Wednesday Jul 31, 2024

Today I built my son a desk and chair. It came in a kit and was pretty easy to figure out. It also made a great activity to do with my son as he was very interested in helping me put it together. 

I was going to start the school year officially tomorrow on the 1st of August because that seemed like a good place to start, but my daughter’s curriculum won’t come in till tomorrow so I think I will just start with the rest of the public school world on Monday. That should also give me more time to prep their spaces and organize their supplies.

The Focus:

This year I want to focus on reading with both of my kids. I also want to focus on service, writing, story-telling, art, math, Hawaiian Language, exercise, being outside, their heritages, and music.

Curriculum:

As for curriculum, I’m using:

'Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann' for my son and then adapting lessons from my daughter’s materials (since she is only a year ahead) to help him in math. I also have all of my daughter's workbooks from Kindergarten so I'll be using those as well.

I thought about getting him his own new curriculum, but he learns a little differently than my daughter and I don’t want to overwhelm him in the beginning so I’m going to work with him on what we have and then I can always get more materials for him as we go.

For my daughter I went with The Good and The Beautiful. I went with this one because, first of all a lot of people recommended it, secondly, it wasn’t too expensive, third it’s Christian-based, fourth, it had a really great website with helpful resources, and lastly, it ships hard copies to you of the materials.

Summary:

When I was looking at curriculums and programs I didn’t want one that was led by a teacher on the screen and I didn’t want to have to print out a lot of things.

Along with these materials, I plan to make my own and also find educational games and apps that they can play with on an ipad.

That’s my plan so far. I can always make changes as we go along. Let me know if I’m missing something you think is terribly important.