Thursday, August 16, 2012

Curriculum: Core Subjects According to Texas

Xander took a nap just because he wanted to try sleeping in our new papasan chairs


This blog might become quite heavy on what we're doing for homeschool each day. It's a natural place for me to write down what is going on each day and it's easy to come back to when I need to access that information.

The state of Texas does not require any particular documentation. Other states are different. For my own peace of mind and preference, I want to keep logs of what we do. What Texas requires is a written curriculum for the subjects of reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics, and good citizenship. Oh, and we must be teaching these subjects in a "real" rather than a "sham" manner. Got it. I am not going to treat teaching my child as a sham. Texas does not regulate private schools and homeschools are considered private schools here. I'm pretty appalled at the above five subjects being the only required ones.

I'm not worrying about doing a certain amount of daily schooling yet, because the district's first day is not for another couple of weeks. I intend to do something along the lines of half-days four days a week all year long, with varying-length vacations when we decide to take them. We also want to do educational field trips, classes, or errands on most Fridays and Saturdays. I think it will be convenient to have a lot of the same days off as the public school district. Friends may want to play on those days, for one thing.

Reading


So our written curriculum for reading used to be The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, plus help from Letter of the Week, Dr. Seuss books, the LeapFrog Letter Factory DVD, and Bob Books. Xander knows how to read now. I will be trying to use Lexile.com to purposefully find more challenging books for him at the library as time goes on. We will be using First Language Lessons, Level 1, for grammar, and What Your First Grader Needs to Know for literature selections. (There are numerous free Core Knowledge lesson plans available for various subjects.)

I'm also going to use the book Games With Books for fun activities and set up a weekly library day when Xander can choose to borrow whichever books he wants. I contacted the Pizza Hut Book It! Program which includes homeschoolers. I remember doing that program as a child. Even though my reading was intrinsically motivated, I super-loved getting personal pan pizzas as an extra!

I can't forget about The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. We own this book and I have read blog posts about him so often that we have sort of internalized the information. We sometimes refer to his extensive reading lists. We will be doing Sustained Silent Reading together each day - and actually we already did this during the summer. In the mornings, I read to both kids whatever books I would like for them to hear that they might not choose on their own. (Think character building and classics. ;)

Spelling


For spelling, we are going to start with spelling workbooks from the Scholastic Phonics Program we were given years ago by Grandma Bonnie. I'm not sure what spelling approach will be best, but certainly starting with something we already have is a good idea. For computer time, I am also going to have him visit Starfall.com and SpellingCity.com to see if their spelling games are fun for him.

On second thought, the Scholastic spelling workbooks leave spaces that are too small for Xander to consistently write in, so we will proceed more slowly with those. The Spell Bright Level Two curriculum at Letter of the Week will be good to use as well.

We already do sight words flash cards occasionally at the table. He is at 99.9999999% accuracy reading first grade sight words.

Math


For math, based on Kim's recommendation, we are using Singapore Math textbooks and workbooks. We have plenty of board games and activities that teach math skills. Off the top of my head, we have (and play) Uno, Monopoly Jr., a tangram puzzle set, Clothespin Hearts, and Busy Bugs (which we all love despite the adult reviews at that link - thanks, Great-Grandma!). I just bought Xander marbles and will be doing math activities with those. I also might find or make some math facts flash cards. Xander and Nick love flash cards. Ooh, I just saw that PBS Kids has tangram computer games.

I almost forgot: we also have Star Wars and SonicX Leapster games that teach math concepts.

From Xander's school, we got a huge Texas Math workbook by Houghton Mifflin. I think they had already done some of this throughout the year. I know they covered the topics, but it looks like all or almost all of the workbook is uncompleted and can be used by us as well.

Good Citizenship


Good citizenship will be covered with the What Your First Grader Needs to Know material, patriotic music, a civics game we have, celebrating holidays, and attending holiday events. We will also follow Michelle Dial's program of having morning meetings that include the Pledge of Allegiance and a review of a president of the week and a state of the week. At Faubion Elementary, they also do the State Pledge of Allegiance (probably mandatory across the state). I imagine we will do that but Xander will have to teach me. :)

By the way, we use What Your Preschooler Needs to Know and the corresponding Activity Book 1 with Nick.

There are plenty of other subjects we will cover, but I'll talk about those curricula later.

Here's what we've done today so far (and this is why I'm not very worried about learning academics):
  • eaten family breakfast, during which Xander and Nick played a game of "Chicka Chicka Blank," which is similar to the verbal game "Walrus." They made it up, but Walrus is an actual conversation game made up by someone else. You can look it up on Wikipedia. ;)
  • Xander has read to Nick and talked through scenarios using some of his toy brochures
  • Nick has "read" books to himself on the couch
  • the boys reaped their reward for filling their "Super-Sibling Jar" which was initiated after a small unit we did together on how to be a great sibling. The reward was to eat the candy in the Super-Sibling Jar while playing board games of their own choosing. We have played a game of Robots. Xander is now setting up War of the Ring in his own way. I am still amazed at how much he remembers - verbatim - after hearing someone read aloud or teach. He remembers some of the real instructions, which are complex, to say the least. Nick wanted to take a look at the marbles, so we counted them and put them in a special bag in an effort to not lose any of them. (For future personal reference, we currently have 26 marbles.)
  • Xander and I have talked over reasons we like to win (to feel proud of ourselves, to try our best, to improve on what we could do before, and to win prizes)
  • Nick is "journaling" by drawing in his road trip composition book
  • later, I will let them play in the back yard with their new crazy sprinklers
Xander's "wrong chess" set-up (he knows the difference)

War of the Ring

Xander took this picture

2 comments:

  1. How exciting! I am glad you're chronicling your homeschool adventures. I will definitely be referencing in a couple of years! :) And you'll LOVE Singapore. It looks almost too-simple... but it builds incredible skills! Have fun!

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  2. Thanks, Kim! I like the Singapore textbook and workbook so far. Like you said, it appears too easy for Xander right now, but building up skills will be good for him considering he is a perfectionist. (As in, he resists and avoids doing things that he doesn't think he will do perfectly.)

    On to read your latest post...

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