2012-2013 Curriculum

I bet you thought I fell off the edge of the earth didn't you?  Well, I promise I'm still here.  I've just been on a blog hiatus.

We wrapped up 4th grade a few weeks ago and now I'm working on prepping for 5th grade.  5th grade!  How is my baby going into 5th grade?????

This year we cycle back to our absolute favorite time period in history: the ancients.  Since Indy plans to be Indiana Jones when he grows up, this is really exciting.  We have loads of cool stuff planned for history, but the best will be another ultimate filed trip.  We are taking a 12 day cruise in September leaving from Civitevecchia (the port closest to Rome) and going to Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Greece and stopping in Naples, before heading back to Civitevecchia.   We port in Alexandria, Egypt, but are taking the overnight excursion to Cairo where we will see the pyramids, sphinx, King Tut exhibit at the Egyptian Museum and many other exciting places.  With the trip being overnight we won't get to explore Alexandria, but maybe another time.  In Israel we will visit Jerusalem and possibly Bethlehem.  In Turkey we'll be going to Ephesus, in Greece we'll go to Athens and when we go to Naples we will head back to Pompeii.  I'd also like to visit Herculaneum, but the last time we were in Pompeii we had to drag Indy away, so I don't know that we'll make it.  We're also spending 3 days in Rome (2 before and 1 after the cruise) where we will visit the Coliseum and Forum again, but I'm also hoping for the Vatican and their museum.  We'll see.

So, onto curriculum.  We will be using a couple of the same programs from last year, but also changing a few things.  Despite really liking Latin, Indy is still struggling, so we're going to stay at the beginning level until he becomes more proficient.  He's really excited to start on ancient Greek.  We did the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker at the end of 4th grade to ease into it and he absolutely loved it.  I was really concerned given his dyslexia, but for some reason Greek clicked with him. Weird, eh?  The following is a list of what we have scheduled for next year.  I do try to be fluid and if something doesn't work we find something that does to replace it.  After 4 years though, I'm hoping that I've figured out what style works best for us and won't have to change much. 

History Odyssey Ancients Level 2 with Human Odyssey for the spine.
Teaching Textbooks 5
Growing with Grammar 5 (still  ♥♥♥♥ it!)
CPO Earth Science
Phonetics Zoo Spelling
SYRWTL Latin Prep 1 and Minimus Latin
SYRWTL Greek (when it comes out in Nov) and Greek to GCSE
Building Thinking Skills (Logic)
One Hour Mysteries (Logic)
Philosophy for Kids
30 minutes of independent chapter book reading 4 days a week.


I know it seems like an awful lot, but Indy is moving into the logic stage this year and we have to ramp it up a notch.  Again, we won't be doing every subject every day.  Most subjects will be done 3-4 times a week and our lessons are relatively short.  We try to start school around 9am with a 15 minute break around 10:30, stop for lunch at noon, then get back to work around 1pm and finish by 2:30.  It may seem short compared to the amount of time public schools are in session, but we don't have to wait for other kids to do things, line up, wait in line for lunch, etc.  We pack a lot into 4-4.5 hours. 
When does school start this year?  Well, I haven't decided yet, but it will be either August 7 or August 14, neither of which is very far away!  Yikes.  We just finished school June 15, so it's a pretty short summer, but we like to take several breaks (like a 2 week cruise!) during the year, which keeps us from burning out.
Most of the first 8 weeks are planned out (I only plan 8 weeks at a time), but I still have a few things to gather up between now and August.   I guess I should get busy!