Wow, this time of year gets really busy and I kind of dropped out this past week. I've been planning out our last few weeks of school. I plan on being finished with home school around Memorial Day weekend. Here'a a recap of our homeschool year.
We've covered everything I had planned for and more. We were able to move forward in Math, starting some 2nd grade concepts. Nothing too indepth, but since I had teaching opportunities I didn't want to let them go by without at least an introduction. We started with multiplication and we really went deeper with fractions.
Math
We took our time with Math, because I think it's really important to have a strong foundation, since Math builds on itself. I feel very confident with how my daughter performed. She really loves math. She has a good grasp of Geometry, Algebra, Graphing, Fractions, Addition, Subtraction and Patterns. With addition and subtraction, she is doing two digit addition/subraction with carry over (we don't do re-grouping).
Reading
My 6 yeard old daughter is reading so well, we've moved to level 3 books and chapter books.
Writing
This year we focused on cursive. Now that is the only way she writes and does it very well. I'm so proud of her! I gave her plenty of opportunities for writing. She wrote about herself and her family. She wrote notes, cards, how to's, and tail gating on our history lesson on occupations, she made a book about different occupatations. There were many other writing assignments, I can't remember them all right now.
Science
We covered the Water Cycle, Clouds, Recycling, we had a weather sheet that she completed everyday. We predicted the weather by looking at the clouds. We made graphs to study weather patterns. We made a rain gauge. We studied habitats, the rainforest, oceans, etc. We studied energy sources. We had fun doing science experiments in our own kitchen!
We had some rainy weather so my lessons on rocks and soil had to be postponed, so we still have to do those.
Social Studies
In Social Studies, we did a lot of geography and learned how to read a map. I also taught geographical terms, such as equator, hemispheres, etc. We also did history lessons on families throughout time, we studied how families lived in the 1800s, the 1950s, and today.
We studied cultures, especially around the holidays.
Art/Music
She started taking piano lessons! In art we learned about different artists such as Seurat, Degas, Edward Hopper, and Geogia O'Keefe. We did lots of art projects based on those artists and did lots of other ones on our own, like paper snow flakes, tissue paper art, etc.
We also went to museums, plays and concerts. We had a very busy first year in homeschool!! Looking back I am very happy and proud of what we accomplished. I have learned a lot too. There are things that I plan to do differently(I'll leave that to another blog entry).
The one thing I have learned is that I do not want to follow any curriculum or book to a tee. Thankfully, I had my school district's curriculum as a guideline (I didn't want to go completely alone). But it was just that, a guideline, more like suggestions. The reason that was important for me was that I wanted to make sure that my daughter had a good foundation and learned what she needed to within the state's requirements. Beyond that, we spread our wings and really took off. We liked being able to learn and explore freely without too many restrictions. Although I must say that I am very organized and like structure. I did plan out every homeschool day and week, knowing that things could change. Having that flexibility was priceless.
I started this journey saying we would do it for one year and see how things went. I had no long terms plans. But as our first homeschool year is coming to a close, I can confidently say we will continue!! I am so happy. My daughter is so happy. That's what matters.
I hope this blog has helped other homeschool parents along their own journeys. I hope my lessons helped as well. I will continue the blog throughout the summer but on a more relaxed schedule.
In the meantime, look out for my Summer Reading list!
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