Cotton ISD 2011-2012 School Year

In retrospect, our first real year of homeschooling was all about surviving the year.  As we ended the year, I could see so many things I wanted to differently.  Regardless, we came out of Coralee's kindergarten year with her reading (my #1 goal) and completing the Saxon 1 Math Curriculum.  Oh, and how could I forget all that she learned in CC?  We both came out of the year knowing much more than we did before.  I think I know more now than when I graduated from college.  Embarrassing, huh? 

I've heard that the first year of homeschooling is about learning how your child learns.  We had many battles about phonics.  Hindsight is always 20/20.  I should have given up on Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading long before I did.  Reading is where I feel the least prepared so I clung to it.  I taught 3rd & 4th grade.... my kiddos came to me knowing how to read. I've never taught someone else how to read and I'm not 100% convinced I taught Coralee.  I think learning to read is a mystery... kind of like long division. ;-)  All of a sudden, you just get it.  This year, we'll be taking a different approach to phonics.  We'll be using Spelling Plus by Susan Anthony & the dictation book that goes along with it.  As for what we'll actually read, my goal is to tie what I read aloud to her to our CC stuff; particularly the history sentences.  My goal is for her to read more books this year.... easy ones for her siblings and ones on her level as well. 

People who brag about how smart & gifted their children are get on my nerves because many times it isn't true.  There isn't a "My xyz is smarter than your honor student" bumper sticker for no reason.  That being said, I am seeing that Coralee is really good at math.  She rarely missed a single question on any homework or test.... with the exception of those days she was in a bad mood or occasionally when her siblings distracted her.  In talking with a veteran homeschooling Mom, she mentioned skipping the lessons and doing the assessments until they started having problems.  I sat down not too long after we finished our year and scheduled out math for the fall semester and used that idea.  She should have the Saxon 2 completed in the early spring and we'll move on to Saxon 3.  It makes the teacher in me a little nervous.... you have to go through each lesson, don't you?  But, I think it's the right thing to do.  The things we're skipping are the things she firmly mastered in Saxon 1.

Last year I noticed that keeping the little ones busy with us at the table seemed to work better than letting them run around & play.  Not only were they staying out of trouble but Coralee wasn't pouting about not being able to play.  So, this year I'm going to try to keep them with us.  Lincoln will start Saxon K & will be learning to write cursive along with Coralee.  We'll be using Cursive First by Elizabeth Fitzgerald.  Obviously there will be a different approach for each of them but the idea will be the same.  I'm also going to start Lincoln with the Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading which I think will go better since most of that is new to him, unlike sister, who already knew that b says "b".  He pays more attention than I think he does.  He may surprise me with what he knows already.  We'll also do some book units for the two little ones.... I know we'll do some fun things with Brown Bear, Brown Bear & Chicka Chicka Boom Boom but I haven't gotten any further than that in my planning.

This year Lincoln will be an Abecedarian in CC and Coralee will be an Apprentice again.  The ladies that tutor the Abecedarian classes are incredible & have little boys about the same age so whichever class he is in will be wonderful.  He'll do wonderfully for them.  Not sure I'll be asking for him to be in my class later because it just doesn't seem like he does as well when we're in his classroom.  I'll be tutoring Coralee's class again and I'm really looking forward to feeling like I have more of a clue about how things should be done.  I am SO excited about Cycle 3.  In looking at all 3 cycles of the memory work, I've decided this is definitely my favorite.  The history is American history, Science is the body, the first 12 elements on the periodic table & different beliefs about how the earth was formed/evolution/natural selection.  Geography is states & capitals as well as land features.  Latin & Bible are learning John 1:1-7.  Math is the same in all cycles - skip counting 1-15, squares & cubes, geometry formulas & the laws (commutative, associative, etc.).  English is all about verbs (irregular tenses, participles, infinitives) & sentence patterns (including definitions for each part of the pattern).    We'll be learning about Grandma Moses, Rockwell, O'Keefe, Wyeth, Lichtenstein  Davis for artists this year and Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Stravinsky for composers.  Good stuff!!

The plan right now is to start school on July 25.  We'll be reading about Shakespeare in the beginning, read a kid version of "Taming of the Shrew", hopefully listen to it on CD and then go see it in Houston the first week of August.  I almost forgot, too, that we'll be using Song School Latin to learn a little more vocabulary and we'll spend the weeks before CC starts learning to draw the "Great Circles" (Arctic Circle, Tropic of Cancer, Equator, Tropic of Capricorn & Antarctic Circle, Prime Meridian, International Date Line), Continental Blobs, & labelling the oceans.  For CC, we are working towards the Challenge program (12-13 year olds) where they will be handed a piece of paper to draw maps.