Settling into a routine.

Now that we've gotten home schooling under way we've begun to settle into a routine.  Here's what it looks like so far:

Monday, Wednesday and Friday are our main school days at home, in mid September Nicole will be going to a home school co-op  in the morning and early afternoon so we aren't going to be doing anything except maybe some occasional special projects on those days.

On the tree school days at home we start in the morning with Singapore Math, one work book section each day,sometimes expanding a section to last a couple days if needed (so far not, but I'm sure it will be).  After a short break we do the Pre-Level 1 Physics from Gravitas, also one section each day, to be expanded if needed.  Each of these is about 15 minutes, which is more actual instruction time that wither subject gets in a public school classroom.

After a little longer break, doing something fun, we switch gears.  First is Power Spelling, quick and easy, and it seems very effective.  Then after another short break come English, we're using an older Houghton Mifflin text book such as might have been used in any school.  The spelling is 10 to 15 minutes maximum, and the English takes a little longer because it involves writing.  Sometimes for English it's just thinking of and writing a few sentences.

IN the Afternoon it will be the unit study Cantering the Country, which we haven't started yet.  We aren't sure how much time will go to this, but there is a lot of stuff in it that looks like fun and it covers many of the required areas so it will likely get more time than the other subjects.

So that's our day, roughly.  Maybe an hour instruction time in the morning spread out over a couple hours.  In the afternoon and a variable time in the afternoon.  Fit in with this is Ice Skating, (we will likely be doing some of the morning stuff at the Ice Rink), Tae Kwon Do, and Violin practice.  This still leave plenty of time for friends, adventures and playing, certainly more than most public school kids with extracurricular activities have.

Today we bought the math curriculum we'll be using, as well as all the school supplies we'll need.  The other curriculum stuff is being ordered and we should have it soon. 

The Singapore math curriculum is great of course, it has a world wide reputation both in both home schooling and in public/private schools.  Nicole did 1a in kindergarten and did well with it, we expect her to go through 1b fairly quickly because she's already done much of the stuff in it, but we feel doing 1b will improve her foundation and that's important.

The Singapore curriculum is very visual, which works well for Nicole, and of course for arithmetic in general.  It starts of with comparing numbers, doing subtraction, and includes doing addition/subtraction with two digit numbers, single digit multiplication up to 40, a brief introduction to division, and of course time and money problems.  I think a child should be very comfortable with single digit addition and subtraction without using fingers, and have a basic idea of what multiplication is is before using this curriculum, at least that's the point we made sure Nicole was at before starting this.

We bought the text book and the workbook, there is a teachers guide but that seemed superfluous.  After looking though all three it seemed all that we would need is in the two books we bought.