I realise that many countries run their school year from September and so do many homeschoolers. Here in South Africa we start the school year in January and to be honest I run homeschooling year round. Just wondering if anyone wanted to share their homeschooling plans for 2012.
I go for an interview for a part time job tomorrow so must decide what I will do with the children and who will look after them while I am at work and if I will send my eldest back to school or not. I will obviously still be doing things with them whether they go to school or not. I am also looking at possibly using au pair services and hope that if I do that whoever comes in would be able to help with the learning.
With my baby (she’s nearly 10 months old) I plan to continue LR and also start showing her flashcards similar to what I did with my eldest as it seemed to work well. 2012 should be a busy year for her as she should start talking, walking and reaching toddlerhood so there will be plenty of learning going on. I would also like to use some Montessori based activities with her and plan on using ideas from Tot School http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/TotSchool.html with her each week.
My eldest is 4 and I plan to continue daily reading with her - I find however that if I give it a complete break for about a week every 5-6 weeks that she advances very fast after the break so will put in breaks unless she chooses to do the reading/phonics herself. Based on what I am seeing at the moment she may start some sort of independent reading in the next year. I also plan on continuing with both Singapore 1a/b and Horizons K Math as well as playing many math games. Depending on her maturity we may start Story of the World for History and I plan on reading books about various countries during the next year too. Science comes pretty naturally in my house due to my profession so we will continue to do relevant things though I will make more effort to find experiments in other scientific fields (we do a LOT of biology and far less of physics etc) I may start a langauge arts programme with her too although much of what is taught in many programmes we are already covering during the reading I do with her. I do want to cover handwriting more in detail with her as I think she is reaching the stage where she is more ready for it than she has been up til now. We have been doing an extensive amount of swimming recently and will continue through summer and then I will try to find another activity for her to do in winter as our pool is not heated. I would also like to cover a Bible Curriculum a little better than we did this year.
Obviously if she goes back to school I will limit things to mostly reading to and with her and playing Math games with her.