2020/2021 Plans!

Well summer is rapidly drawing to a close and school time is upon us again! I have mixed feelings about this school year - last year I felt nothing but excitement but this year with E joining the family as well as trying to keep C busy I'm going to be very much on my toes. J will be in 1st grade, M will be doing most of that work with him but also some scaled-back Kindergarten work, C is 2.5 so he will be working on counting, letter recognition, colors and play and E is 9 months so he'll be working hard on his job as resident cutie.

Covid also has me a bit bummed because all of our "fun" activities and extracurricular activities are on hold. I'm especially going to miss our co-op (which decided not to meet this year due to Covid concerns) very much. It was not only fun for the kids but fun for me as well to get to be with other parents! But it's okay - hopefully we can resume meeting next year.

We are doing Sonlight as our core again with a few different add-ons and electives. I've put photos of what we are doing below for anyone who is curious! We didn't quite finish last year's curriculum with the addition of E and just wanting to take time to bond as a family so we will be wrapping up the last few weeks of their kindergarten (A module) and then moving on to 1st grade (B module).

We will be doing a 4 day week again with Friday mornings reserved for field-trips (used to be co-op day) or some other fun learning activity.

Our first day is actually next Monday the 10th - we like to start early when the mosquitoes get annoying and take a week off here and there when the fall weather is gorgeous!

We are continuing this for reading along with Waseca reading program (below)

This is the gorgeous Waseca reading program! It's a Montessori program and it is amazing!

I have seen so much growth in J with this and he really enjoys doing it which is important to me.

We decided to switch to The Good and The Beautiful for Math this spring and I have no regrets.

It's a much better fit for J and M.

We will continue with Go for the Code - it's a suggested pairing with Sonlight so we have assignments in our Sonlight guide for it. We're almost done with this book and we will move on to the next level. This is for handwriting/reading.

I picked up these books on the left for Melody to improve pencil skills! The ones on the far right are part of the Sonlight 4k program which she did last fall but didn't quite complete and loved!

This is what we are doing for Bible this year and I am SO excited! This book is amazing and it is gorgeous to boot! We got the songs that go with it as well and just some ABC memory verses from christianbook.com

Our big elective this year is art for the kids, especially J!

He has a huge interest in art so I want to see where that leads!

Hopefully we will be able to visit some museums and use this book!

Some games we have to work on math (time and money) and personal safety.

This is our huge Sonlight teacher's guide and those things next to it are coloring books for historical topics!

This is an example of what a week looks like for one subject in Sonlight (I put check marks by what we have done because sometimes we read ahead on one book or another) - they have a sheet like this for History, one for language arts and one for Science (the 3 subjects we do with Sonlight)

Our attendance calendar!

Our rough draft of our school year schedule (grayed-out dates are when we plan to take off!)

Our rough draft of our schedule. I find this needs to change a few times throughout the year but I like to have some idea of what I think will work best for starting!

I took a photo holder set from Michael's and made it into "work boxes" for the kids when I need them to work on something independently while I help another kiddo. Here are some examples of what is inside!