learn a new song each week, singing it nightly as a family. Since daddy is also a recording engineer, I have been nudging (strongly) to have him record the girls singing and work with them to perfect the songs. Finally, we study classical musicians in the same way that we study artists, getting in about one each month (sometimes more). We listen to their music throughout the month, learn about their lives, countries, cultures, and influences. Next up is Franz Schubert.
Bible: We read the bible every morning. It is a good time to have the kids stand individually and read aloud as well. I have found this helps them greatly with public speaking. We have been reading through the New Testament. This year we have joined a Community Bible Study group that meets once a week with homework to be completed through the week. They have a class specifically for the homeschool kids and one for me as well! The kids have also joined AWANAS for the first time and have started their own prayer journals.
Life Skills: My goal is to have each of the older kids be able to prepare one of our common weekly meals on their own by the end of the semester. Micah is working on tacos and Hailey on spaghetti. This will include planning, shopping, prep, cooking, and serving. This is, of course, in addition to their standard chores and everyday helping/learning that comes with being a homeschooled kid!
Math: We use Math U See
Language Arts
Grammar: We use Easy Grammar
Spelling: We have struggled a LOT with this subject and although we do address it in their daily writing, I was not seeing improvement. We tried several different programs with no great success. I am currently using Sequential Spelling and feel it is the best fit. No more tears and frustration! I am seeing slow but steady improvement in their free writing with this program as well, so we’ll keep with it this year. We also have a vocabulary word of the week with periodic review of these words in crosswords and flashcards. These are words they come across in their reading and wonder what they mean; big words like portentous and epiphany.
Foreign Language: We will continue to use Rosetta Stone
Reading: We will read, read, read, and read! Each kid has a novel they are working on at all times. We take 30 minutes during schooltime, but they also read in their free time and always at bedtime. I always have a book I read aloud to them while they illustrate pictures for it as I read. I am currently reading Redwall. The older two read aloud during bible time and my youngest reads library books aloud to me as well as books from the online resource Reading A-Z which has evaluations available.
Writing: We will write whenever we can. I incorporate it into all our other studies. For example, if we are studying the Revolutionary War, I will read aloud about Nathan Hale then ask them to write me a paragraph about him. They always know they will write a rough draft, I will correct it with editing notation, and then they will write a final draft. We do this for anything I want them to write about: reptiles, Mozart, Japan, etc. Each of them has a reading log in which they write about whatever book they finish during their individual reading. On days that I do not have a writing plan, they write in journals. Usually these are fictional stories. I also have them write book reports on stories I read aloud. I try to make these fun. For example: after The Tale of Despereaux they wrote different sections of their book reports on the arms, legs, and body of their favorite character, then decorated the face to look like them. Finally, we do plenty of copywork along with our various unit studies.
And of course we will do each and every one of these planned activities every single day….HA!! In reality, I will allow it to be very fluid, with group work in the morning hours and individual work following that. If we can get even a decent percentage of what I have planned done within a month, I will be happy.
