Saturday, May 2, 2020

Homeschool Plans for 2020-2021

We’ve always schooled year-round from June to June.  This year, I left out some breaks so we could finish in mid-May, so we’re in the home stretch!  We were off this week for the last time this school year, and we only have 3 weeks left (12 actual school days)! 

I firmed up plans for our new 2020-2021 school year in early March at convention time.  Fortunately, I was able to slip in and out of the vendor hall opening night of GHC at the Fort Worth Convention Center just a day before the convention was canceled due to coronavirus!  I got exactly the things I still needed, so I was all set.

2020-2021 CURRICULUM PLAN

7th GRADE

SUBJECT

CURRICULUM

Math

CTC Math – Basic Math & Pre-Algebra

History/Reading

Bookshark 7

Language Arts

Write Shop Junior E

Science

Apologia Exploring Creation with Zoology 3: Land Animals

Spelling

Spelling City – HMSV Word Lists – Grade 8

Vocabulary

Vocabulary/Spelling City - Wordly Wise 3000 Word Lists – Level 7

Spanish

La Clase Divertida Level III

Bible

Bible Quest – Old Testament

We’re continuing to use most of the things we used this school year, which is great.  We settled on some programs that were a really good fit for us this year.  I’m hoping to review CTC math pretty soon, and that will give us access for another year.  Holden has done SO well with that, and I love that we can pre-test and skip things he knows well, and also repeat things he hasn’t quite grasped before moving on.  That’s so important!  It’s truly self-paced, and I love that for him.

We’re going to make even better use of our premium subscription to Vocabulary Spelling City this year.  Since our Wordly Wise 3000 Online program was discontinued in the middle of our school year, we had to improvise.  But for our new school year, I’m going to return to the word lists he would have studied with Wordly Wise 3000, but have him practice them using the online games at Vocabulary Spelling City.  And with the code they issued to existing subscribers to help during the quarantine for coronavirus, we got a free year added on to our subscription!  That was awesome.  Also, we used it for spelling tests from our spelling book, but we’re going to drop the book altogether and just play games and take spelling tests on the site using the word lists from the spelling book series we were using.  Holden enjoys online games, and he hates writing.  I think it will be a win-win to let him use the words in other ways as he’s learning to spell them.  The site makes it so easy to assign games and activities, and it keeps track of his progress and grades for me.  We’ve always loved it!  So now we’ll be getting more use out of it than ever before.

Senior Gamache from La Clase Divertida told me at the convention that Level III is much more advanced than the previous 2 levels, so he suggested we slow it down, do even more repetition of the lessons, and spread it out over 2 years.  That works out well for us since we just plan to homeschool 2 more years until high school!

We’re looking forward to Apologia Zoology with land animals.  I remember reviewing it a few years ago when the kids were younger.  I know it starts out with body language of dogs and what it means.  I think he will be fascinated by that!  I know I learned a lot in just that one section.  I think this will be a really interesting year for science!  I was able to pick up the lab supply kit from Natures Workshop at the convention, so we’re good to go there.

Holden did pretty well this year with Write Shop Junior, so we’re moving on to the next level.  He is a reluctant writer, so he’s still within the recommended age range for someone in that category.  We had a good time with the assignments this year, and the varying activities keeps it light and fun.

Bible Quest was something I reviewed this school year.  We were given both the Old Testament and New Testament lesson books, so we plan to continue with that this year.  We should have plenty of material to get us through the year.

I still had Bookshark 7 from when Haylee did it a few years ago, and nothing has changed in terms of the book list, so I didn’t need to buy any new books!  That’s a first. 

I got my schedule binder prepped and ready to go with weekly tabs, and I entered the whole Bookshark schedule into Homeschool Planet for the year, so the bulk of that work is done!  It just took me a few hours one afternoon to get everything set up. Now I just need to schedule out the other subjects, and I’ll be ready for our first day of school before I know it!  I wanted to start getting everything ready now so I don’t have all the prep work to do during our month-long break that we get this year.  That’s a rare thing for us…we usually just have a week between school years…so I’m looking forward to every minute of it!

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