I started writing this post on our first day of school which was Labor Day. It is now three weeks later and I'm finally finishing it up. Homeschooling has proven to be a much busier task than we expected.
I wanted to take a few minutes to share with all of my imaginary readers our general plan for the year. Our curriculum is entirely self-designed. That really means that we've done lots of research to find the best resources and formed courses around our own set of those resources. We hope to make learning exciting for CJ where applicable. You'll see that we've selected activities and field trips around his interests. However, it is ridiculous to think that a child his age is interested in learning EVERYTHING or even has a real grasp of what their interests are. They just simply haven't been exposed to enough at this point to have any real idea. CJ thinks his only interest is basketball. Let me rephrase that, CJ's only interest IS basketball. However, we will expose him to a lot of other things even if they simply lay dormant until he's old enough (read: mature enough) to appreciate and use what he's been taught.
I digressed. Back to our curriculum. Over the course of the year, we'll be teaching the following courses:
Math
CJ will begin studying prealgebra. The primary resources that we will be using are the Art of Problem Solving: Prealgebra and Jeff's Brain lol. I LOVE this book though. It really teaches you to solve problems rather than learning how to find the solutions to the problems that are given to you in class. We expect that it will be a tough road to change CJ's way of thinking and push his brain to approach new problems but we are excited about the breakthrough that will eventually happen and how it will set him up for success later on.
English
Our English course will focus on reading comprehension, learning literary devices, improving his writing and public speaking skills and his understanding and use of grammar. English topics are easily combined and can be weaved through pretty much every other course. Aside from reading novels and doing grammar practice problems, CJ will create and give presentations, author research papers, and revise and edit his writings.
The first book he is reading is the Hunger Games. I love this book and he's obsessed with Fortnite so we thought this was a good first choice. We'll start to work on Type 1 and 2 writing skills (I'll talk more about those later). We'll learn what it means to have the perspective of first, second and third person. We'll study what it means to be the protagonist of a story, how to recognize themes in a book and why symbols are used in literature.
CJ will also start to develop a set of personal vocabulary cards. More on this later as well.
Science
CJ has disliked Science the most out of all of his subjects. One of our main goals this year is to show him that science can be exciting. On our last day in San Diego, we went to the Fleet Science Center. He hated it at first but, once forced to digest one of the exhibits, he eventually came around. It was a fleeting excitement but I think that we can continue to fan that fire. Our first module in science is the obligatory "Scientific Investigation." He'll need to understand the scientific method and how to create measurable, repeatable experiments. He also needs to understand how to collect, represent and analyze data. He'll learn all of those things in our first module.
The second module will focus on energy. Primarily, we'll learn the difference between potential and kinetic energy. We'll study the transfer of energy using a few experiments that involve a basketball (see what I did there? he he). We'll also use a roller coaster building set to demonstrate how potential energy is converted into kinetic energy and how height and other factors contribute to that process. Finally, we will actually go to an amusement park to see/feel these things in action from a different perspective.
We'll also study space, climate change and insects in the future.
Foreign Language
CJ will be learning Esperanto this year. Most people's initial reaction, including mine the first time I heard it, was "what the HECK is Esperanto?" Esperanto is regarded as the "international language". Comparatively, it is a very simple language. Those who are invested in it, consider it one of the easiest languages to learn. We've chosen it for several reasons:
- You can see immediate results of the efforts of your learning. Compared to a language like Spanish or French, you can begin to use the language in everyday life almost immediately. For CJ, this has been really confidence building and motivating so far.
- It sets the foundation that you can learn a second language.
Health
Our current module for health is titled "Athlete Nutrition and Cooking". The goal is to teach CJ how to best fuel his body for athletic performance and how to cook some of the meals that will provide the best fuel. In the process he should learn the following:
- What the basic macronutrients are and how the body uses them?
- The difference between simple and complex carbs.
- The best choices for food/snacks as determined by the time until your next athletic activity.
- Cooking basics.
Other modules we've identified for health include sex education and home fire safety.
Life Skills
We have grouped a ton of things under this umbrella because it seems most appropriate really. The whole year isn't planned out just yet but here's what we're working on now and some plans for the future:
Current Learning:
- Typing. I'm sad that the kids no longer learn typing and don't really understand the motivation for it. CJ has always been impressed with how fast I type and so now he's learning to type himself. Typing.com has a wonderful curriculum and so we're just using that. In addition to daily learning exercises, there are test options as well. CJ really enjoys it so far.
- Daily News. I find watching the news very depressing but I think it is good to get into the habit of knowing what is going on in the world. I'm a huge believer that the biggest factor of success in the real world is how well you can interact with others. Being well rounded is such a huge part of that. The more well rounded you are, the more topics you can discuss which means you have more points of intersection from which to start conversations with anyone.
Future Learning:
- Cursive. I can see why they no longer teach cursive in schools but CJ wants to learn and so he will.
Art and Music
For art, CJ will learn how to recreate several basketball posters of his choosing in Photoshop. He's wanted to learn Photoshop and I think this is a good bridge of art and technology.
Jeff is going to be responsible for our music lessons and I'm not sure what he's got in store yet. One of the ideas was to focus on how music is used to elicit emotions in movies but we will see.
