I have been homeschooling for about 16 years (and more to go, my youngest is only 4) I started back when it was unknown and only the weird, crazy people did it. I have learned a lot of things.The
most important one is the fact that you don't need to buy all of those
expensive curriculum's. Making your own is extremely doable and not hard at all. In the beginning it may be a bit time consuming but
after you get the hang of if you will breeze right through it. When I started there was a limited amount of curriculum to buy. I started out with no curriculum and used a book (can't remember the name) that basically outlined what was needed in each subject for each grade. My daughter was only 4 at the time so figuring out what to teach was easy, learn to read, write and math. For reading I bought the book Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons. She did not like using the book so I just used the concept of the book and a marker board. She took off reading and I gave the book away. For math I followed the outline from the book I had that taught what was needed for each grade. Since there really is no math in Pre-K I went ahead with the First Grade math, so she learned how to add and subtract numbers. We took it slow since she was only 4. First I made sure that she understood the concept of what addition and subtraction were. We used a lot of manipulatives, and I only taught one concept at a time. So we did addition until she understood it completely and then I added subtraction when I knew she would not get confused. Once she understood I then had her memorize her facts. When she had a good understanding of both I added multiplication and division the exact same way. Since she loved to read and all we were doing at the time was math and reading I decided to buy a curriculum that was heavy on reading. I went with Sonlight which we both loved. When my son was ready to start school I went ahead and bought the Sonlight level that corresponded to him. At this time my 4th child(3rd to be homeschooled) was ready to start school. Sonlight did not offer a payment plan as they do now and it was to expensive for me to have to buy 2 new curriculum's from them. A friend had given me some of her old school books, and I used those. She had given me A Beka grade3 for my daughter and A Beka K for my two younger kids. My daughter did her work on her own, she was given what she needed to do daily and she did it. Since the other two were to young for that I had to do school with them. This was not so much a problem for me until it came time to having to correct everything. This took almost as much time as it did teaching the kids. It was just to much upkeep for me with 3 young kids. In speaking with another friend on how much we loved Sonlight because of the reading, oh how we loved the reading, she suggested the Robinson Curriculum. She was using it and loved the freedom of it. The kids basically read, write and do Math. I loved the sound of it since that is exactly what we did before anything, that is how I started. We are still using this curriculum and I love it.
Ok so enough of that and here is how you go about making a lesson plan.
So in almost every state the law for how many school days is basically the same 180 days. Take that and divide it by 5 and you get 36 weeks of school. You divide the book into 36 weekly readings by dividing the number of pages in the book with the number of weeks.
For this example I will be using the book Charlotte's Web. There are 182 pages in the book. Which gives you about 5 pages per week to read. This is not always accurate because not all the pages end in a sentence that has a period. So I go through the pages and adjust them as necessary. Five pages takes me to page 5 which does not end in a period. So I decide to end that reading on page 4 the 3rd paragraph. So in my lesson plan book I write CW pages 1-4 till "He's absolutely perfect" for day 1. For day 2 I write from page 4- till end of chapter on page 8.
I hope this was easy to understand, if you have any questions just ask.
NO Blogging But some sewing
Here are some things I made and one dress I am working on.
Hiking part 2
This hike was more strenuous. Lots of hills, that were not necessarily easy to climb.
I loved it and it felt great.
I loved it and it felt great.
Fabric
In the first picture the red is more true to the color. In the second picture the blue is more true to the real color.
I just need to finish up sewing the organza to the fashion fabric. I have most of the dress done, just the skirt pieces are left. Hopefully I will get them done today. Then sew the dress up, do one more fitting and if everything is good I can just sew up the dress. It looks as if I will be done by next week. This makes me very happy. Hopefully everything goes as planned.
Hiking
Last Sunday I went hiking with 3 of my kids.
The boys are in BoyScouts and 1 daughter and 1 of the boys are in Venturers.
We hiked up at Jockey Hollow. It's a 5 mile hike with another 5 miles this coming Saturday.
After the hike if they choose to write a report of what they learned the can get a special medal.
This is the Medal and The Boy Scout Patch.
One thing that I learned is that one winter during the Revolutionary war, it got so cold the all the water in this area froze.
It was so cold that the soldiers were able to pull a 2 ton canon over the hudson river. They pulled it from NYC(Battery Park) to Staten Island.
This means that they walked over where The Statue Of Liberty Currently stands.
Saying that it was cold is an understatement. Miss Liberty stands where the Atlantic Ocean and The Hudson River meet. Can you imagine being able to walk, with 2 elephants, over this, nope neither can I.
Vogue 8648
I had plans on making The Couture Dress for my birthday and life interrupted so I said OK, I will make it as my Easter dress well life interrupted again. I would say I will make it for Mothers Day but I have another dress planned for that day( I don't have the pattern in front of me and of course I don't remember the name). I am still currently working on the couture dress, its Vogue 8648.
For this dress I am using a deep red Shantung fabric, with a nice blue lining. My muslin fitting went well. I need to add alittle to my hip area but besides that, the fit is perfect. For the interlining I am using Organza.
I am using Susan's class over at Craftsy to make the dress..and I am learning so much. I am making the one on the bottom right hand corner.
Hopefully I can be done some time in the next two weeks. I will upload pics of my fabric soon.
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