Saturday, July 4, 2015

Planning Spanish

As I wrote yesterday, my big focus for this year is Spanish.  I speak at a high intermediate level but have had great difficulty adding Spanish effectively into our homeschool and home, particularly with Bug.  

One thing I want to introduce into our homeschool this year is Spanish skits and short plays.  I am going to try and get my boys to memorize several throughout the year and perform them for their dad (or grandparents, etc).  I think this will be a good way to get them more comfortable speaking in sentences. 

I have some books of short plays by Teacher Created Materials that I hope to use, but they are a little bit long and complicated to start out with.  They are also not really designed for kids learning Spanish; they are intended as Spanish readers for Spanish speaking kids.  They look like a lot of fun though--I am just worried about overwhelming Bug, who is only 7 and can be insecure about speaking Spanish. 

I was delighted to find some great skits at Teachers pay Teachers.  I spent $18 to download 18.  I was nervous about spending that much without seeing any of the skits, but the bundle had really good reviews, and I am very pleased with them.  I think they will be a lot of fun and will surely be enough material for the semester. 

My daily plan will look like this (to be done 3 days a week):

1)  We will sing 3 Spanish songs, rotating songs each month. 
2)  I will read them a short Spanish book (on toddler level).
3) We will do a quick calendar time on the dry erase board. 
4)  We will work with vocabulary cards, rotating themes each month. 
5)  We will practice some Spanish questions, from my Risas and Sonrisas curriculum. 
6)  Journaling (they will illustrate a Spanish sentence in a journal). 
7)  We will work on a skit. 

On Friday we will skip everything but the singing, book, and skit and play a game.  We may possibly also watch a video in Spanish.  

I am not sure if this will be too much, but I want to spend at least an hour on Spanish, and most of the things won't take too long.  If it is too much, I will adjust as needed. 

In addition, we will be listening to Spanish songs in the car, which is something we have always done regularly in the past. 

All of this Spanish during the school day should get me in "Spanish mode" and speaking more to them during our daily life. 

I am really hopeful that this works out.  I'll try and write at the end of the semester about how it went. 

Literature for 2nd and 6th Grade

Most of our reading has been informal.  We read to both boys when they were younger, and now they read to themselves.  This year, however, I'd like to do a little more with them. 

For Bee, I will be assigning him one book a month.  I thought of having him choose from a list of books, but he tends to get overwhelmed by too many choices, so I thought it better just to pick for him.  I have tried to choose books that I think he will really enjoy and that are also a little different from his usual choices. 

I will have him read about a chapter a day until he finishes the book each month, depending on the length of the chapters.  After he finishes, I plan to take him to a coffee shop to get him a treat on a weekend, and bring a list of book discussion questions, like having our own little book club.  I am drawing the discussion questions from the web in advance.  He will also have a writing assignment each month based on the book he has read.  

Here is his list:
  • August: The Giver
  • September: Harriet the Spy
  • October: Hatchet
  • November: Cheaper by the Dozen
  • December: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

These are all books that I read as a child, with the exception of The Giver, which will be new to me.  I hope this will be a fun experience for both of us.

For Bug, I went to the Five in a Row site and chose most of the books from their unit on longer picture books.  I'm not using the curriculum, but it was a good start for getting ideas on good books to read out loud.  I'll be choosing some others in addition. I'll try and make an update at the end of the semester about how it all went. 

Finally, I'd like to read them a poem a week, maybe on Fridays. 

Test Results

I gave my boys the Iowa Test of Basic Skills back in April.  This was our first time to use that particular test, and I am thrilled to report that they both scored in the 99th percentile overall.  I know that tests are limited in what they can tell about a person, but it was still a huge confidence booster for me.  I let them know how well they did, and they were happy about it too. 

What is the point of this blog entry?  Shameless bragging.  That is all. 

Gearing up for the School Year

So, this is going to be my SIXTH year of homeschooling.  I'm surprised about how excited I am about this year.  I think we have a really nice and solid academic plan that is not going to overwhelm me (or Bee or Bug).  I'm thrilled about what we are going to be doing together at home, and I'm excited about the classes they are going to be taking. 

Baby Girl was born, and we are all madly in love with her.  I think I'm going to call her Dot on the blog.  It's going to be interesting homeschooling next year with a baby.  Because of that, I'm really focusing on my planning.  I know I'm not going to have much time at all during the school year to plan. 

It hurts my heart to think about how fast Bee is growing up, going into the sixth grade!  At the same time, I'm really proud of him.  I copied his finished writing assignments that he completed last year with his tutor from WriteGuide into a file, so that I can save them.  They are so precious and capture his unique perspective.

I am actually thinking about doing writing with him this year, now that he has got the hang of completing writing assignments, and I have a better idea of what to expect and how to work with him.   I will be using a book from which to select many of the assignments.  His WriteGuide tutor is no longer working there, so this is a good time for us to take a break.  I'm sure we'll use WG again at some point though, and I am incredibly grateful for his time with WG. 

I have made a flexible morning schedule made that includes Spanish, Math, Writing, and Spelling 4 days a week.  Science will be done mostly through outside classes, and history will get done on certain afternoons.  I don't teach "Reading" formally, but they read on their own each day, and Bee will have some assigned reading this year, and I'll be reading out loud some longer picture books to Bug (and hopefully Bee will join us too). 

The main thing I am needing to do is make lesson plans for Spanish for several weeks. Spanish is going to be our number one priority for a while, but I've never found a curriculum I could follow.  Bee will continue his wonderful lessons at Homeschool Spanish Academy, which I cannot recommend highly enough, but if we could spend more time on Spanish as a family, he would learn even more. 

I have a lot of copies to make, from expensive books that are intended to be reproducible.  I'd like to get all of that done this summer because I never feel like doing it on the weekends during the school year.  

I am planning for August through November.  December will be much more relaxed.  I plan to do mostly Spanish and crafts, and other subjects only as needed.  And, hopefully, find some time to plan the rest of the year.