Does anyone plan their curriculum for each year?

[sorky]

Just wondered if you wanted to share what you're planning to study this year?

We follow a Classical Education. 4 dc's aged 8, 6, 3 and toddler.

Buying/gathering in the stuff for next year and wondered what everyone else was doing

I only plan a term ahead usually in terms of a time table of work, but I know what we will be doing for the whole school year.

Ds is 7 (8 in the autumn) and would be going into year 3 in sept if he was in school.

I use letts and cgp work books for maths and English and science, ( we tried all sorts and ds seems to like those best) with worksheets and things printed form the Internet to supliment. I go through the workbooks and corrolate work so that we do say nouns one week and do the corresponding page from a couple of work books and some things from the internet etc. Same with maths and science.

He loves creative writing, so he usually writes a short story everyday. We've just started cursive writing as a summer project, he's mastered it in two days, but needs to get faster at it, so hopefully he will over the
summer! He reads all the time and loves books, so I don't worry about that anymore, and his spelling is also good as he does so much writing, so I don't tend to worry about that either.

For history, ds has decided he'd like to study it in chronological order, so these past two terms we did the Egyptians and the ancient Greeks and next term
well do the Romans (although he's itching to start so
we may study them over the summer!). He usually makes a project out of it, writing about things and doing drawings, visiting museums and taking photos to stick in.

For geography we are doing the earth next year, which will cover everything from mountains, to continants,
rivers and how the Earth is made up. Like history, he likes to make project books.

We'll follow the same kind of plan as we did this year, it's worked well. Ds seems to like structure and to know
a plan of what were going to do.

I do have to write a time table though, as he does so many classes and activities, we need to plan when we will be in to do work.

We do some elements of classical, use Galore Park textbooks and various other things and have an overall plan for the year (as in what books/resources we will use) and then I plan 10 weeks at a time - so 4 times through the year - in detail. They then each get their 'work plan' and colour over the page numbers/lesson numbers as they do them (each day of the week has its own colour!)

So DD already knows she will be doing First Language Lessons 4; Galore Park Junior English 2; No Nonsense Maths years 4 and 5 etc but doesn't know exactly how much per week she will have to do. FLL is usually twice a week, occasionally 3, GP English we cover a chapter over 3 weeks then do Writing Strands for a week.

So I know roughly how much for some things already but won't do work plans till late August (after our holidays).

Ooh, we are just talking about starting to do this as DD1 would be starting a school nursery in september and is showing more and more interest in "puzzles" (our word for workbooks and so on)

lol Butterpie DD calls them Homework! because she sees me do my OU stuff. she's always asking to do 'maths' (currently involves scribbling over old maths books)

I've built up a collection of workbooks, now she's 3 I'm thinking of doing a page a day with her or something.

We find that, once she starts a workbook, she wants to carry on for a few pages, iyswim. I'm a bit mean with the ones with stars/stickers- they say to give them one after every page, I just give her one when she struggled a bit but managed it in the end, or if she did really good work.

That way we get a sticker surplus to use for other things :D

ah we get loadsa stickers from my mum as she's a librarian and has leftovers from all the craft sessions she runs. we have enough sticker dots to cover the flippin moon!

I've been biding my time with the workbooks (keep buying more as they're so cheap in The Works! love that shop!) - wanted to wait until she's ready to use them at least vaguely properly, rather than just scribbling IYSWIM.

she's also much more into craft now so I'd quite like to do something arty every day.

sorry OP for hijacking as my DCs aren't even school age!

hey, maybe we could do a preschool home ed thread? for activity ideas etc? if I started one would it get used do you think?

I would use it

We find that cbeebies magazine is really good for paper and pen activities, and you can then use the ideas to make more of your own.

DD1 also loves a big sticker book she has, where she has to complete the picture with the right stickers- it has little tasks on the page like "stick a triangle on the end of the rocket" and she has to find the triangle sticker and stick that on to the page. It is gradually getting harder- we have now finished shapes and colours so it is on to letters next time. I do sit with her to help, especially with the first half of each page (each sheet of stickers is half to answer the questions and half to just decorate the page) and we chat about each shape and so on so we tend to do maybe two scenes in each sitting. Anything involving stickers is very popular though.

We are going to make a weekly tick chart I think. So, abc (ie reading related tasks) would have 5 boxes, as would 123, a picture of outside and a picture of a pencil, meaning she needs to do something for each of those on 5 days of the week (although it could all be the same activity, iyswim). Then I think we will have little pictures to somehow represent history, geography, spanish, craft, science and so on with less boxes. That way we can try to get an even spread of areas of study, as well as helping her to see that, for example, playing snakes and ladders will help her count so that when we want to do written maths it isn't such a huge jump. At least that is the theory

Then as she gets older we can make the chart more detailed, maybe putting specific tasks such as completing a section of the story of the world or making a narration poster or lapbook. I can then keep those checklists in a file and use them to help me plan out their work.

The joy of checklists being that they are not timetables- so if they don't feel like doing history at 10am on Thursday, they can do music instead, as long as history gets done at some point. Also, if they had, say, an hour of history written down, they might spend that hour staring out of the window. With the checklist they can stare out of the window as much as they like, but they need to get a certain task done as well. I'm hoping that my two will motivate each other in that way, so if DD2 finishes early and is relaxing with a treat, DD1 will hopefully want to join her. Obviously we will be flexible, but that gives us something to be flexible around.

I like the tick list idea - it gives them and me a way of checking what they are covering. I will have to think of a way for adapting it for us.

We have been HE with DS1 since easter, and are about to have D2&3 as well after this week - so the dynamics are going to have to change quite a bit. That method will help us keep track of things a bit.

I think the ticklist idea sounds great - it's kind of what we did when we first started. Now that they are older I have a rough timetable as I know how long they are likely to spend on something. So DS1 does history for a whole morning because that's how he likes doing it but does English an hour at a time because he really struggles to do more than that without losing concentration. We still go out if the weather's nice though! And I only timetable mornings and then they do reading/read alouds/science experiments/art/craft in the afternoons as well as piano practice.

what's a narration poster?

I kind of made up the term It is where, when we have read a book or watched a film or whatever, they repeat it in their own words or pictures, to check they have actually understood. Then they stick it on the wall to refer to while they are doing the next thing

ooh I like it

I THINK there might be something like it in Charlotte Mason. It should work well for us as we are vaguely following the well trained mind so everything will lead on from the last thing. Hopefully. :s

Ooh, didn't think I'd get anyone answering

We are following TWTM too. Did it last year and loved it! It's definitely working for us.

We're doing FLL
SOTW (medieval)
Complete Writer (which we started yesterday, couldn't wait to see what they thought )
Spelling workout B/C
a mix of Singapore and Miquon Maths.
It's Cosmology & Geology this year for Science.
Galore Park's Latin series this year too. We started with Prima Latina but it was a bit too Godly for us

We're seriously considering getting the Rosetta Stone homeschool edition for Spanish as Ds1 wants to learn. We covered some basics free from Enchanted Learning, but I think we'll need to give him something more this year. Don't fancy shelling out for it though

Preschool will involve jolly phonics for blending. He goes to Nursery in September, but already knows his numbers to 50, alphabet and shapes/colours. He's just absorbed it from being around us during worktime.

We play lots of Orchard Toys games with the 3yo, can highly recommend them. Then just lots of drawing and painting, glueing etc. He gets a 'comic' once a fortnight which he loves

The baby will hopefully be staying out of mischief

ooh what specific orchard toys games are good, sorky? have seen quite a few but haven't bought any (except Pick and Mix People) as I couldn't choose!

especially ones that are good for counting/alphabet and that sort of thing (she's got colour/shape things already) sorry for hijacking again!

I've just recently bought

Ladybirds (counting)
Dotty Dinosaurs (colours & shapes)
Incey Wincey Spider (shapes/colours)
Two by Two (matching pairs memory game)

but we have loads of others

For 4-6 yo, I can recommend
Pop to the shops or Shopping game (shopping memory game)
Tell the time lotto (time, both analogue & digital)
Slug in a jug (rhyming & sentences)

We've been collecting them for the last 5 years

I also like Galt jigsaws, from 18mo +, they do some lovely sequential ones which are fab for 3-5yo's

For alphabet we have a soft toy crocodile that has pockets in it into which there are little bits/bobs. I just tip them out and he puts them all back in their pockets.

It was from ELC iirc

brilliant thanks. have put ladybirds and shopping list games on my amazon wish list

Ahh I see it's now called a letter lion

Sorkym, depending on age of your DCs it might be worth considering SKOLDO Spanish (for ages 4-7 but can be used and made harder for slightly older) or Galore Park Spanish. Lots cheaper than Rosetta Stone, although RS seems to be very good from what I've heard.

We used Prima Latina too - it was really boring! I had to keep coming up with games etc to make it interesting. And TBH if I'm going to have to put that much effort into resources, I might as well have just made up my own thing from the start! We moved on to Cambridge Latin but now combine that with GP as it's a bit weak on the grammar.

Knickerbocker Glory and Spotty Dog are very good games, MMM, if they are still available!

I sell Usborne books, so I have the excuse of research when I buy millions of children's books I think I'm going to do a big order soon actually, and get a good selection of reference and activity books to be going at. I get lots here and there on the end of orders and so on, but I think a good look through the catalogue could be in order

oi oi butterpie, that reminds me, have you dug out a freebie for me yet? still willing to review it on my blog if the offer's still there

(apologies for being rude!)