Highhill Homeschool: planning

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Classroom Organization

This is the last of the series of link-ups for educators to share ideas and lesson plans for the upcoming school year. This week's topic is organization.

There are so many ways to organize school work. Last year our main tool was a spreadsheet. The first few columns listed the school week, date and day. Across the top each subject was listed in a separate column. Book chapters to read, links to videos to watch, pages or math sections to do, writing assignments to complete and so on were listed in each cell of the spreadsheet.

Once school started, each child had a list of activities. Many of the tasks the kids could do on their own which made the school day run fairly smoothly. They could begin before I even woke up. When they were finished with a task they highlighted the cell.

During the day I spent about an hour with each child working one-on-one going through their specific work. Typically this involved activities such as reading writing they had written, reading to them or listening to them read, helping with math problems, and giving a spelling lessons.

It took a few hours for me to fill in one subject column before the school year began and each child had their own tab. In addition, I revised the schedule a few times throughout the school year. Having a daughter in-and-out of the hospital going through Leukemia treatment made this type of organization essential.

This year I'm planning to have a more relaxed approach. I recently wrote about our morning, afternoon and evening plans. Here's the link.
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Now it's your turn. Please share your plans for organization.

Link-Up Rules

Link-up to your post URL
Include a link back to this page in your post – You can grab the button below
Check out what other educators have planned for music

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This post is linked to:
Creations by Kara

Lesson Planning - Reading

I'm having so much fun with this series and am enjoying reading the linked posts each week. To see the past subjects please visit our Resources Page.

Are your kids learning to read or enjoying good books? This is the first year I have had three capable readers.

Here are my top three Learning to Read resources.
Leap Frog Videos
Starfall
Active Phonics Game

After the kids learned their letters, sounds and a few basic words they read progressively more difficult books to me daily. Before long they were reading.

Last year we spent about an hour reading every day. Sometimes I read to the kids, sometimes they read to me, sometimes they read to each other and some days they did silent reading.

Here are some of the books I'm hoping to read with the kids this year.

First Grade Daughter
50 Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
Paddle to the Sea by Hollings C Hollings
Jataka Tales

Fifth Grade Son
The Jungle Book
Rocks, Rivers and Earth
Story of the World Volume 2 - Middle Ages
Jataka Tales
Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt

Seventh Grade Daughter
Indian Folk and Fairy Tales
Kim
Cat of Bubastes

What books are you planning to read this year?

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This post is linked to:
Read Explore Learn
123 Homeschool 4 Me

Lesson Planning - Foreign Language

Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Parlez-vous francais? Hable usted espanol? This week's planning series topic is foreign language.

Learning a foreign language has always been a goal of mine. I know a lot about French and Spanish, but have never had much of an opportunity to speak them on a consistent basis. But now, since we live in Germany I have lots of opportunities to practice German. Although I wouldn't describe myself as fluent I can converse well with native speakers.

Since learning language has always been interesting to me I've used many resources. Here are my recommendations.
Duolingo - It's brand new and free on the internet. Best for ages eleven and up.
Rosetta Stone - Very natural way to learn language. Best for ages nine and up.
Muzzy - Entertaining children's cartoon all in target language. Episodes begin with easy language and increase in difficulty. Some of the cartoons are disturbing to young or sensitive kids. Best for ages eight and up.
Salsa Spanish - Free entertaining children's cartoons in Spanish only.
Music and cartoons created for children who speak the target language are great tools for kids trying to learn those languages. I've listed some resources for Spanish and German in these two blog posts: Language Learning - German and Spanish and Educational Videos.

This year the kids will continue to study German and Spanish. In addition, my daughter is working on French and my son on Chinese. It sounds like a lot, but they work in 10-15 minute sessions two to three times per week per language. So they spend a maximum of 2.5 hours on language learning per week.

I'm interest to see how you are studying language and the resources you have found.

Lesson Planning - Geography

How do you study geography?

In the past we have done many different geography activities, but don't usually cover it as a separate subject. Rather it is discussed in context with other subjects. When studying history typically one week is set aside to focus on the map for the region we are covering. If we are reading about an artist or composer we will use the map to locate his/her town and country.

That being said, I have found a few resources that work great when covering geography separately. We love A Child's geography of the World. It is an older book but written in story format, and very entertaining. Unfortunately since it's out of print it can be difficult to obtain. Seterra is an on-line geography quiz game that's free to download. Mozart, The Wonder Boy is a good book to read while studying European geography and Mozart.

This year we will cover geography in conjunction with our other subjects. We are planning to cover Earth Science this year and I expect to cover a lot of geography. Beginning with the continents and oceans, we should locate different habitats, the Pacific Ring of Fire, and unique geological formations such as the Grand Canyon and the Great Rift Valley.

What are your plans for geography?

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This post is linked to:
Manic Monday
It's Playtime
Weekly Kids Co-op
Hip Homeschool Hop

Lesson Planning - Art and Handicrafts

This series of link-ups is for educators to share ideas and lesson plans for the upcoming school year. This week's topic is art and handicrafts. To see the rest of the schedule please visit our Resources Page.

Although art and handicrafts are related, we cover them separately. In the past we have followed both Ambleside Online's Picture Study and the Come Look With Me series of books to study famous works of art. When using the Come Look With Me series we go through the books very slowly covering one picture every two weeks. We just read about the painting and answer the questions in the book. Then we set the picture as the desktop background on the computer. If there is a Mike Venezia book on the artist we read the book.

This year I plan to use the Discovering Great Artists projects in conjunction with Mike Venezia's series of Getting To Know The World's Best Artists. If all goes well we will read one book and do a project every two weeks.

Knitting, sewing, spinning, and needle felting seem to be the favorite handicrafts in our house. In the past I haven't really taught handicrafts during school time, but rather helped with projects the kids are interested in.

This year will be different. I plan to teach photography. My photographer friend's daughter used to teach my daughter to play the piano. During lessons I would help her with knitting projects and she taught me about photography. Not long after our chats, much of the conversations would show up on her blog in the form of weekend photography tips.

Weekend Photography Tips
Starting with what You've Got - Jan 21, 2012
Scene Modes - Jan 29, 2012
Zoom and Lens Distortion - Feb 4, 2012
Composition - Feb 18, 2012
Fill Flash - Feb 25, 2012
Flash Diffusers - March 4, 2012
Lens and Focal Lengths - March 11, 2012
Getting the Color Right - March 25, 2012
Depth of Field App - April 7, 2012
Picmonkey and Point and Shoots - April 21, 2012
How to Shoot in Manual - May 5, 2012
Processing Pitfalls - May 12, 2012
iPhoto - June 2, 2012
All Those Old Photos - June 23, 2012
Cropping and Printing - July 2, 2012

I learned a lot from her and can see improvements in the photos I have taken since our talks. This year I plan to pass on my limited knowledge to my kids and hopefully spark a new interest.

How do you teach art and handicrafts?

This post is linked to:
Homeschooling Hearts and Minds

Lesson Planning Link-up- Music

For the past several years we have followed the Ambleside Online Composer Study as a large part of our music curriculum. I purchased the songs from the list via iTunes and downloaded them to my iPod. We played the songs while eating meals. The kids learned to recognize a lot of music this way.

The Ambleside Music curriculum focuses on classical music, English language folk tunes and hymns. While I have been very satisfied with the method and content, I would like to expose them to a greater variety of genres.

This year I'm going to loosely follow the Ambleside Composer Study. I have a ton of music in my iTunes account, but don't always have the exact songs on the list. We will listen to the classical music of the composers and exact songs if we have them. When we don't have the music I will substitute other songs by the same composers, Jazz music, bluegrass, and perhaps some Elvis, Michael Jackson or Beatles tunes.

In addition to music appreciation, the kids are learning to play the piano. I have basic knowledge so teach them until they are at level 3 and then send them off to an instructor with more knowledge. My eleven year old is also playing the violin. I told her she could pick another instrument to play when she turned eleven. She chose the harp....... Expensive, big and beautiful.......... I think it would be a wonderful instrument for her to learn, but thought it would be easier to start with something more common. Her back-up was the violin which she loves.

This is a series of link-ups for educators to share ideas and lesson plans for the upcoming school year.

Here's the Rest of the Schedule
May 16 - Lessons Learned from 2012/13
July 11 - Writing
July 18 - Math
July 25 - Science
August 1 - History
August 8 - Music
August 15 - Art
August 22 - Handicrafts
August 29 - Geography
September 5 - Foreign Language
September 12 - Reading
September 19 - Organizing your Classroom/Schedule

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Now it's your turn. Please share your plans for music.

Link-Up Rules

Link-up to your post URL
Include a link back to this page in your post – You can grab the button below
Check out what other educators have planned for music

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This post is linked to:
Montessori Monday

Lesson Planning - History

Over the past two years we have studied several ancient European and Asian peoples including;

Celts
Vikings
Scythians
Chinese
Greeks
Mesopotamians
- Sumarians
- Assyrians
- Hittites
- Babylonians
- Marsh Arabs
- Persians
Romans

Our studies have been completed with a few other families and I'm not sure if we will continue with the co-op or not. If the co-op continues I plan to participate which could change my topics significantly. But that's alright........ because I'm flexible. Here are my plans as of today.

This year we plan to continue watching documentaries, reading and doing projects while we study India and Egypt. That's as far as I've gotten. After India and Egypt I'm not sure if we will jump into the middle ages, study Russia, Japan and Korea or do something different.

How do you plan to study history this year? Have you selected resources? Please grab a button and link-up and be sure to visit over the next few weeks for more lesson planning link-ups.

May 16 - Lessons Learned from 2012/13
July 11 - Writing
July 18 - Math
July 25 - Science
August 1 - History
August 8 - Music
August 15 - Art
August 22 - Handicrafts
August 29 - Geography
September 5 - Foreign Language
September 12 - Reading
September 19 - Organizing your Classroom/Schedule

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Lesson Planning - Science Curriculum

Last year for science we did an extensive cell and the human body study. In fact, I still have human body posts that will last until January. In the mean time I've been planning for this year's science study. Earth Science!

I'm so excited for this topic. All summer I have been gathering resources and putting together an outline of topics. Between rocks and minerals, earth layers, erosion, climates, magnetic field, volcanoes and tectonic plates there is so much to cover. I have tons of videos bookmarked and have been browsing library books. Here's a small preview of some of the activities I plan to do.

Last week bloggers shared their plans for math and the week before it was writing. There are many more subjects coming up and I'd love to see how you teach them. Here's the Schedule.

What are your plans for science?

Link-Up Rules

Link-up to your post URL
Include a link back to this page in your post – You can grab the button below
Check out what other educators have planned for science and come back next week to link-up your history posts

Lesson Planning Link-up - Math Curriculum

This is a series of link-ups for educators to share ideas and lesson plans for the upcoming school year. This week's topic is math. If you haven't linked up yet, there's still time to link-up to last week's writing lesson planning. Here's the rest of the schedule.

Games, activities, Life of Fred, Math-U-See, and a few simple workbooks describe our approach to math. All children learn differently and some programs just seem to work best with certain kids.

My eleven year old daughter thrives with the straight forward approach of Math-U-See, while Life of Fred makes my nine year old son think. We used these programs last year and although we will continue with them again this year I plan to play a lot more games with my son and use the curriculum much less.

My six year old like many young children, learns about adding, subtracting, money, and time just by doing normal kid activities such as helping to cook meals, anticipating birthdays and purchasing her own stuffed animals. This year we will focus on adding and subtracting by playing Black Jack 21 and Adding War and skip-counting by playing Speed! Most mornings I plan to play a game or do a math activity with her and my son together, and once or twice per week work from Life of Fred with my son. In the future my six year old may follow Math-U-See, Life of Fred or some other math curriculum. For the mean time she can just play with math to learn.

Now it's your turn. Please put a link back to Highhill Education in your post and share your plans for math.

This post is linked to:
Family Fun Friday
Cheerios and Lattes
123 Homeschool for Me
Sun Scholars

Lesson Planning Link-up- Writing Curriculum

Welcome back to the planning series for the upcoming school year. Back in May I hosted a lessons learned link-up where bloggers shared their highlights of school year. Now it's time to begin the subject-based planning portion of the series. This week's topic is writing.

Have you figured out how you will teach writing next year? Writing was a bit of a struggle for us in the past, but last year I discovered The Writer's Jungle and I intend to use it again this year. It is not a writing curriculum, but rather a writing philosophy intended to create an enjoyment of writing. Communicating thoughts and ideas in a logical descriptive way are the primary goals. Grammar, spelling and punctuation are seen as important, but covered separately or as the very last step in a polished writing assignment.

Last year I had my kids write about three times per week. For the most part I selected the topics for the two older kids to write about. Occasionally I had them choose one of their free writes to polish. Following the principles described in The Writer's Jungle I tried to help them create interesting beginnings, add detail to their papers and organize the information in a logical manner. Some of their papers were published on their blogs (For A Kid by a Kid and Jeenland95) and a few were entered into a writing contest.

This year I plan to follow the same process for improving writing, but I want the topics to be much more kid directed. My goal is for them to be proficient writers. I plan to spend 30-60 minutes each morning focused on writing. Whether they choose to create a Poetry Journal, Nature Notebook, Stamp Collecting album, write short stories, novels, or letters to famous people they are writing. I will encourage them to have some variety of topics and require that a small portion of their material is polished. If they are stuck I will give them ideas, but I hope this will be a year of writing inspiration and not struggles.

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Now it's your turn. Please share your writing plans.

Link-up to your post URL
Include a link back to this page in your post – You can grab the button below

Be sure to visit next week to share your plans for Math.

This post is linked to:
Real-Life Homeschooling

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Lesson Planning - Lessons Learned

Lesson Planning can be a fun and time consuming task for educators. Welcome to Lessons Learned; the first link-up in this planning series. Each year I change things up a bit and try some new ideas in our classroom. Some work and some don't. Here are three things that worked well this year.

Wizard of Oz - Did you know there are over 15 Wizard of Oz stories. We downloaded them from Librivox to the iPad and the kids listened to them all. They sparked imagination, inspired creativity and greatly increased my children's vocabulary.

We used Google Sketch-up and Scratch to develop engineering skills. The kids learned a lot and were able to work very independently with the projects.

Our Cell Science Unit Study has been an awesome learning experience. The hands-on projects have made science come to life and easy to understand.

Before summer arrives I would love to hear about the successes in your class room. Just grab the button below and link-up.

The week after the 4th of July, each Thursday there will be link-ups for sharing upcoming lesson plans. I would love to hear about new curriculum, resources and method ideas. Here's the Schedule. Please come back in a few weeks to share your subject-based plans for next year.

Please share this link with friends and other bloggers. The more people we have link-up, the easier it should be for us to find resources. Sometimes it's easy, but some subjects seem to be more of a challenge. Science and writing come to my mind. I would love for you to join me on this helpful planning series.

This post is linked to:
Show and Share
Five for Friday
TGIF Linky
The Chicken Chick

Lesson Planning - Introduction

How was your school year? Is it done yet? Did you try anything new? What worked well? Are you ready for next year? - I'm not! We're not even done with this year......... but I'm starting to think about it a little.

I'm beginning a blog hop series to help us all plan for next year. Next Thursday will be a lessons learned link-up. Favorite resources, organization tips, motivation help or any post on ways that have helped school run more smoothly are welcome. Please jot down your lessons learned and then visit next Thursday to link-up.

After that there will be a two month break and then beginning after the 4th of July I will begin a weekly series of subject-based planning posts with a linky so you can all join in.

Here's the Schedule
May 16 - Lessons Learned - Top Three Things That Worked
July 11 - Writing
July 18 - Math
July 25 - Science
August 1 - History
August 8 - Music
August 15 - Art & Handicrafts
August 22 - Geography
August 29 - Foreign Language
September 5 - Reading
September 12 - Organization your Classroom/Schedule

To participate start thinking and writing about your upcoming school year plans, place a link to Highhill Education in your post, then visit each Thursday to link-up your ideas.

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As this gets going I will place links to this series on my Resource Page so it is easy to find.

Pages

Classroom Organization

Lesson Planning - Reading

Lesson Planning - Foreign Language

Lesson Planning - Geography

Lesson Planning - Art and Handicrafts

Lesson Planning Link-up- Music

Lesson Planning - History

Lesson Planning - Science Curriculum

Lesson Planning Link-up - Math Curriculum

Lesson Planning Link-up- Writing Curriculum

Lesson Planning - Lessons Learned

Lesson Planning - Introduction

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