Putting pen to paper

Creating a lesson plan. A complete lesson plan....it is pretty tough. I finally have our schedule planned out and have begun to do the lesson plans week by week. I include the core standards as well as fun things for the kids to do. The first week seems jam packed, but each task will take 5-20 minutes each. We have reading, writing, math, literature, science, history and learning ASL (free resource). I'm ready, I just hope these little ones are :)

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Adventures with math, a wolf and a kid

P likes to learn, as long as he doesn't know that he's learning. This is probably a common thing among 7 year old boys and math. So, we have fun with math games to keep him engaged and progressing.
Along with that, is our daily dose of Charlotte Mason, by way of a fable from Aesop: The Wolf and
The Kid.
As always, both of those links are free!

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Charlotette Mason and her way of building great people

One thing, aside from basic knowledge, that I want my children to learn is how to be happy being themselves. I also want them to know how to be good people, to learn morals and ethics and have them be ingrained into their brain. Charlotte Mason's method of homeschooling does that, with quality stories. Today we started Day 1 of Year 1 (I am supplementing P's public school learning with home school things we will do next year to ease the transition). This consisted of our normal knowledge builders, as I want to be sure he is up to date on core standards for his age, before we begin next year. Today we brought out the Nook and read The Sword of Damocles, from Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin (we scored this free). It teaches the reader that the grass isn't always greener on the other side.

Yesterday, I had a fabulous fellow home school Mom show me a link to an amazing site! (I will put it up in the menu), Easy Peasy, all in one homeschool. It totally rocks my socks.

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Before we even begin

In Texas, thankfully, the home school guidelines are pretty easy to navigate. With minimal hoops to jump through, that also comes with not much navigation aside from what can be found on the internet. The problem I have ran into with prepping for our first home school year (with a 7 and a 4 year old) is finding the perfect curriculum. That may not seem like much of a problem seeing as how there is a plethora to choose from, but our problem comes from trying to find a certain type of curriculum.

• Non-religious
• Visual/hands on
• Without a strict schedule

Easy enough, you would think. So, with all of that being said I have opted to create my own with bits and pieces of others. I started out at the TEA website that has the state standard curriculum (free). Along with that state standard, I am also adding in a little of the Charlotte Mason way, via Ambleside Online (also free). Adding to those, the fabulous field trips we will take, I think this is our golden goose! That is the plan, and all the failure and success shall be documented...if not for posterity, for my own sanity's sake.

Enjoy our adventures? Want to chat about so many things that are good, bad and ridiculous? Join the group :)

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