Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Not Back to School curriculum edition

I'm just about reorganized for the start of our homeschooling year and, for the month of August, am participating in My 3 Boy Barbarians Not-Back-to-School fest. Everyone around here goes back Aug. 13 and I suppose we'll officially "start" around then too.
Hayes has set her goals of wanting to learn more about horses and donkeys, cursive writing, cooking, the Bible and more history. She also wants to learn to sew. I told her I'd like to do a series this year on the body and include more art. Our tri-state homeschool group has an entire year devoted to science, which I'm really excited about. There are twice monthly experiments scheduled. What a great group of moms!
I got the 3rd grade BrainQuest book for weekly worksheets and have divided all my papers and such into subject books for Hayes' basket.
Of course, I plan to continue our weekly Outdoor Nature Hour and using the Handbook of Nature Study.
My "curriculum" is willy-nilly but I've been inspired by "The Well Trained Mind." I'm a super organized person and need that kind of structure; however, my daughter is not organized and doesn't adhere to my structure. Therein lay the joy of homeschooling.
I have promised myself we'll do more games in our homeschooling this year. After a rave review from Kris at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers, I bought the Hank the Cowdog Tornado game. We played it yesterday and it was a good time!

Here's some more of my resource books and games for math, social studies and science:

Then I nabbed this idea after reading a Scholastic Instructor magazine. Story telling cubes! Since we're working on writing, a book report is pure drudgery right now so this is a way to ensure Hayes is reading comprehensively. Cool!

7 comments:

rural momma said...

I love it, especially the Nature Hour that is awesome!! :o) Thanks for sharing.
http://www.ruralmommasramblings6.blogspot.com

Tiffany said...

I love the Hank the Cowdog game! And the story cubes are great!

Thanks for sharing the FUN stuff - my kids might just think I am a cool mom this year :)

PetiteMommy said...

I'm participating in the blog hop too! I like your idea of story cubes. I think I'll implement that. :)

Wendy said...

I LOVE the story-telling cubes!! That will be my evening project!!

Darcy @ m3b said...

No way!

That looks like so much fun! I love the idea of the cubes.

We use Prof Noggins games here, too, which are a fun way to learn, too.

Thanks for joining in on the NBTS Blog Hop!

Anonymous said...

We love Hank the Cowdog... I'll have to go check out the game!

Robin E. said...

I love the idea of playing more games for school. We're trying a bit more of that ourselves this year. Thanks for sharing on the Blog Hop.