So I was sitting down to plan E.V.’s schoolwork for the week and thought it might be nice to write about my process. People might be interested!
Maybe not.
At least if something happens to me my wife, Lesley, will be able to see what I was doing and continue if she wants.
What I use:
Five in a Row aka FIAR
I use an older version of volume 1 as shown above. There is a newer version, but I got mine at a used book sale and it suffices.
FIAR is the backbone of our curriculum. Basically you take a story book listed, read it each day of the week, and build lessons around the story. It works surprisingly well.
Last week we used The Story about Ping and learned about fiction/non-fiction, China, addition, consequenses of choices, and how water is depicted in art.
This week we will be reading Madeline!
Interactive Notebooks
Carson Dellosa has a series of Interactive Notebooks that are broken down by Grade and Subject. They’re called interactive notebooks because the student builds a notebook by cutting and pasting.
I use these to reinforce the concepts we are learning in FIAR, doing one page per day on the concept we are covering.
If I can’t find what I’m looking for in the Interactive Notebooks by Carson Dellosa, I go to teacherspayteachers.com. Here’s a link to the country bundle I downloaded. It includes a lot of the countries we’ll be touching on in FIAR.
Note: We use cardstock as the base and then put the pages in a binder so they are sturdy, yet easy for her to go back and look at.
Here are some examples from last week:
Life of Fred
Life of Fred is a quirky and fun math curriculum that takes things slow and easy. I use it as a way to introduce concepts to E.V. in a low key narrative form.
Concepts are introduced in a natural way as Fred himself encounters them in his daily life. It makes math approachable and real in a way that other curriculums fail to do. As E.V. says, “Fred doesn’t ‘Do Math’, Fred ‘Does Life’ and the math just happens!”
MEP Math
This is a free math curriculum created by The Center for Innovation in Mathmatics Teaching in the UK. Each lesson is meant to last 45 minutes in a public school classroom.
Since it’s just E.V. and I, we go at her speed finishing a couple of lessons in about 10 minutes total each day. As they get harder we’ll slow down though.
What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know
This book has a lot of stuff not covered by anything else I’m using. I read from it when I need something to read to E.V. and want it to be educational. A lot of my home schooling is about covering my bases!
180 Days Of… Workbooks
The ones pictured above are the ones that we use. For more info check out my review here.
Each one has one super short worksheet per day, five days a week. She finishes them all in less than thirty minutes. I use them to make sure she doesn’t have any holes in her knowledge.
Draw, Write, Now!
We use Draw, Write, Now! for art and handwriting. Each day she learns how to draw something and then copies four short sentences about that thing for copy work.
Because it incorporates drawing E.V. enjoys it better than pure copywork. And I try to pick things to draw that go with the FIAR book we are reading.
Prodigies Music
We use Prodigies Music as a beginning music curriculum 2-3 times a week. She uses desk bells to play along with video instruction. It takes 10 – 20 minutes for the lessons.
I let E.V. choose when to do this and she decides on a day by day basis. She loves music though, so she usually chooses to do it.
Various Other Resources
While the above covers 90% of what we use, we also do other fun worksheets (she loves word ladders), watch shows, and of course read lots of books.
We also use a heap of school/office supplies to do all our arts and crafts.
Welp, that’s most of the resources I use, Planning My Week 2020: Part 2 will actually get into the meat of how I plan!
[…] If you missed Part 1 you can find it by clicking here. […]