My Own Curriculum!

Posted by Coral on February 5, 2009

I am stepping out on a limb this next school term ! When we finish Sonlight Core K/Science K, we will take a brake from it. We will continue with Sonlight, after R turns 6 yrs.old. I really do LOVE Sonlight. However, I believe that I goofed when I started with Core K/Sci. K instead of Core P4/5 -Sc. P4/5, (it would still have been plenty challenging for P). R has done fine with listening in on Core K/Sci. K; but after looking at Core 1/Sci. 1, I think it will be too much for her right now. I really want to try and keep the girls together in History and Science.

So here is where the limb comes in.  For the time being; I am piecing together my own His./Sci. curriculum for this next term (I say term because we do year-around-school).  Mainly it’s just my own History curr.

Here’s the plan:

I will be using these Value Tales books for History

These were mine when I was a child. Each book covers one very important person in history (Abraham Lincoln, Christopher Columbus, Harriet Tubman etc..) I have 30 of these. We will read about, and do activities on one person a week (two weeks for some of them).

For each person I made a folder like this (this one is Christopher Columbus):

The “supplies needed” list is the supplies that I don’t have (or need to check and see if I have enough of ) for crafts. For Christopher Columbus(CC) we will be making an egg carton boat http://crafts.kaboose.com/egg-cup-ships.html ,and a map of his journey to the New World http://crafts.kaboose.com/new-world-map.html. Inside the folder are all the craft instructions and coloring pages, that I printed out.

The pink Post-it notes are the call #’s of books and videos at the library that are about CC. Our libraries online look-up system makes this very easy.

I look at each Value Tales book, then decide how I will break it up into 3 Days of reading. I write the page #’s under the Days. The 4^th Day we will do a craft and/or some other activity, to bring it all together. For CC we will make the Map and watch a Nest family video. We only do school four days a week, so this works out well. Here is what it looks like:

The “go exploring” on Day 3 will probably be moved to Day 4 also. I plan on  taking them on an expedition in the back yard. I don’t know what this will  look like exactly, but it seems like a fun idea .

With some of the people in the Value Tales, I will have a Bible lesson to coincide with it that week. For CC’s week we will do Noah’s Ark, using the common theme of “Boats”. I am not quite sure what all we will do for this. However, I did find the whole story of Noah, in coloring pages http://www.coloring.ws/noah.htm.

I’ll read the library books here and there when time allows, or just let P read them in her free time.

For Science:

I bought this Christian Liberty Nature Reader: Book 1.

I also purchased Grade 2 Science “Patterns of Nature” Set from Rod & Staff.

Along with a butterfly habitat

and maybe a few other projects this will be our Science.

I am definitely not brave enough to do this again, and again (for now, at least). I already went ahead and purchased (used) all of Sonlight Core 1/ Science 1,  it is just waiting for us to be ready, for it. The only reason I am doing this is because- I already had the Value Tales books (saves money), and I don’t want to overwhelm my R; she so wants to be a part of our school experience.

Anyone out there wanting to take a break for a year (from their curr.), might want to use this Value Tales idea also . Leave me comments if you are interested in seeing the rest of my lesson plans for these.

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