Planning Week 1 Day 2

Tuesday



Science

Exploring Space-Read pages 28-30 in I Wonder Why Stars Twinkle

Read Sputnik The First Satellite

Locate Russia on the map



Book Basket

Space Stations

Ultimate Field Trip

Exploring Space with an Astronaut



Copywork/Grammar Underline the common nouns, cirlce the proper nouns

Sputnik was a satellite. A satellite is an object that orbits Earth or another object in space



Reading

Princess-Astronaut Living in space

Speed Racer- Me And My Place In Space



Math

Lesson 151 front and first 3 rows of back. Miquon Math

Read Bats on Parade and look at a couple of riddles from The Grapes of Math



Spelling

Princess-Step 15 in All About Spelling. Review rule and practice writing more words

Speed Racer-Review words from I Am Sam books

Planning

I've decided to put together my lesson plans for this week on my blog so I'll have something concrete to look at to keep us on track. We've been having trouble with getting schoolwork done. I really need to make this a priority and what better place to put my plans than my blog!?



We've started our unit on Native American Indians. We are using History Pockets Native Americans and North American Indians as our spines. The first tribe we covered were the Inuits. We didn't get as far as I would have like last week so we are going to continue learning about the Inuits this week as well. I've gotten a lot of books from the library that I need to divid up into read alouds, independent reading, and book basket selections.



Book Basket



What Do We Know About The Inuit?

Eskimos The Inuit of the Arctic

Ice Bear and Little Fox

Go Home, River





Independent Reading



Whale Snow

The Polar Bear Son



Read Aloud



Inunguak The Little Greenlander

Building an Igloo

Amorak

The Gift of the Inuksuk



Monday


History
Cut out dictionary cards and picutres from History Pockets. Copy the definitions for each word. Have Princess read the information from History Pockets out loud. Talk about the folllowing

• The difference between Inuit and Eskimo (WDWKA The Inuit page 9)
• The mean of Legends and Myths Read Amorak, and then start Inunguak The Little GreenLander

Copywork & Grammar- underline the common nouns, circle the proper nouns.

The word Inuit means 'people' or 'human beings' and is the name the Inuit give themselves.

Math

Lesson 150 R&S math 2 front and back. Miquon Math

Spelling

Princess-Step 15 /er/ Tiles

Speed Racer-Spelling from I Am Sam book 44

Reading/Phonics

Princess- Read Whale Snow and give narration

Speed Racer-Read book 44

This is my plan for Monday. Since this post is becoming very long, and there is no way I'm going to be able to finish it all in one sitting, I have decided to split this post up. I will post my plans for Tuesday either later or tomorrow.

The Lies Homeschooling Moms Believe

"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is EASY and My burden is LIGHT" (Mathew 11:29-30

I've had the last part of this scripture on my sidebar for quite some time now. The Lord showed it to me again yesterday while I was preparing for my bible study. I've been having a lot of doubts lately about homeschooling and my ability to teach my children. I feel like Satan has taken hold of me with all the lies that he has been telling me. We are reading "Lies Homeschooling Mom's Believe" by Todd Wilson. It has really opened up my ears to all the lies I've been believing. I've become so overwhelmed with trying to find the perfect curriculum, and perfect method of homeschooling that it has taken all the joy out of my life. It has consumed me night and day. It has weighed me down and I've found myself slipping into depression. I'm learning to search out the truth and not believe the lies, however truthful they may seem. I know God will get us through this, and I am leaning heavily on him for his wisdom.

Feeling Overwhelmed

I've been so overwhelmed lately that the little bit of joy I had left in life has been sucked right out of me. I feel like I never getting anything accomplished with my dc where school is concerned. There are a lot of moments throughout the day when I just think they would be better off back in school. I think to myself, what are they learning here at home? The only thing that gets done a regular basis is math and that hasn't been happening much lately either. I have a very demanding 4 year old and 1 year old, as sweet as they are as soon as I sit down to do something with the older two something happends to upset Sweetie Pie and then I find myself having to scream the lesson to the older two so the can hear me above her cries. I find myself wanting to push on even with her crying because I'm afraid if I don't we will never get back to it. I just don't feel like I have ever been able to get it together enough to be a good mom and teacher to my dc. No, I really don't want to send them back to school but I can't figure out how to get past this. I'm afraid that they are falling further and further behind and there is nothing I can do to stop it. I feel myself falling into a depression from being overwhelmed with the kids and because of some other things that are going on in my life right now. I sometimes think we should just take a break from 'trying to homeschool' but I've been doing that on and off since we started and nothing has changed. I just don't know what to do.

Decisions about Math

Trying to decide which way to go with math has been driving me crazy! I love the drill that my dc are getting with Rod & Staff. We are almost done with second grade math and we soon be moving on to multiplication. I think my dc may have trouble with this concept, although I could be completely wrong, so I won't a program that explains the why's behind math. I don't believe that Rod & Staff does this. So I started asking around on the WTM forum. Two of the first that I thought of were Math-U-See, and Bob Jones University Press. I don't know a lot about BJU but it was brought to my attention at the WTM forum so I thought I would look into it further. After doing a little research I'm not so sure it's for us. The price for one doesn't help, the TM is expensive but as I've come to find out most of the math programs I'm looking at aren't too cheap. I've never been crazy about Math-U-See. We did Miqoun math for awhile and my dc just never seemed to understand the rods. MUS uses rods as well so I figure why even go down that road.

Then there was a great thread about delaying formal math instruction. An article was quoted from Trivium Pursuit about how they waited until there dc were 10 to start formal, workbooky math. They still taught there dc math but not with a traditional program. And that got me thinking even further. Could we do this? Could we just use everyday life for math and not worry about a workbook? I don't know if I could just wing it so I started looking into math curriculums that might be similar. Math on the Level is one, but again way to expensive. Then there is Making Math Meaningful. Looks okay, but then I started reading that there were a few mistakes in it and I don't want to pay for something that has mistakes. Well, what about Moving with Math? Looks good, but then I started reading some reviews that said you have to do a lot of page turning in it during each lesson. Meaning you have to jump from book to book for one lessons. Somebody mentioned Systematic Mathematics, this one is doesn't cost that much and has DVD's that the kids would watch. I viewed a sample and wasn't too impressed with it but at the price I need to look into this further.

There is just so much out there and I am very overwhelmed trying to weed through everything and figure out what would be the best for me and my family. If I don't lose my mind over this it will be a miracle!