Our home education 2011-2012

Our homeschool year has only just begun and we're already having fun! We haven't started everything and we're waiting for some materials to come in but off we go. The general plan for this year is to learn more about world geography and cultures, zoology, physical science, pretty up our handwriting, move along in math at every one's own level and read lots and improve writing skills. Also important to make sure we stay physically fit not just mentally fit. We'll continue our many hikes with the dogs, so some homeschool PE with the area homeschoolers and ski and snowboard when winter comes. As for getting out of the house, well I;d like to stay IN the house more this year, you know the HOME part in homeschooling. We were so busy last year! We will be out for selected classes and activities though to include a monthly Lego class, monthly art classes and sometimes science with mixed class day, getting together with area homeschool tweens and teens and for the younger boys, Boys Scouts.

During our first week of this new year we made K'nex fans for science:

ate candy for science?!

Had a helpful mammal sit in on zoology classes:

found out the most all our frog eggs that were laid in the pool months ago were spring peepers, or tiny tree frogs, as expected. Many are leaving to pool and starting their new life in the nearby puddles, bushes and trees.

Built and shot off some rockets:

The boys helped a fellow scout and good friend work on his Eagle scout project, Colin went off on a hike up Mt. Jefferson with a few other scouts, took the dogs for countless walks to the lake, in the woods and all around the town, built with legos, learned about working children and how fortunate we are compared to many people around the world, learned about careers involving animals and more.

For our world geography and cultures study this year we are using Winter Promise. A friend loaned us the books, I added in some of our own, ordered a few new ones and now if only my student materials and exclusives would arrive from the actual company we'd be all set. I ordered around 3 weeks ago and still haven't even gotten a shipment notice. I have heard they're slow to ship but hopefully these items will arrive soon. I printed out some maps and things to get us going as we started to learn about our family culture and Europe.

For Science we're double dipping by doing Zoology and physical sciences but we tend to like science here so it's all good. For Zoology we're using Apologia's Land animals course with the student notebooks, Jr notebook for Tristan and the main notebook for the others. I think we can probably do all three books this year, sea animals and flying animals as well as Land animals, my kids are older and this area is high interest. It seems like as we settle in that a good pace for us is two lessons per week rather than one (it is designed to be used just 2X a week but my gang wants to use it daily).

For Physical science I have Kinex educational Materials, we will be doing Lego club with curr click and also a Lego class and I have Thames and Kosmos' History of Science which seems to be mainly physical science type labs. We will also use some parts of Rainbow Science again as needed.

For math it is everyone to themselves with some using Math U See, some Teaching textbooks (if we ever find it, it was misplaced over the summer. some using power basics, some Life of Fred as a supplement for all and probably some Khan Academy too. Hmm maybe that could work in place of the missing teaching Textbooks!

For language arts again everyone to their own levels and materials. For Tristan who has dyslexia and vision issues we're continuing with Barton Reading and spelling which has gone very well so far. Everyone will be trying to improve their handwriting, some need more work than others. I have not chosen a specific curriculum for that yet. Thee is quite a lot of writing across the materials we're using this year so I doubt I'll add in too much more language arts beyond some grammar review. As usual for reading I just require that everyone does read on a regular basis. For those it doesn't come as naturally too they can set a timer for at least 30 minutes of reading a day. For those who enjoy reading they can read as long as they like.

We are going to definitely for sure tackle level 2 of La Clase Divertida Spanish this year. We have started and will not let it fall through the cracks this year. Two of the four kids enjoy language learning and will do more on their own.

Boy Scout merit badges add a lot to our learning, the boys have a few badges out at the moment and still plan to do as many as possible so we'll carry on with that.

Is that everything? Probably not but that is about where we are headed this year, animals, countries, cultures, improve our basics, have fun with physics.

More photos from the past week or so below.

Trevor, Colin and Tristan and other scouts help a friend with his Eagle project:

Flower the cat helps with some Lego building:

More Eagle scout helping, my pictures are out of order:

Rocket launching:

Colin and other scouts head off on a back packing trip to Mt Jefferson, while there they participated in a flags on the summit 9/11 ceremony:

Comet is unimpressed with the still flooded from tropical storm Irene lake:

Ah, what is this about? Science! You'll just have to do Zoology 3 land animals to find out:

More Zoology, Predator Tristan (and Comet I guess!) caught some candy "prey".

One of our little pool tree frogs:

Tristan's Zoology binder:

Maps I printed out for Geography:

Some of the Geography Materials we're using, some of it is Winter Promise and some I have added in. There are quite a lot of country specific books too that are not pictured:

So we are off on another homeschool adventure. This is our 12th year homeschooling.