2012-2013 Education Plan COMPLETED!!!

We are on our summer/fall book break and I have taken some time to get things reorganized before starting our fall session. I think that I have arrived at the point where we have made the final decisions for the majority of KM's lessons for the next three sessions. AS ALWAYS nothing is set in stone, but each year I feel more comfortable and end up changing less things throughout. I take a lot of time researching and organizing in the beginning to help us feel comfortable and to allow our year to flow.

I will also continue to update the Home Education Through High School Resources page so be sure to check it out!!!

KM's Education Outline

Summer '12 – Spring '13 Sessions 

ELA - Literature & Writing

Classic Fiction including - Little Women, Frankenstein, Yearling, Ethan Frome, Wrinkle in Time, Animal Farm, & Adventures of Huck Finn ~ additionally we will be watching various cinematic versions of each of these when applicable. 
Glencoe Literature Guides

Steck-Vaughn G: Language Arts, Writing
Reading Section from - Steck-Vaughn Complete GED Preparation 

Math

^{Hands on Banking For Teens - Summer Only 
Applying Algebra - Fall - Spring}

Science

Chem Prep Unit 1 of GPB Chemistry Video Resources - Summer Only

Chemistry (Science) 

Various Chemistry related videos which will be listed - HERE 

Social Sciences – U.S. History, Current Events & Geography

A History of US Books 5-9

Story of the US DVD

U.S. History – Basic Not Boring

CNN Student News

Election Study - iCivics Resources

Will of the people - Virtual Field Trip

Health & P.E.

What Do You Stand For? For Teens: A Guide to Building Character 
Bowling
Tennis
Ice Skating

ExerBeat

Electives

Milady's Standard Cosmetology with Theory Workbook & Practical    Workbook

Youth Group

Volunteer Work

Chess Club 
Teen Advisory Group 
Shakespeare Theatre Group

Japanese from Zero!
Japanese 1 - GPB Resources 

Essentially this would be KM's 10th grade year if she were in traditional school.  KM's lighter Summer Schedule - 

and her Fall - Spring Schedule

The Hokey Pokey - Shakespeare style! - By Jeff Brechlin

The Hokey Pokey - Shakespeare style! - By Jeff Brechlin:

The following is from the Washington Post Style Invitational contest that asked readers to submit "instructions" for something (anything), but written in the style of a famous person. The winning entry was The Hokey Pokey (as written by William Shakespeare).

O proud left foot, that ventures quick within

Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.

Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:

Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.

Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,

A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.

To spin! A wilde release from Heavens yoke.

Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl.

The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt

Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.

        -- by "William Shakespeare""

'via Blog this'

What I am reading - February - Music Kid

I am starting my skype novel class this week and we are reading Wuthering Heights! 

Weekly Update - Week of Game Play

DN has become very motivated and is finishing his entire weeks worth of work in just about a day, so he was only here Monday and Tuesday this week and I sent him home with a copy of Lord of the Flies to read and a calendar to keep track of any basketball he plays or other "phys. ed-ish" type activities he is doing as this is something that we feel is really important. He also responsible to do Khan Academy and watch CNN Student News each day while he is home. My hope is that in the free time that he has he will discover something that will spark his interest and he might start to see that learning goes beyond worksheets, report writing, and textbooks.


KM moved along smoothly with her lessons per usual. She has been working on a story that is in journal format and decided to turn it into a fictitious blog, pop on over if you feel like checking it out - HERE. She is planning on adding to it with some of her manga drawings, so it should be pretty interesting! She has two more weeks left in her poetry class she is taking via Skype and is getting a bit anxious about the final assignment which is to write a critical analysis of a poem. Formal writing has never been her strong suit, but it is more about her lack of confidence than her actual writing skills. I am fairly certain that she will do just fine and she is excited that she will be continuing with this group and doing a literature study of Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

Click here to get the answer!

Learning this week centered around a lot of game play. They played a round of Math Jeopardy from What's Your Angle Scholastic Math Games Resource. For health this week we played the Professor Noggin's Human Body game.  I am always shocked by the ones that we get right, as well as the ones that we get wrong.

As part of our U.S. History we have be doing activities from Colonial Days: Discover the Past with Fun Projects, Games, Activities, and Recipes (American Kids in History Series) and this week we played a Native American Stick Toss Game. It had a lot to do with luck, more than anything, as you simply toss the sticks in the air and add up your score based on how the sticks land. The kids seem to enjoy it and the scores went back and forth quite a few times!

KM started practicing for the World Education Games this week! She has participated in some Math events previously but this will be the first time she will be doing the spelling and science competitions so she wants to get as much practice in as possible. There is still plenty of time to register HERE!

KM also had fun with music and dance on the Wii this week! We all LOVE the Wii! It is such a great way to incorporate fun into learning while getting everyone up and moving!

Empty Promises and Hope - A Poem

Empty Promises and Hope

By  Gckstudent

I live in a World.

A World full of Empty Promises.

I get Promised so many Things...

But...

They never come true.

I fear that Nothing

That is Promised to me

Will come True.

But I have a dear Friend...

Hope.

Hope shows me that some

Things can come true.

That not all Things are Terrible.

So...even though the Promises

Made to me may not come True

I Hope that the Promises I make

Will...

Come...

TRUE.

Shakespeare Thematic Unit

I have been getting a lot of emails asking about our Shakespeare Thematic Unit, so I figured I would take a few minutes to outline our plan.

KM has been in a Shakespeare group for three years now and since she has a really good grasp on a few plays and a phenomenal understanding of the language, we have decided to cover a good deal of Shakespeare's plays, some better known and some not so much.

We began the summer using the free educational resource kit we got from the National Endowment of the Arts. This kit was incredible!!! KM also spent a good amount of time researching Shakespeare's life by reading Who Was William Shakespeare? and The World Of Shakespeare. We also have been gathering info on all things Elizabethan, utilizing Teacher Created Thematic Unit, discovering the beauty in his sonnets and were lucky enough to be able to attend a  free Shakespeare on the Common performances of All's Well That Ends Well. 

Starting this week we will begin delving into recordings of the plays - all of which can be found on Netflix. Here are the ones we will be covering -

• Romeo & Juliet - 1968
• Romeo + Juliet - 1996
• Macbeth
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Hamlet
• Taming of the Shrew
• Richard III
• Othello 
• O
• King Lear
• As You Like It
• The Tempest
• Merchant of Venice
• Julius Cesear
• Anthony Cleopatra
• Henry V
• Twelfth Night
• Comedy of Errors
• Merry Wives of Windsor
• The Winter's Tale
• Midsummer's Night Dream
• All's Well That Ends Well
• Love's Labour's Lost

Additional Related Films - 

• Shakespeare in Love
• Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead
• Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Undead

Additional Resources - 

• Rocketbooks
• Scholastic's Unlocking Shakespeare Folders

All our lesson plans are done on Homeschool Tracker so if you use it too and would like a copy feel free to ask! I would not recommend this type of intensive program for a child that isn't familiar with Shakespeare and more importantly the language style.

Almost forgot ---

The week was so hectic that I forgot I had taken some shots of KM before her anime/manga club cosplay party - 

Here is her inspiration - Raven from Vampire Kisses -

 Using what we had around the house I think she did a really good job!

Looking Ahead to High School - Part 5

If you missed any previous parts HERE is a quick link to them.


This is the third year that KM has been participating in an incredible theater group that focuses on Shakespearean plays. She has been in Romeo & Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream and is currently working on Much Ado About Nothing.

The fab director that we are so lucky to be able to work with has reworked the original plays, keeping the original language and pentameter, but making them approachable and suitable for this age group. She has learned so much about the language and of course theater skills, but has now asked to learn about Shakespeare and to read the original scripts, so she will be doing a thematic unit on Shakespeare next year which will include his life, sonnets, Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet and Richard III.

We will be utilizing the following resources a free Shakespeare Kit - Shakespeare in American Communities  and the Shakespeare Thematic Unit from Teacher Created Resources as spines for this study. KM really likes and responds well to these interdisciplinary units. We are also planning on watching several versions of each play, other movies that follow the story lines of these plays, and are hopeful that she will be able to continue working with the theater group!

8th Grade Fall Curriculum Picks

Here is what KM and I have decided to work with this fall -

Math -

She did a great job over the summer on the Straight Forward Algebra Book 1 and we decided to take a break from it before she starts book 2. So she will be finishing up the book Word Problems (Practice Practice)
and she completed the rest of Ko's Journey.

English Language Arts -

We love the Straight Forward Series so much that we decided to try the English Series as well, so she will be using the All-In-One English Series Master Book (Straight Forward) . For vocabulary she will be working on Painless Vocabulary. For Spelling she will be utilizing a variation of the Free Spelling program found HERE. For writing we are going to incorporate some of the review questions from Story of the World's Activity Guide as well as the questions from The Story of Science Student Quest Guide so that we are working on her strengthening her answers to open ended response questions - which in my opinion is the practical writing skill that she needs to work on write now.

Science -

We will be continuing on our journey through the Story of Science on to Newton at the Center. As I mentioned we will be utilizing all aspects of the Student's Quest Guide, but will especially be focusing on the open response questions. We also will still be using the Thames & Kosmos Milestones in Science kit as well as working on K'nex and other projects.

History and Geography -

We will also be moving on to The Story of the World Volume 3: Early Modern Times and again utilizing the review questions for writing. In case you missed how we adapt this for the middle school crowd you can check the post on that HERE.

EXTRAS -

We will also be doing -

• Music - Music Alive Classical Connections to U.S. History
• Piano -Accelerated Piano Adventures, Level 2- Lesson Set (1 Book and 1 CD Set, Lesson Book 2 and Lesson Book 2 CD)
  
• Spanish - Tell Me More and The 100+ Series Spanish, Middle School / High School (English and Spanish Edition)
  
• Health - Human Body & Health: Science Skills : Grades 6-8+ (Basic, Not Boring 6 to 8)
• Global Studies - Global Studies: Social Studies Skills : Grades 6-8+ (Basic, Not Boring 6 to 8)
  
• Computer Technology - I haven't finalized all of the resources for this one yet, but will post as soon as I have them. I do know that we will be basing the main context of the program on the Brain Pop Cool Tech spotlight. We also have a printer, laptop, mouse, digital camera, MP3 player, DVD player and camcorder that we will be dissecting throughout the session.

Movie Review - Percy Jackson and the Lighting Theif

I mentioned way back we found out that they were making this movie how excited we were to see it! KM and I read EVERY book and were very disappointed when we found it was being released over Feb. vaca because we were not going to cram into a theater to see it. So we had to wait.....






but I have to say....IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT!!!!

This is one of the best movies that I have seen in a long time. Unlike many movies that have been made from incredible books this one was as close to the mark as I think it could get using living actors. The graphics and special effects were incredible. Medusa's snakes were the pinnacle of the movie for me, it truly looked like Uma Thurman had snakes crawling out of her head!

I don't want to be a spoiler so I will just say that the few tweaks that they did for the movie were understandable in my opinion. KM was a bit annoyed that Annabeth was not blonde, but really she had NOTHING else bad to say about the movie.

It was truly spectacular and we REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, ~ oh did i say REALLY, ~ hope they make the rest of the series!


I will also mention that CJ - who did not read the book ~ also thorougly enjoyed it and hopes for sequels!

Winter Session 7th Grade Curriculum Picks

As we are drawing our fall session to a close over the next week, I figured it was time to look ahead and finalize the choices we have made for the upcoming Winter Session! Since we are always changing things around here, this is of course a rough guess of what we will be doing. Most of our picks for the fall session worked out rather well, but there are some areas that we needed to tweak a bit. Here is our "intended" outline -

ELA -
We have swapped out our ELA system SEVERAL times in the past two years, but I do think that we have finally made a bit of progress in this area. KM worked through Levels 3 & 4 of Writing Strands rather quickly and decided to work through a few workbooks for latter half of this past session and the next.

• She has been working through 5-Minute Daily Practice Grammar, she tends to do all 5 lessons for the week at once on Monday, but she is getting them all correct, so I guess I can't really complain can I.
• Quick Practice Writing Skills is a bit more of a challenge for her - well it varies day to day. There are some things that she just needs a slight reminder on and others that have never been covered, so when we come to an area that needs to be covered completely we stop and cover it. It seems to be working and she is far less weary of asking for help.
• For writing itself we have gone back to the 3 minute non-stop writing and are using 350 Fabulous Writing Prompts. Some of the prompts are not so fabulous in my opinion, but we just skip those ones and take those days to go back over and review or edit her previous days writings.
• We will also begin working through the Grammar and then Writing on BrainPop.
• For literature we will be using Teacher Created Resources for Tuck Everlasting and The Island of the Blue Dolphin. As well as a Scholastic Book Guide for Around the World in Eighty Days which will coincide with our Geography. KM of course will also be continuing her free time reading - not that I have to worry about that.

Math -

• We will be finishing up The Complete Book of Algebra and Geometry this next session so that she can feel confident when she goes back to the Teaching Textbook for Algebra in the Spring.
• I also thought that it would be fun and interesting to take a look at Women Mathematicians during this session. This book features 15 women and we will spread them out covering one or two a week for the 10 week session.
  

Science -

• We have decided to put off Story of Science again as KM wanted to slow down a bit on her Physics so that she could really investigate each area more closely. So for the next session she will continue with her Physics Workshop Kit from Thames & Kosmos. She will also continue to supplement with Brain Pop.
• We are also going to revisit Chemistry. She had done a bit of it last year at our co-op, but I think we will try to dive a bit deeper this time around. I have gotten a light textbook - Chemistry of Matter - from Paperback Swap and she has agreed to try it. I have the Periodic Table from Basher Science Books - WHICH SHE LOVES! - as a stand by in case the text flops. I have a lot of projects and kitchen chemistry things to add in as well as BrainPop - AGAIN!
  

Social Sciences -

• For history we will be working on Ancient Rome and finishing up volume one of Story of the World. This will also conclude our Giant Lapbook! I will be sure to post all the info on that when it is complete! This will be our final history pocket as well. KM is very happy that we will also be continuing with the Horrible Histories series, which despite mixed reviews from others, has been going over very well with her! We started out with the books, then I purchased the animated series on Ebay and now have been using the resources for the CBBC series.
• We will be finishing up Rand McNally's Intermediate Geography as well as doing a cultural study of each area as it is covered in the book. I am using several other resources for this including Global Trek, Hands-On Heritage series and Art Projects from Around the World.
  

Health -
KM really likes the Learn to Be Healthy site - though some of the content is a bit below her level, most of it seems to be sinking in and she is moving right along through it. They do have a high school level, but I don't think she is ready for that set just yet. She is also working through the Health topics on Brain Pop.


Electives -

• Staying with our strong Science focus - per KM's request - she will be studying weather and meteorology this session. I will be listing our resources for this in a separate post.
• For her foreign language she is going to be doing Spanish. We were lucky enough to get a FANTASTIC deal on Tell Me More by Auralog through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op last summer and she is REALLY enjoying the program. The voice recognition software is great and the homeschool edition has worksheets that you can print off to supplement with. I will be supplementing with two workbooks - Let's Learn Spanish Grades 7 & 8. I also picked up to sticker books that I thought KM & SC could do together. This would help reinforce the basics for KM and would introduce SC to a bit of Spanish as well.
• Music Alive! is still a big hit and we will continue with this through the next session. We also will be taking a look at some opera pieces from Opera for Everyone and will be going to the Boston Lyric Opera's presentation of Barber of Seville.
  
• Piano Adventures is working incredibly! She will be starting on Level 2 and I am amazed and awestruck by how well she is playing with no outside instruction. There was talk of an interest in Flute, but I am not too sure how serious that was...
• She will be continuing with Drama at our co-op and they will be working on another Shakespearean play with music and dancing, but the title has not been disclosed yet!
• We will be continuing to work through the Meet The Masters for our art practical and theory section. She will also continue on her cross stitch work and may start some sewing as she interested in working on her costume for the play this spring.
  

Again I can't stress enough how much of a guideline this is and it is in NO WAY set in stone. I am very open to changing things that are not working and try to make sure that KM feels that she can be honest with me about how she feels something is going.

Curriculum Picks for Fall Session - 7th Grade - English Language Arts

I am continuing to hammer down our curriculum choices and here are our ELA choices!

English Language Arts - Traditionally, the primary divisions in the language arts are Literature and Language, where language in this case refers to both linguistics, and specific languages. The subjects, including reading, spelling, and composition, aimed at developing reading and writing skills, usually taught in elementary and secondary school.



You may have seen my many different postings about KM's lack of interest in writing and my realization a few months ago which has lead me to the following choices -

• Word Smart Junior I & II
  
• Writing Strands Level 3
• 5-Minute Daily Practice - Grammar
  

Literature & Reading Comprehension -
KM is an avid reader - she has already read 31 books this summer. So we are going to try a different approach to literature this year by alternating with an actual literature curriculum and literature unit studies. I am hoping that with this mix it will keep things moving and build her writing skills a bit as well...

• Island of the Blue Dolphin - Teacher Created Resource
  
• Cricket in Time Square - Teacher Created Resource - we will be using many of these products throughout the next two years
• Language of Literature - we will be alternating doing one literature unit mentioned above and one unit from this book.

We also will be trying to increase and encourage more free writing and may work out some sort of writing prompts as we did toward the end of the spring with our Proverbs Project.