Finalizing plans for the 2010-2011 school year (grade 4)…

Please share!

The Old Schoolhouse has announced the Fall Release Schedule for the Download-n-Go (DNG) series, which means I have finished planning our school year!

There are several DNGs that Ben is interested in doing, so I think our schedule will look a little different this year.  Rather than doing moslty 4-week unit studies, we’ll likely fill our time with more DNGs, which are one-week long.

There are a few things Ben has requested.  He wants more studies of countries, and he wants a pretty intense study of all things ocean…..pirates, ships, animals, lighthouses, and explorers.  So we will likely do a combination of 3 of Amanda Bennett’s unit studies: Oceans, Sailing Ships, and Lighthouses.  I think I will combine those 3 units into one unit, lasting about 6 weeks, since I think there will be some overlap with them.  There are also a couple of DNGs that will fit in with those….Dolphin Days and Whale Tales, as well as Expedition Australia and Seashells.  I’ve also decided to add the Homeschool in the Woods Time Travelers history unit on New World Explorers to cover the pirates and explorers aspect of the study in a bit more depth.  It arrived in the mail today and looks like so much fun!  It provides for some fun projects as well!  That will probably take another 6 weeks.  Homeschool Share (HSS) has a unit on Pirates, so it’s possible I’ll pull a few things from there.

For our Geography focus, I also have several resources to pull from. Our spines will be the e-book, Master World Geography in 7 Months from Globalmaina and  A Child’s Geography by Ann Voskamp, along with Galloping the Globe, Window on the World and all 3 of the Trip Around the World books (Another Trip and A New Trip are the other two). I plan to choose 2-3 countries from each continent to study.  The  “Expedition” DNGs (China, Australia, Ireland, Mexico, Israel, Africa, and Canada) will help with that, as well as several of the other fun topical DNGs. One of my friends at HSS has written lapbooks for several more countries (Australia, Brazil, China, Ghana, Italy, Philippines, Russia and Mexico), so I may integrate those as well.

I think the schedule will look something like this:

Fall Semester

• Introduction to Geography (TOS June, 2010 Planner Module) Jul 
• New World Explorers, Oceans, Lighthouses and Sailing Ships Jul-Aug-Sep
• Australia (Expedition Australia, Dolphin Days, Whale Tales, Sunny Seashells) Oct
• Constitution Celebration Nov
• Asia (Expedition China review, Expedition Israel, Kite Capers) Nov-Dec

• Christmas Around the World, Crunchy Cookies Dec

Please share!