New Year

It's a new year here, which for us means some switch-up in curriculum (we go year round, but are most likely to start new stuff in July/august or January). This is the first year that my little guy won't be moving up a grade in January. He started K on his 5th birthday, and it has generally made the most sense to keep promoting him then. In things like reading and writing, he's plateaued a bit, and will finish out the regular school year as a 5th grader. He has a lot of non-academic stuff on his plate this semester -- testing for his black belt in TaeKwonDo from March to May and starting Boy Scouts.

Our curriculum now looks like this:

Older ds: continuing Miller-Levine Biology with the Kolbe syllabus -- he and older dd will be taking an intensive lab course in March (overlapping little brother's black belt testing).

Cooking -- not sure what we're going to be doing. He's almost finished with the classroom part of Rouxbe cooking school, but needs some practice.

Geometry -- he did some of this a couple of years ago, but I wanted a more solid, Euclidean approach than he had before. Now that his sister is at that point, I've hired a tutor. They'll use Life of Fred as their base, but I have Jacobs and some other stuff to add in when needed.

Literature -- The Harvard Classics ... I inherited a set from my grandfather, and there is a sampler -- 15 minutes a day to hit the highlights. He'll be reading and journaling.

Writing -- TBD -- for the short term, he and little brother will be doing a short Star Wars literary study.

Game Science -- mostly with Dad -- we have a Great Courses video set, and there will be more discussion, reading and of course, games.

Older dd: Continuing most of what she has been working on -- Where Brook and River Meet, Miller-Levine Biology, LOF Geometry (math and science with her brother). I'll probably be assigning a list of classic for her to pick one a month to read and review.

Younger ds: Continuing through SOTW -- he's almost through Volume 3, and so focus will be from mid-1800s forward.

LOF Decimals and Percents

Star Wars Literary Unit with his brother

I need to work on adding more for him. We might return to McGuffey's readers, maybe Igniting Your Writing. He also would like some formal science or engineering, so I need to see what I have.

Younger dd: Brainquest 3 is her spine right now for busywork to keep her out of the way while I work with the olders. I also have a cursive program that I'd picked up for free on Currclick and she likes that, and doesn't seem to need more to learn it. I need to do more read-alouds with her this semester. I have plenty on the shelf, just need to get them out and read them. My plan is to read the first book or two in a series, get her hooked, and let her pick up from there. She can read anything, but lacks confidence with longer chapter books.

No travel on the plans right now, but that can change. Everyone has some big scouting projects. It's looking to be a fun semester.