Academic

MATH

An ability-appropriate level math textbook for each child. 4 days per week. — I am completely against math texts for young children, instead I would recommend a workbook, or series of worksheets.

Drill work on math facts, 3-10 min/day, 5 days per week (while learning math facts). — Starting as simple as rout counting.

Math reading: Each Friday or 2nd Friday of the month, as needed.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Phonics: (for beginning readers), daily.

Handwriting: (while learning penmanship), 2 days per week, Tuesday & Thursday.

Spelling: Monday, Wednesday & Friday. —To begin only AFTER ‘cvc‘ words have begun to be mastered.

Grammar: 2 days per week, Tuesday & Thursday.

Reading Practice and Literature: (read-alouds, personal reading, fluency reading, vocabulary development, reading comprehension, american and world literature) daily, integrated into other subjects.

Composition: 2 – 3 days per week, Monday, Wednesday & Friday. Use compositions to reinforce grammar instruction as well as for additional handwriting practice while your child is learning penmanship. —-NOT until fluency in reading is established.

Vocabulary: daily integrated into reading/literature, as well as other subject areas as needed.

HISTORY/CITIZENSHIP

Use a grade-level history (textbook daily or) complete 3 to 6 history history units per year. If doing units, spend 1-1/2 to 2 hours per day, 2 days per week (Tuesday and Thursday) for 36 weeks, incorporating reading, hands-on activities, art, music, and composition, as appropriate.

Integrate citizenship into history curriculum or complete one or two special classes per year.

Geography and Mapping Skills: Mondays

Current Events: daily

SCIENCE

Use a grade-level science (textbook daily or) complete 3 to 6 science science units per year. If doing units, spend 1-1/2 to 2 hours per day, 2 days per week (Monday and Wednesday) for 36 weeks, incorporating reading, hands-on activities, lab work, art, music and composition, as appropriate.

ART

Each Wednesday, as needed.

MUSIC

Each Monday, as needed.

COMPUTER SKILLS

Each Saturday and/or integrate into other subjects, as needed.

Keyboarding: daily (after child has learned to write in cursive and until he can type a minimum of 40 wpm with only 1-2 errors).

PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Keep track of 75 minutes of physical activity per week.

Attend one or two special classes on Tuesdays, as needed.

HEALTH/SAFETY

Integrate into science curriculum.

ELECTIVES:

Bible: daily

Foreign Language: briefly integrate into lessons daily, as needed.

Field trips: Fridays or occasionally substitute for Monday – Thursday school day, as needed.

Social Activities: daily play time with friends after school, during field trips, Fridays, special classes, or weekends

Scheduling for Homeschooling

A traditional school year is five to six hours a day, 5 days a week for 36 weeks or 180 days.

As a home-schooling family, we could have chosen to follow the same schedule of the local school, but we chose to customize a schedule to suit our family’s needs.

According to the state of Connecticut, we do not have to do every subject every day of the school year.

I have been struggling with the amount of activities in which to enroll my children and just beginning to face the realities that I do not have to enroll my children in every class or outside activity that their/my friends do.

I have decided to enroll each child in in only one pay activity per week. Of course I will schedule play dates and the like, and invite other children to sit in some of our activities and lessons, but I do not want these things to interfere with the educational purpose of home schooling.

Our Fridays will continue to be left for field trip days whereas, Monday through Thursday will hold the highest concentration of academic study. I do however, plan on teaching some things on Fridays and Saturdays.

I am such a planner that I cannot help myself about planning out everything. Of course, I do not anticipate a play-by-play daily run-down, but I will specify subject area topics for each day.

The amount of time spent on each subject depends upon the age, small motor skills, learning style, and abilities of each child (ranges as follows: 3-5 minutes for preschoolers, 10-20 minutes for 1st -3rd graders, 20-45 minutes for 4th – 6th graders, 45 minutes or more for 8th – 12th graders). Although Jonathan is at a preschool age, his attention-span, learning style and abilities enable lessons to run approximately 10-15 minutes.

The total number of hours spent each day in one-on-one instruction ranges as follows: thirty minutes in Kindergarten (broken up into several five-minute sessions), one to two hours in grades 1 – 6, two hours or more in grades 7 – 12. Again, more can be accomplished orally than handwritten for children with handwriting difficulties. In our planning, our TOTAL home-schooling daily agenda is two hours — which conveniently is the amount of nap-time for the baby.

The remainder of our school day is spent in independent book exploration, free play activities with his siblings and friends, complete own “chores”, exploring an instrument, create an art projects, and/or participate in any other activity that can be done independently. The television and computers are not available during the school day, and are limited to ninety minutes weekly, other than for educational purposes.

Some states require an excess of four to five hours of home schooling daily, thankfully Connecticut is not one of them. However there is a difference between “actual teaching time” and “school attendance” time.

Talk like a PIRATE day

PIRATE’S TREASURE MAP

Tasha started kindergarten this year and has been in “craft overload” a bit so we don’t do as many projects at home as we used to. But every once in awhile, I come up with something to intrigue her and “making” the paper for the treasure map definitely did! CLICK HERE to see a full sized photo of the craft. Close the photo window when done viewing.


Pirate's Treasure Map

You’ll need cold coffee or tea (about 1/2 cup), piece of white paper, a blowdryer, a little imagination and some markers.

Take a piece of nice white paper and rip off all the edges (don’t cut them with scissors, rip them!) If you rip the paper a bit more than you meant to, it’s not the end of the world.

Crumple the paper up as tightly as you can into a ball.

Flatten the paper out again and put onto a plate or cookie sheet. (if you haven’t told the kids what you’re doing, they’ll start thinking you’re really weird right about now).

Pour coffee or tea over the paper. Swoosh around with your hands to make sure it covers everything.

If you’re doing this with a large group of smaller kids, you may want to get it to this point and set them aside for a couple minutes (get the children arranged at the table for drawing their maps). Then pull out some finished, dried sheets that you premade. It keeps the kids from having to sit through the “waiting” parts of the project.

Let it sit for about 5 minutes (if you’re doing it with a group, you don’t have to let it sit so long… 2 minutes is enough to give it some colour)

Pour the coffee off into the sink.

Blowdry with a hand held blowdryer on high for about 5 minutes (leave it sitting on the plate while blowdrying or it will tear to pieces). When it’s pretty dry (and starts to lift a bit) switch the blowdrier to low to finish off (about another 2 minutes).

Now… take some markers and draw your map. There should be a big X in the middle, a dotted line trail that winds around and maybe a title that says “Pirate Island” and a North, South, East, West arrow in the corner.

Once you’ve drawn the trail and X you can draw and label some “obstacles”. Some ideas are:

Bloody Beach

Waterfalls of Doom

Skull rock

Monster Mountain

Skeleton Jungle

Captain’s Cave (Captain’s Cavern)

Serpent Pass

You can roll the map up and slip into a 1/4 tp roll holder or tie with a ribbon, stick it into a bottle or just hang it up on your wall!

Eat an Apple Day

The picture above is a photograph of the finished craft. The diagram instructions are drawn. (drawings load faster than photos over the internet)

Stamp the side of your hand in brown paint and stamp it on the paper as the trunk

Stamp your index finger in green paint and stamp it many times on the paper for the leaves (re-dipping in the paint as necessary)

Stamp your pinkie finger in red paint and stamp it lightly on the paper for the apples (light stamps make rounder prints)

Good for Adam and Eve, Johnny Appleseed, Arbor Day and Summer themes.

Patriot's Day

My kids created these Q Tip Fireworks to celebrate Patriot’s Day BUT, they are good for any holiday or special occasion.

An easy craft for preschoolers on up for Independence Day or an important sporting event! Even younger hands can pull it off! The baby (15 months) made a cute one!

Here’s what you’ll need

• Q Tips
• Water
• Small container
• Food coloring
• Paper plate
• Black construction paper
• Glue

Here’s how you make them…1. Cut your Q Tips in various sizes. You can actually break them off pretty easily with your hands.

2.Now you will need to color you Q Tips. Put some water in a small container and add food coloring (6-8 drops is good). Dip your swabs in to the colored water and place on a paper plate. Repeat for as many colors of fireworks as you’d like.

3. If you are not doing this craft right away, or have time to prepare ahead of time, you can leave your swabs out to dry overnight. If you need them to be dry quickly you can put them in the microwave, on high for 5-6 minutes, or until they are dry.

4. On a piece of black paper glue your Q Tips in a circular pattern. For younger children it will be easier if you drawa black dot on the paper and instruct them to glue their swabs all pointing to the dot in the middle.

Make as many different fireworks as you can, make them all different colors, sizes and patterns!

Keep in mind that the more food coloring you add the more vibrant your swabs will be!

Patriot's Day

Bald Eagle

The Bald Eagle is not only one of the most beautiful birds, but is also a well recognized American symbol. This would make a great preschool or kindergarten craft for American holidays!

Ages: 3 and up



Here’s what you’ll need…• Brown, white, blue and yellow
construction paper
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Glue
• Google eye

Here’s how you make it…

1. First you will need cut trace and cut out all the shapes. You will need a brown foot and hand prints, white feathers, and a yellow beak.

2. Glue your foot print body onto a piece of blue paper. Next, glue the hand print wings on either side of the body so it looks like the Eagle is flying(as shown in the picture).

3. Glue your white feathers on the Eagles head and neck, and don’t forget to put a few on his tail! Once that is done it’s time to put on your yellow beak and eyes. If you don’t have any google eyes you can always just draw on an eye with a black marker.

You don’t have to make a flying Eagle, you may choose to do a standing up Eagle like the one in the picture.

Grandparent's Day

Have kids assemble small green leaves to represent their grandparents and parents, as well as themselves and each of their siblings. Have them attach each leaf with a paperclip to a small twig with numerous branches or do a brown-paint hand print on construction paper and fingerprints in fall leaf colors to fill in the top of the tree. Starting with the grandparents’ at the top of the tree, let them glue the generations at varying levels on the tree, and then write each person’s on each of the leaves.

Picture Frame

Use foam craft sheets to make frames for family photos. Find a family photo. Draw an interesting shape, at least 1 inch wider on all sides than the photo, onto the foam sheet and cut it out, using decorative-edged scissors if desired. Cut out a circle or square, slightly smaller than the photo, from the center of the foam sheet. Glue the photo to the back of the foam sheet. Alternatively, cut different colored and shaped frames for individual pictures of family members. String all of the frames together on a ribbon for grandparents to drape over a shelf or fireplace.

Magnets

Make magnets with holiday messages that grandparents can use for reminders and lists on the refrigerator. Trace small hands and feet onto colorful, thick card stock. Let kids write personal Grandparents Day messages or poems with colorful markers or crayons on the cutouts and glue a small magnet to the back. Add the year to the message and make new ones each year to show how much kids have grown and how their writing has improved.

Silhouettes

Create portraits to frame of kids’ silhouettes. Have kids trace the outlines of their own and their siblings’ faces and necks onto black construction paper or card stock, using a white crayon. Cut out the silhouette inside the white lines and glue it to a colorful piece of card stock, solid or printed. Frame the silhouette in a wood or metal frame. Alternatively, create a small scrapbook of the silhouettes of each family member, using construction paper and lacing the pages together along one edge through punched holes with ribbon or yarn.