Homeschooling Planning: 3rd Grade, 1st Grade, + a Toddler

We are just beginning to plan our homeschool for the next school year.  It feels like we’re a little late.  But we won’t be starting formal learning in earnest until after VBS at the end of August.  Till then, we’ve got berries to pick, pools to swim, another Shakespeare play, an exchange student from Japan, house guests from Australia, and books a’plenty.  There will be learning!

This coming year we will be studying American History–because the toddler loves the presidents!  Yes, we let the toddler’s taste influence our course of study.  It’s also a great year to do American history because we’ll be electing a new president soon.  Today our copy of Volume 5 of Draw Write Now came in the mail all the way from Gloucester, England.  Put us in mind of Richard III!

I also spent some time today looking through online resources that I had saved, searching high and low for an almanac page that Mabel used during her 1st grade year.  The sheet is great, nearly painless writing practice.  And it helps everyone get a handle on weeks/months/dates.  There’s a place to record the temperature and time as well.  But I couldn’t find it anywhere!  Then I searched here on the blog using the word “rainbow” because I remembered that it featured pretty rainbow details.  Sure enough there it was!

Here’s a link to the sheets made by Homeschool Creations.  There’s even a version of the forms in cursive…which would have meant nothing to me a few years ago, but will come in handy for our cursive girl.  But the neatest surprise was the link to a post by Sarah from Amongst Lovely Things about pairing white board markers with sheets in page protectors!  It’s a fun way to add some color to worksheets and reuse practice sheets.  We also liked just using them as another place to draw.  So yeah, I come by my love for Amongst Lovely Things honestly!