Planning our homeschooling year 2015 (and a painted snail)

It's the last days of the holidays and the last days of planning to get done too! I've been busy getting journals organized, calendars written on and charts completed.
This year I'm going back to Five in A Row with my little ones (this way Sapphire can enjoy the family read time too!) and focusing on Tasmanian History for our main unit study for the older ones. Sophia has chosen horses to study about and we will be looking at A Year on our Farm picture book by Penny Matthews and Andrew Mclean each month learning about what happens on a farm throughout a year.
We're starting a new Maths program and introducing walks as part of our daily learning and exercise.
I'm looking forward to seeing how the coming weeks unfold as we get into the groove of it all.

 Sophia found this snail after some wet weather we had, 

she happened to be painting at the time and so decided to give the snail a renovation on his home!!

Hope he didn't mind!!

Smiles The Torrents'

Planning, planning, and some more planning for our Homeschooling year!

Over the last week and a bit all my "spare" time has been sitting in front of the computer searching and planning for this years homeschooling!! When the children are looking for me, they go straight to the office!! Then it's funny if I'm actually NOT THERE and the
"Where's Mum??" calls come...... just needed a quick ladies break!! hee hee

So what are we doing this year??? Well firstly I wanted to really try and plan the WHOLE year this time, I mean not just pretend to do it but really DO IT!!! My dear friend KIM is soooo super awesome in all her plans, it blows me away, everything is sooooo, well, WELL PLANNED!!! I want some of that, so some of that I'm trying to achieve!!!

I've looked for planners HERE and HERE
Then some new charts for the children HERE and HERE with lists of age appropriate jobs HERE
Inspiration as to how to ease into the new year HERE
Ideas on core subjects HERE

It feels good to be scribbling down LOADS of things and ideas and plans and crafts and seeing it all come together!! So before the week is out I should be pretty much there...... looking forward to that!
Smiles The Torrents'

Planning the year ahead

It's really coming to the time when school is lercking around the corner and the Summer here in Tassie will also soon be over....
I've been sooooo deep in planning the school year for my treasures, yes you read right I wanted to PLAN the WHOLE YEAR!! To adventurous??!!?? Probably but a Mum has to have dreams and goals right??!!
In some way I do have that on paper, but as far as resources and the like and an actual week by week, term by term plan well that still needs refining!
Here is a list of what we are doing this year....

First Term we are looking at the Titanic! It's the 100th year anni in April and so thanks to the very wonderful De'Arn who gave me the idea, I thought it would be perfect to do! I've been searching the Internet for books and the like, this one I especially LIKE.
Maths for Sophia this year will be MEP. Again I was given this idea from another wonderful friend Samantha. The WHOLE curriculum on line FOR FREE just needing to be printed!!
LOVE THAT!
Zeke has chosen to study The Royal family! Well he said "I want to know who sat on the throne first!" So this will be great for a Unit study, History, Culture, Geography etc etc! I'm excited!
Hannah would love to know more about Hip Hop so we will do a mini Unit study on that.
I'm also considering going back to Five in a Row, I love this program when I did it a few years ago (before Esther was born) I really love all the subjects it covers and what the children learn from it, especially the art side, even now they can tell me complimentary colours and cross hatching drawing! Not sure how I will fit that in!!
I'd like to make special time with each child for 30mins on a subject they struggle with. For Hannah this will be Maths. Then in this time I'd love for the other older child to do some fun Maths or Phonic games with Sophia!
Lastly we will still be doing Art, Music and Geography (similar to the Charlotte Mason teachings) and of course copy work, reading, cooking etc!
Man that really sounds like a LOT! As I said it's still in the planning mode, when it's put to the test I'll see how it REALLY WORKS!
I hope that your planning is going great and you're looking forward to kicking off!
Smiles The Torrents's :)