Forward, to next year

There is nothing like writing a blog post to help me get organized.  So I will be a bit self indulging and take a look at my plans for next fall.

Charry will be a forth grader, but a young forth.  I need to start expecting more writing and more independent thinking.  She is at the age when self motivation goes a lot farther than dangling a carrot.  So for her I want:

Math- Life of Fred.  I love the series.  It made me laugh, it uses big words, it covers more topics than just addition and multiplication, it encourages kids to enjoy learning as a whole.  The best part, she loves it too.  She likes the story, she likes the characters, she get to work at her own pace, she knows I'm learning new things also.

Other Math- Wrap-ups, they are easier to bring places than flash cards, using a timer it is easy to see which factors she is struggling with.  The down side, she doesn't love them.

This year I am taking a risk and not doing a workbook along with Life of Fred, instead I will try to do a once a week worksheet to make sure she has her math facts down.

Science- I just finished reading through the text book for next year.  We are going to try Apologia's "Exploring Creation With Zoology".  I'm labeling this a "writing intensive" course.  Much of the book work involves reading a chapter then rewriting the important information in your own words.  The curriculum will be a stretch for me.  The good points:
-Easy to use lesson plans.
-Made to do only twice a week.
-Creation Centered, points out the wonders of creation that couldn't have just happened.
-We can use it for both girls so Merry will be using it also.

The not good points (not bad just hard for me):
-The book is written first person, it grates on me.  I like my text books to read like an encyclopedia, this one doesn't.
- Many activities and experiment involve exploring you backyard, we live in an apartment so these will be tough for us.

English- Since Science will have a lot of writing we will not be doing a lot of that in English.  We will be working though an online grammar workbook.  We will also be doing book reports, although I haven't figured out how those will work yet.  And of course we will have spelling.

We are still working on All About Spelling level 3.  That should take us about half the school year to complete.

Languages- Charry will continue to review Hebrew, much of the reviewing will be done with "The Learnables" which is a computer program.

We will also be tackling Latin.  I'm hoping to try "Minimus, starting out in Latin" ( the link is to a website to use with the book, to but try amazon) but I haven't gotten a teacher guide for it yet.  That is next on my list.

Geography-  Next year we will take an imaginary trip across the USA.  Along the way we will focus on learning capitals and landmarks as well as general location.  To aid us I have been looking at geography websites and state worksheets.  This is another subject Merry will being doing with Charry.

I think that will be everything, except extra curriculars like Dance, AWANA, Bible Quizzing and maybe piano or a sport.  Wish us luck :)