Monday, October 02, 2006

Completed some great lesson planning this weekend

I had a productive weekend doing some lesson planning for History and Science. I wanted to make sure that we covered what I wanted to cover BEFORE our trip to Jamestown and Williamsburg later this month. I also then wanted to lay out what we were going to cover by Christmas, and then roughed out what we will cover for the rest of the year.

By Christmas, we will have completed our review of the colonial period. We will have a nice project of information about how life was during colonial time to share with the grandparents over the holidays. I also planned to spend the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas reviewing Christmas traditions around the world (focusing on the countries of our background - England and Germany - and countries nearby - Canada and Mexico). I look forward to spending this Christmas much more relaxed that previous years and not RUSH through activities.

In History, by the end of the year it appears that we will cover American History though and including the American Revolution, including reading the biographies of many American personalities of the time (my list keeps growing so I hope I have planned enough time). We will also complete a 4-6 week unit on our own state, reviewing its geography and political organization and other aspects of our state.

I also mapped out the rest of our 10 week science unit and designed a "lapbook" project for the kids to complete throughout the remaining 6 weeks of the unit and then for 2 weeks following the unit. We should also have a nice lapbook to share with the grandparents over the Christmas holidays.

I had also been lax at organizing and printing out the kids' weekly assignment sheet. Its just so easy to just "do the next lesson" in the book. But, by planning it out I can easily see what needs to be done, I can give the kids a chance to be more accountable for being sure that we have covered everything, and I can more easily adjust things to speed them up or slow them down as necessary.

So, I'm pleased with the progress I made this weekend and I feel like we are "sailing along" right now.

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