Planning for next year (2017-2018)

I have started planning for next year.  We'll continue to use MA and my oldest K who is 6 will be doing 1st grade, which is Level 1B in MA.  For religion, we'll be covering the new testament both using the New Catholic Picture Bible by Rev. Laurence G..Lovasik  as well as A Life of Our Lord for Children which is a narrative that also explains a lot of helpful background information on the gospels. We started reading it this year and should hopefully finish next year. We will also read saint stories from  Lives of the Saints an Illustrated History for Children by Bart Tesoriero  or Saints for Young Readers for Every Day Volumes One and Twoby Pauline Kids. We'll be doing Faith and Life 1: Our Heavenly Father for catechism. A friend told me about Tiny Thomists which is emailed every two weeks and we'll split each one over those two weeks. They also send out an explanation of the Sunday Gospel and we'll include that as well. Religion will be done daily with Bible reading twice a week and A Life of Our Lord for Children, catechism, saints and Tiny Thomists will each be done once a week. During Advent, we'll read some Tomie DePaola books and watch Holy Heroes Advent Adventure. During Lent, we'll cover the Stations of the Cross using the book and CD from Holy Heroes and watching Holy Heroes Lenten Adventure. My 4 year old E and I will be reading Chats with God's Little Ones.

K will continue to use Logic of English for phonics and reading. She is currently working on Level C and she'll finish Level C and start Level D next year. Logic of English covers phonics, reading, spelling and some aspects of English mechanics as well as copywork for handwriting (Levels A and B taught the letters in lowercase and uppercase). However, I plan to use Spelling U See Jack and Jill as well for spelling. We started English Lessons through Literature Level 1 this year doing a lesson broken up over a week and we'll continue this next year. ELTL covers literature, poetry, fables and picture study. I will add at least one additional poem each week, probably either from A Child's Garden of Verses or Now We Are Six. We will read fairy tales and American tall tales. We'll probably read Winnie the Pooh although I haven't decided what other literature we'll read next year. Lighted Lanterns looks like a interesting copywork, etc. resource but they are temporarily unavailable and I don't know when they'll be available again. We would use Pre-Level if it becomes available. MA has a picture book list for a Prep PK that I plan to use with E once a week. E isn't ready yet for LOE lessons yet, but I'll continue to introduce her to phonogram sounds and also read LOE's A-Z sounds book Doodling Dragons more frequently. E is left handed so I want to make sure I teach her properly.

We will continue to use MEP for math. K is currently doing Year 1 and we'll finish that and start Year 2. We will also continue with Life of Fred Apples and do Butterflies if we finish Apples. We may use something for additional addition and subtraction practice. E will do games and activities to practice counting, one to one correspondence and number recognition. I have found quite a few activities at Measured Mom to use for her.

We use Connecting with History for our history studies. We will continue with both American history with Volume 4A and world history with Volume 1 which covers ancient history. In American history, we will be starting with Unit 5 covering the beginning of the nation and the writing of the Constitution. For ancient history, we'll start with Unit 7 covering the divided kingdom (of Israel). When we finish Volume 1, we'll start Volume 2 which begins with the birth of Christ. We are incorporating The Story of Civilization Volume 1 and hopefully they will release Volume 2 before we need it.

Geography and earth studies focuses on family geography and rivers and oceans. Family geography will cover genealogy with My Family Tree Workbook. My mother in law is a genealogist so we'll get her help. We'll also read about areas our ancestors came from such as Ireland and Germany. I also plan to have her do a Child's Own History chart. We'll work from our town to the whole planet doing Expanding Horizons. The Rivers and Oceans study includes water cycle and we'll also read about pond environments and animals using Among the Pond People and One Small Square: Pond.

For nature study/science reading, we'll read Burgess Animal book and Pagoo. We will try to do a nature walk at least once a week.

We have been using Song School Latin 1 and we'll continue that and start Song School Latin 2 when we finish. We might start a modern foreign language but I don't know if we'll do Spanish or French or what resources we'll use.

For music appreciation, we'll start with The Story of the Orchestra. I need to decide the two hymns and folk songs we'll learn for each term after I look at the Latin selections for Classically Catholic Memory for our co-op next year. 

In addition to the picture study in ELTL, we'll probably use the art cards from Memoria Press either the Kindergarten or 1st grade set.  I'm probably going to use ARTistic Pursuits, Early Elementary K-3 Book One with both K and E.

We do our Classically Catholic Memory co-op twice a month and will continue next year. K will be doing CCM while E will be doing Catholic Icing Preschool curriculum in the older preschool class. S who is my youngest and will turn 2 in the fall will be starting in the younger preschool class which will do some aspects of Catholic Icing.

For E, I am considering using Little Saints curriculum. I need to research more to see what I think of it. It would be nice to have something prepared for E, although I generally am pretty eclectic in my curriculum choices and I modify curriculum to better fit our needs.