Planning

My poor neglected blog.  Between vacation planning (or unplanning as the case may be), wrangling a two year old, nursing a newborn, getting the two year old off the table, snuggling the newborn, switching out videos for the big kids, cleaning up yet another mess from the two year old...  Well you get the idea.  Plugging my camera into the computer in order to blog just seems like such a big project right now.

I am finishing up some school planning and just spent the entire day (not kidding) working on plans for celebrating the liturgical year.  If it's not planned and not written down, I will never do anything about it, so I'm hoping this was time well spent.

In case you are interested, here are the resources I'm using to plan:

The Mother of Divine Grace Syllabus is obvious, since there are lots of book choices surrounding the feast days of the Church.

Cay Gibson's Catholic Mosaic is awesome and I look forward to using it this year.  I really, really want the Coloring Companion for it, but I'm not sure yet if it will fit in the budget.

A Year With God from Catholic Heritage Curricula has a lot of great ideas in it, although many of them are pretty involved so this year I think we might only use a few.

The Year & Our Children is packed with ideas that I haven't even begun to scrape the surface of.

Jessica at a Shower of Roses is pretty much a rock star when it comes to celebrating the liturgical year.  Between her blog and the companion to it Catholic Cuisine there is a wealth of ideas.

Here are our school plans:

Fritter (1st grade):
I have decided to stick with Mother of Divine Grace.  We did well with it last year and I'm looking forward to this coming year.  Where we vary from the curriculum is below.

Fritter has finished 100 Easy Lessons for reading and so we are just jumping ahead to Sound Beginnings.  We are also going to use the American Cardinal Readers which I received used from a friend. 

To supplement we will be using:

Lepanto Grammar 1
Explode the Code

For Science:
God's Marvelous Works 1
Health, Safety, and Manners 1
Seaside and Wayside Reader 1
Science Experiments from various books

For History:
American History for Young Catholics
Maps Charts and Graphs A (Again, if it fits in the budget.  This might be one we get next semester.)

Obviously we have a good stock of historical and science books and readers on a variety of subjects.  I'm considering a quarterly theme to focus on, but I'm not sure if we'll do it unless I plan really well.*  Some ideas I've thought of are astronomy, dinosaurs, animal groups...still thinking this one out.

Ladybug (PK) and Sunflower:
I am planning on using Brightly Beaming Resources Preparatory Curricula for both girls.  Fritter and I had fun with it when he was little. 
I have some of the Explode the Code books left for Ladybug from last year, so we'll do those.  I have a general Kindergarten workbook that I think I can get to go with our learning poster.

Extras:
I enrolled our family in our Catholic homeschool groups Co-op which will be twice a month.  I only paid for one semester, so this gives us a chance to see how well it fits.
Fritter will be in soccer and swimming this fall.
Ladybug will continue in her tap/ballet class
Both big kids will be in our homeschool PE class
Both big kids will also be in Catechism of the Good Shepherd

We are also beginning to work on one skill at a time.  These may be decided as we go or I may get a chance to plan it out more.  Right now Fritter is working on building models while following instructions (a habit he really needs work with).  These include Lego models, airplane models, ect.  Ladybug is working on learning how to jump rope.  And I am working with Sunflower on blanket time (without fussing).  So far she'll stay on the blanket, but not without lots of fussing.  :)  Hopefully we can get this one down by the time school starts again, because I think it will really help.  Last year when she gave up her nap I had her do playpen time.  Some days she did fine but other days she whined for most of the time and threw out all her toys.

So far these are our plans.  I keep looking to see if there are gaps.  See anything obvious?  ;)

*Note: After talking with my husband this morning and getting his input we have decided on these four quarterly themes:

Planetary Science
The Human Body
Medieval History
Transportation & Identification

As to what order and the different things we do, the jury is still out, but I'm guessing there will be various field trips involved.  :)