School

It looks as though Monday night may become my new blogging night, as the new Fall season of shows has started up, and my hubby has a favorite on tonight. I usually don't enjoy the shows he likes, but the same is not true for him. (Does that mean I have better taste because he likes my shows?) ;-)

So, once again, my week has been packed with phone calls. Today it was all about school!
First, I talked to Deborah's assigned psychologist at what could possibly be her new school. If you know me, I'm not really a huge fan of public school, and I've always planned to homeschool. However, I'm finding out some things that sound really great about the Special Needs Preschool they have set up in our district. With smaller class sizes, and lots of additional support from teacher's aids, it's really sounding like it could help Deborah develop some great skills, as well as help with her physical therapy. Plus, it's only two hours a day, four days a week. This is great, because I DID NOT want her to be away from us for an extended period of time. I have an appointment to meet with the teachers a week from Friday. I'm just praying for clear direction as to whether or not this would be beneficial for Deborah.

Now, onto Josiah. I have chosen to enroll him in the Meridian Parent Partnership Program (MP3). It's a fabulous homeschooling resource. I have the freedom to choose his curriculum and extra curricular activities (like gymnastics, piano or karate), and as I write them into my Student Learning Plan, the school will give us the money to purchase the curriculum and classes. Writing the SLP has taken a lot of thought, but it's been really fun finding all of the books we'll be using this year.

(This next part of my writing for today will probably only interest those of you who are desiring to keep up with our homeschooling this year.)

For Math, I'll be using Developing Number Concepts, and the addition and subtraction book that goes along with it. I chose it because it looks really hands on, and like it will be very fun and engaging. I'm hoping Noah will be able to get something out of it as well.

Language Arts is probably my favorite subject to look at books for. It was really hard to narrow it down. In the end, we decided to use Hooked on Phonics (since I already own it, and we've already started on it), and the Spectrum Reading and Sight Words for Kindergarten books. Spectrum had some very high reviews, and looked like it went at a challenging but reasonable pace.

For Science, we'll be learning all about weather, and plants this year. To aid in this, I've chosen Primarily Plants and Primarily Weather. These books are hard to come by, as Amazon, and Rainbow Resources do not have it! I did, however, find the publishers website, and I can order them online. These are also very hands on, but they have super easy projects. I can't think of anything worse than having a science book wanting you to gather a bunch of strange items for an experiment!

Now I can talk about Social Studies! Okay, I'll be using the book The Story of the World (vol. 1). Of course, we also have our weekly country and continent study. The Story of the World is a fantastic series of history/geography books which are suitable for a wide range of grades. They have a reading portion, or CD, if you prefer to listen, and a workbook. The workbook has easy to follow activities, games, discussion questions, and coloring sheets. Josiah is going to love this! In conjunction, we will continue to have our country study with Jana every Thursday. So far, we've covered a brief overview of the continents, and studied our first country, Australia. The kids are loving it, and learning SO much! I admit, I'm learning lots too!

And finally, we are working on choosing a PE program. It's the great debate between Karate or gymnastics. Everything in him wants to take gymnastics, but he thinks Karate will be a bit safer. Bless his heart. He is so nervous. Anyway, I'll keep you posted about what he decides. Either way, he is going to have a blast being in his first real organized class.

The days that haven't been taken up with homeschooling have been packed with Dr visits. Tomorrow, Deborah is going to see a Dr. about Botox injections in her ankles to get the muscled to relax. We're hopeful that with a couple of shots her muscles might be able to relax enough to get her feet flat. I just hope it's not too hard on her. I don't know if it's painful or not.

That's about all for now. If you follow me on Pinterest, I've tried to pin all of my curriculum choices to the homeschool board.

Hope you all had a good and productive Monday!