Back in January I touched on our 2012-2013 plans and after
ordering some of the needed items, viewing some of the materials a friend of
mine had, and a long chat with The Spouse the decision was made to change up
our plans. Despite my original stance on
using a “box” curriculum or “all-in-one” I had a change of heart, which is of
course the beauty of homeschooling, you can change things as you see fit.
While we have managed to get some work done this year,
neither the spouse nor I ,are pleased with the current way things are
progressing-there is a lack of structure we both feel is necessary in our
homeschooling-and our home in general-.
I had gone back and forth for some time over using Oak Meadow, I did
like the way the program looked, but didn’t really want to use an “all-in-one”. After a long discussion with The Spouse –I’m
talking about a conversation that went well into the early morning hours!-
where we both expressed concerns, expectations, positives, and negatives of
switching as well as our current hodgepodge of materials.
We went through the Oak Meadow Grade K that I had purchased
from a friend and decided that while we like the material it was too easy for
Professor Chaos so I purchased the Grade 1 for him and we will be starting that
as soon as it arrives. For General Disarray
we decided to skip fourth grade because he already knows a great deal of the
material Grade 4 covers and what we haven’t covered Oak Meadow covers as review
in the start of the year, so we are going directly to Grade 5.
We won’t be using it as a complete “all-in-one” because we
prefer Saxon Math and find it to be a bit more advanced/challenging than Oak
Meadow. We’ll use the Oak Meadow
provided Math for the first three grades and then switch to the Saxon 5/4 math
and go forth from there. We’ll also be
supplementing our science and history work as well for more in depth
study.
As for our yearly game plan, General Disarray will start his
Oak Meadow work this upcoming week, since the program is broken down into 36
weeks we’ll finish up right before Christmas-no planned breaks- and then take
off from our regular schooling until we get settled at our next duty
station. We’ll do some light work to
ensure material learned isn’t lost during the 2 - 2 ½ month break. For Professor Chaos we’ll be using Hooked on
Phonics, Explode the Code, and a series of math workbooks until his Oak Meadow
work arrives and then we’ll use Hooked on Phonics in combination with Oak
Meadow.
We won’t finish up Professor
Chaos’ work before the Christmas break, so we’ll do a light version of it
starting after the holidays- at the same time we are starting the light work
for General Disarray- that will put Professor Chaos finishing up around the
time we are settled at our next duty station.
Once we are all settled in we’ll stop the light work and take a good
solid two weeks off to relax, adjust, and prep for the new school year.
That’s our school plan and I’m looking forward to seeing how
the school year unfolds. There are also going
to be changes to our daily schedule as well, but that is for another blog
post. After I’ve got some much needed
sleep.
Copyright(c)2012 Rayven Holmes
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