Planning Continues

In November I wrote this post, Home School Planning Begins Now about how our home school planning begins and moves forward. To give all of you a little bit of an update, our planning is moving forward. Yesterday I had asked my daughter HJ to look at books based on "Russia," "India," "Wars," "Prussia," & "The Effects of Nuclear Radiation." Of course, she found the Catherine and Anastasia from the Royal Diaries. She already has Jahanara from India, so we didn't need to look at that one.

How do we come up with our topics to study? Usually something comes up where we have a conversation about a topic and it comes to our attention to add that particular topic needs to be covered more in depth. This year we will revisit Wars in general. We've already covered the Revolutionary War quite extensively as well as the changes in munitions over the years with each new war. (What can I say? My boys enjoy studying munitions.) So next school year we'll study wars, but the political aspects as well as the people involved, famous names and what those people did and perhaps some biographies of those people. Right now the children have been fascinated by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte (only because our little dog, Biscuit, exhibits a "Napoleonic Complex!" LOL)

Today I hope to get one of the boys on the computer to look up books for themselves according to their likes and dislikes. It certainly makes for an interesting challenge for me!

Home School Curriculum Part 1--SOS

No, SOS isn't a distress call in this case!  LOL  SOS stands for Switched on Schoolhouse.  This curriculum is computer based, all inclusive if you' d like it to be and not for the faint of heart, or for every special needs student.

We started using the 2002 version of SOS math in 2008 with our daughter.  She needed something different than Alpha Omega Lifepacs.  Their workbooks had hurt her hand as she slid her hand across the paper.  She's sensitive that way.  Currently she is doing Math, LA, Health Quest and Pennsylvania History on SOS.  She is doing very well with it too.

We increased our usage of this curriculum with both of our sons as well the year following.  The only subjects we used were Language Arts and Math.  The rest were filled in with other curriculum.  This step had proven to be a very good one for a few months, perhaps a year.  When I found myself sitting with our youngest doing all of his school work with him by typing in his answers so they get spelled correctly.  For this dyslexic young man, having to type things in correctly and not knowing the correct spelling was a great source of frustration.  His tests showed that he knew the material, but something was not quite right.

With our oldest son, this curriculum worked well for him until he hit a brick wall in Prealgebra.  When he felt like throwing the computer out the window, it was time to not only discuss what to do before getting that frustrated, but also to get something else that he can see the concepts.  He is currently doing wonderfully with SOS LA and Pennsylvania History.  Next year he will be doing World Geography & LA.

To be continued with Part 2--Math-u-see