Getting into the Groove

I've started to develop a little system for my lesson planning. Starting next month we'll have a monthly theme. On a manila file folder, I've written the month and the theme (January's theme is "God Made the World" and February's theme is "God Made Me"). Inside the folder I have a blank piece of paper divided into four sections, which are labeled: Language Arts, Math, Science and Social Studies. Under each section I jot down our objectives for that subject. Under the Language Arts section I also make a list of books that we're going to read, vocabulary words, word families, sight words etc. As I come across patterns, worksheets and other resources, I just stick them in the folder. This has worked really well for December. We've met almost all of our objectives and we still have a week to go. When my January plan is finished I'll take a picture of it - and of course I always write it in pencil!

Another thing that I'm excited about is Scholastic! When I was teaching, I loved doing the scholastic book orders. Their prices can't be beat, and teachers get so much back from the students orders: free books, bonus points, posters and more. So I called Scholastic and got myself signed up as a Homeschool Teacher. We're getting ready to send in our first order and I feel like that makes our homeschooling real and official somehow! I also just received an issue of the Mailbox for free. I can't say how much I love their product. I used it in the school system and I find their graphic organizers and ideas to be very helpful with the little ones.

I'm about to make my first purchase for our homeschool from Oriental Trading. We're buying upper and lower case letter cutouts and will be using them as we start the kindergarten scope and sequence. We've been collecting items for decorating them - apple stickers for the letter "A", blue buttons for "B", candy cane stickers for "C"...it's amazing what you can find in the clearance section of any store!