Right now we are all working together for our Native American unit study but after Christmas things will be changing a bit as I move into using more curriculum than I ever have before. The schedule described below is the schedule I will be using from January onwards, although some of it is in place right now.
B3 is a total joy to teach and she is very excited about doing school for the very first time, all by herself. She has, of course, joined in with lots of the activities I do with A5, but this year she will be getting some 1-2-1 time just me and her. And I can’t wait.
Session One: 9-930am
My older three children return from swimming at around 8.45am each morning. School will start at 9. For the first session B3 will be with me. I will be working through All About Reading Preschool, which is all about teaching the children their letters and sounds:
It is my intention to work through one letter each week with her.
For maths I am using a British reception curriculum from New Heinemann Maths:
This is a very gentle curriculum which I intend to supplement with lots of hands on maths learning. Lastly I will give her some sort of worksheet from a book I picked up from a local shop, which will help with prewriting skills:
All this will be done within the half an hour.
Session Two: 930-10am
B3 will spend her second session with C11 who has requested that she be allowed to take responsibility for some of B3’s schooling. After some discussion with her, I think we are going to work out of the free Letter of the Week curriculum. This curriculum gives many ideas linked to each letter. I will give C11 the freedom to choose whatever she wants to do each day with her little sister.
Session Three: 10-11am
This will be our morning meeting which we have had for forever. I am scheduling it a bit later to fit in better with mid morning snack time. I have found that having a snack encourages the meeting to flow with less interruptions. I will bring in the little one’s table and chairs and after their snack they will have the option of pallet painting (letter of week colouring sheets), do a dot stickers (again letter of the week) or play dough. I will probably photocopy extra letter of the weeks colouring sheets to laminate and use for play dough modelling. All these tray activities are 100% independent and fairly quiet, which will allow me to read aloud and chat with the older ones.
The last thing to do during the morning meeting is bible time. We are currently using Apologia Who is God? curriculum. I have purchased the colouring in book for B3 and she will sit and colour whilst I read aloud the Who is God? chapters:
Session Four: 11-1130am
During this time A6 will join her for half an hour of science. I am still working out the finer details but it will be one of the few things this year that I will be researching and putting together. And I am very excited! I will be writing a more detailed post shortly which will explain the ins and outs of it and help me create a little more cohesion to all my ideas!
Session Five: 1130-12 midday
By now A3 is usually ready for some down time. With this in mind I will be offering her this dvd to watch. As her main learning goals this year are to know her alphabet and all the phonical sounds of the letters, each day she will watch 30 minutes of this dvd to reinforce that which she is learning in her lessons. There are a few other dvds in the series which I intend to buy as and when they are required. If she does not want to watch the dvd she will have access to her Leap Frog phonics set:
She really enjoys playing with this and again I have chosen it to reinforce the sounds she is learning during her letter of the week. I will probably only give her access to the letters she has already learnt rather than the whole alphabet. Hopefully this will keep the toy feeling fairly new each time a new letter is added.
Lunch and Quiet Time
Once a week I intend to make both A6 and B3 an alphabet muffin tin of the letter of the week. We always eat lunch, do kitchen chores and all of us (me included) head into quiet time. This was when B3 used to nap, but she has stopped napping and this makes a nice transition time for her to curl up on her bed and relax with a book or catch up on some shut eye if she needs to. She is very good at staying on her bed, probably because she has been seeing her siblings do the same since she was a baby. I pack up a basket full of books for her which remains on her bed for her to choose whatever tickles her fancy!
Afternoon Lessons
Activities in the afternoon will change each day and will be done with A5 and sometimes the rest of the family. I will be doing a separate post on them.
Extra Curricular Activities
B3 attends Sunday school Sunday morning and a church service Sunday evenings. She goes to soft play most days as well taking swimming lessons on a Thursday and going to inflatable play at the swimming pool on a Saturday with Gary. She will be joining in with as many afternoon learning activities as she can. In addition to all this she will be allowed 1/2 hour screen time on her computer which is filled with educational games:
I am really looking forward to this new chapter in her life.