Because Friday, Mommy (thats me!) had to make....drumroll please...."THE PLAN!"
Otherwise know as my "First Annual Homeschool Planning Day!"
So after breakfast, Hubby loaded up the subjects of our experiment in parenting and took them to Hands On Museum for the morning.
As soon as the garage door closed, I started cleaning out the two large closet shelves I have allotted for craft things and school books. We had accumulated quite a lot of junk...dried up acrylic paints, markers with no lids, lids with no markers, and crayons crayons crayons crayons....
Let me dwell on the Crayola phenomenon for a moment! What happened to the 8 basic colors? Or even the jumbo box (remember, it used to have a sharpener in the back?!) Now they make Glitter crayons. Neon crayons. Skin Tone crayons and no I am not joking.
Anyway, I cleaned out the junk, segragated dry erase markers, regular markers, colored pencils, and crayons into separate (but equal!) pencil boxes. I culled through the coloring books and pitched the ones in which someone had scribbled on every page. I separated the coloring books from the preschool workbooks that Abby can use later....I put things in stacks and baskets and piles...you get the picture. It was extremely cathartic.
Then I moved on to the homeschool cart (pictured below!) and went through the same process. Flash cards went back into envelopes, math manipulatives put back into baskets, old phonics workbooks thrown out, etc. I love this cart because I can fit a lot into it, and since it has wheels I just roll the whole thing into the kitchen when its time for lessons!
So once all that was done, I could get down to planning the plan. I spread Bella's curriculum out all around me on the floor and stared at it for a long time, resisting the urge to frantically call the registrars office at ETSU and beg them to enroll me in some primary education classes. Then I rolled up my sleeves, poured more coffee, and dug in.
As I've stated in previous posts, I have chosen A Beka for Bella's curriculum this year. Her Kindergarten kiy provides Math and Phonics (which also encompasses handwriting). I have started familiarizing myself with the layout of the teachers manuals. They looked a bit daunting at first glance, but I think by paring down what I really want with a highlighter they will work really well, especially as I get more familiar with them. I also purchased A Beka's Art Projects book, although we will supplement this a LOT with our own crafts. Hey, its Kindergarten!
For our Bible lessons, I purchased the Kindergarten curriculum from Positive Action Bible Curriculum. I really like this! It is set up to be used 3, 4, or 5 days a week as you choose. There are songs and memory verses that correspond to the lossons, and the child's workbook has coloring, drawing, matching activites with each lesson to keep them engaged.
As far as things like Science and History, for now we will cover these things sporadically or as we are interested in them by checking out books at the library. One of my big goals for kindergarten is read, read read!
After looking through curriculum for a while, I set out for the really fun part of the day: shopping! I purchased several craft supplies at Michaels, then got 2 large dry erase boards- one for here and one to keep at my moms for the days she does lessons with Bella. I also picked up some pretty sparkly pencils to give Bella on her first day of school
After Planning Day was completed, I can say with confidence that I fell almost, barely, hopefully ready to begin teaching Bella kindergarten!
