Thursday, June 19, 2008

September homeschool plans for Crayons

(Tentative plans!) [July 15, 2008: Updated version]

Crayons will be in Grade 2 this fall, and will be following a modified version of Ambleside Online's Year 2. Because she's been following along with many of Ponytails' readings over the last couple of years, I have had to substitute some books. She's also a very avid independent reader, so she may be able to handle some of these books on her own (although she likes to be read to as well).

Bible:
Term 1: 1 Samuel, Matthew, selected Psalms & Proverbs; Judy Rogers CDs
Term 2: 2nd Samuel, continue Matthew, read from Acts
Term 3: Life of Solomon; continue Book of Acts

Language Arts:
Specific grade 2 skills from Gentle Language (an outline by Karen Glass), Teaching Children (Diane Lopez) and Ruth Beechick's 3-R's booklets, taught as needed, using our own books and supplements (word puzzles, a couple of Gifted and Talented workbooks, magnetic words, Scrabble letters, children's dictionary)

Skills include:
Oral communication, including narration, telephone/manners
Listening skills (demonstrated by oral or other responses)
Capitalization, some punctuation, plurals, complete sentences, contractions, prefixes/suffixes, alphabetizing to the second letter
Copywork, simple dictation (spelling words with specific patterns as well as calendar words and holiday words)
Printing practice, using Canadian Handwriting workbooks
Memory work (see list for each term)
Reading silently and out loud, and being read to (see booklists)
Writing, mostly informal, e.g. short letters
Following written directions--cooking, crafts

Math
Begin Miquon Math Blue level (see their scope and sequence)
Typical grade 2 skills including number awareness, skip counting, understanding of place value, addition & subtraction, fraction concepts, money, time, measurement, problem solving, greater than/less than, multiplication & division concepts
Games, rod activities, hundreds chart, real-life math situations, commercial & homemade board games

History and Geography

Eh? to Zed--A Canadian ABeCeDarium
Choose one letter each week and find out more about the Canadian words on that page

Term 1: An Island Story chapters 22-32, Child's History of the World chp 45, 47-51
David Thompson activity book (and online supplements)--covers his life and explorations of the NorthWest; we learn something about the fur trade, mapmaking, and the Rocky Mountains.

Term 2: AIS 33-50, CHOW 52-54, Stories for Canada's Birthday, Kids' Book of the Far North (and library books about the Arctic)

Term 3: AIS 51-61; CHOW 55-58; Stories for Canada's Birthday; Bagley's Marco Polo (To Far Cathay)

HOLIDAYS
A Pioneer Thanksgiving
A Pioneer Christmas (both by Barbara Greenwood; read during the appropriate seasons)
"Journey to a First Canadian Christmas" (story from Stories for Canada's Birthday)
Festivals, Family and Food, by Diana Carey and Judy Large (good way to learn about British holidays like Whitsun and Candlemas)


Biography
Term 1--undecided, may skip
Term 2--Brother Sun, Sister Moon (St. Francis of Assisi)
Term 3--Mr. Pipes & the British Hymn Makers (I like this for Year 2 because it ties in with Pilgrim's Progress)

Science and Nature
Topics from Handbook of Nature Study (including the HNS blog), Natural Science Through the Seasons (Partridge), and Through the Year (Frasier et al), a simply-written science reader that is referenced in Partridge's book

Possible books by term:
Term 1: Flower Fairies of the Autumn; Among the Night People (Pierson)
Term 2: Continue the Pierson series of nature books; add Linnea's Almanac
Term 3: Pagoo; Linnea's Windowsill Garden

LITERATURE
Shakespeare stories, Pilgrim's Progress
Term 1--Poems of Walter de la Mare; Understood Betsy; extra reading (see AO lists)
Term 2--Poems of Eugene Field and James Whitcomb Riley; Wind in the Willows
Term 3--Poems of Christina Rossetti; Robin Hood

ART AND MUSIC
Artist and composer: More or less follow the Ambleside Online rotation. Possibly study Andy Warhol in Term 1 since a local museum will be hosting a Warhol exhibit starting in January. Possibly do Giotto in Term 2 (we did him a few years ago, but Crayons doesn't remember)
Drawing and painting activities
Singing--folk songs, hymns, Canadian songs
Musical instruments--maybe start some keyboard lessons

LIFE SKILLS
Crafts--Jumbo Book of Crafts; possible sewing club with some friends; make Christmas decorations; cooking, helping at home; add knitting frame/corking and cat's cradles in third term

Phys-ed type activities

FRENCH
Aux Yeux des Enfants, which we usually do in Grade 1 but didn't get to this past year

MEMORY WORK
(Bible work was taken from Teaching Children (Lopez))
TERM 1: Ps. 23, Matt. 2:1-12, poems, geography songs, names of Bible books
TERM 2: Ps. 117, Matt. 6: 9-13, Lutheran catechism, etc.
TERM 3: Ps. 121, Matt. 28:1-10, catechism, etc.

(I should note here that our plans for Ponytails are more tentative at this point, so I won't be posting them for awhile.)

2 comments:

MasterpieceMom said...

Thanks so much for posting! This will help me for next year.

Where is the outline Gentle Language to be found?

Mama Squirrel said...

I don't know if you can find it anywhere--Karen wrote it a number of years ago and emailed some of us a copy of her work-in-progress so that we could try it out and give her feedback. It's a series of simple language/grammar/copywork lessons that you can use with any of your own books--much like Ruth Beechick's style.