End of the Year
It’s over! School, that is. More specifically, First Grade for Boo and Pre-K/K for Pumpkin Girl. We tied up the loose ends, finished up the subjects we’d fallen behind in and officially ended our school year. We actually school year round, so we will be starting 2nd Grade and Kindergarten on August 28th.
This last school year went quite differently from what I had planned. Last summer we moved twice and added a baby to our family. Our year-round schedule allowed us to work around the interruptions without getting stressed out about falling behind, but things happen and we got further off course than I’d “allowed” for. My plan had been to keep up school throughout the summer, finish in July, take a short break and start up again at the beginning of August. However, some unanticipated summer events got in the way. It wasn’t so much the events themselves as it was when they occured. I attempted to have school around the various activities, taking a week off for VBS, back in school for a week, two weeks off for swimming lessons, back in school for two weeks, off for a week for family visits, back for one last week to finish up. It was too disjointed that way and hard to get back into things for just a few days. This coming year, without any moving or new babies, we should find ourselves in a better position to incorporate our summer activities. I’m not too worried about it, though. We’ll see what happens and roll with the punches. It’ll all work out in the end, just like it did this year.
For those interested, we will be starting our new school year with Sonlight Core 1, which is world history. We’ll spread it out over 2 years, so that when the jump in difficulty occurs in Core 3, Pumpkin Girl won’t be completely overwhelmed. I’ve added in The Mystery of History along with Sonlight materials to help give us a little more “meat” as we take Core 1 slowly. Both children will listen in to the Bible, history and read alouds in Core 1, as well as Science 1.
Boo will continue with Horizons Math. He’s currently doing two lessons a day of level 1 and it suits him perfectly. He’s doing Sonlight Language Arts 2. I’m not sure what grade level he can actually read at, but LA 2 is a good fit for his spelling, grammar and handwriting ability.
Pumpkin Girl will do Horizons Math Level K. She’d gotten all the way to lesson 42 when it became too hard for her. We took a break and she worked on a thinking skills book. She’s been asking to do math “like Boo does”, so we’ll be back to Horizons at the start of our new school year. She’ll do Sonlight Language Arts K. She is my Wonder Reader so is actually doing the readers from LA 1 already. She’ll be done with those soon and move on to the readers from LA2. But again, for grammar, spelling and handwriting, she needs LA K.
The extra fun stuff will include nature notebooks and artist/picture studies a la Charlotte Mason. They will both continue with knitting and weaving potholders (can you say “grandmas’ Christmas presents”?) and their illustrated story notebooks. I found a home ec course for children their age which looks like fun. Art and music appreciation will round things out.
Yes, I know. Looks like a lot of girl stuff. My goal is to teach both children to manage a home, craft a little and appreciate the arts. Knitting is excellent for hand-eye coordination, plus teaches patience. When they are older, they will both learn to care for a home on the outside, like mowing the lawn and tending a garden. Their home ec skills will include car care and woodworking. We have classes for those things on base, they just need to be old enough to take them.
Lastly, it looks like both children will be into scouting this year. Boo will be playing soccer in the fall and Pumpkin Girl is taking ballet.
As for Bip, he’s just along for the ride.
