Yet More Homeschool Planning: Tweaking, Refining, Ready for Next Week

Here's a modified general block schedule for our primary level (grades 3 & 4) homeschooling week:

And here's how I'm thinking that this will play out for our first week of school next week, which is to say, These are the assignment lists I'm working on, to go in each child's school basket:

3rd Grader

Monday

Morning Basket w/4th grader:  all our combined subjects

Independent Work:
copywork
(Poem:  "There Is No Frigate Like a Book,"*  "The First Book" by Rita Dove, 2 lines daily)
MCP Math C Lesson 1
CHC Level 3 Handwriting  Lesson 1
copy German vocabulary:
die Katze
die Maus
der Hund
die Biene
der Vogel
die Kuh

Reading:
1. Bible:  The Story of Ruth:  Unhappy Times
2. Roman Myths 2 pages
3. Buster Bear's Twins 2 pages

Reading journal:  Each book in her box will have one of these nifty little blank books in it, marking the page. For each reading, I am asking her to write one sentence about what she has read and illustrate what she writes.

Tuesday
A.M.:
Driving college girl to airport. Listening to audiobooks in car (not sure which ones yet;  will update)

PM:
Independent Work:
copywork
math 1 page
handwriting 1 lesson
review German vocabulary

Reading:
1. Joan of Arc 2 pages
2. A Lion to Guard Us 3 pages
3. Burgess Seashore Book for Children 3 pages

Reading journal as before

Wednesday

Morning Basket

Independent Work:
copywork
math 1 page
handwriting 1 lesson
review German vocabulary

Reading:
1. Bible:  The Promised King
2. Roman Myths 2 pages
3. Paddle-to-the-Sea 1 page

Journal

Thursday

Morning Basket

Independent Work:
copywork
math 1 page
handwriting 1 lesson
dictation:  German vocabulary

Reading:
1. Joan of Arc 2 pages
2. A Lion to Guard Us 3 pages
3. Buster Bear's Twins 3 pages

Journal

Friday

Morning Basket

Independent Work:
dictation:  2 lines (or more -- we'll play this by ear) from the week's poem
math 1 page

Read:
1. Amy Welborn's Book of Heroes 1 page
2. Buster Bear's Twins 3 pages

Journal

Nature walk/notebook

4th Grader

Monday

Morning Basket

Independent Work:
copywork (as above)
MCP Math D 1 lesson
CHC Handwriting 3 1 lesson
copy German vocabulary

Reading:
1. Bible:  The Story of Ruth
2. The Roman Ransom 4 pages
3. Danny, Champion of the World 4 pages

Journal (as above)

Tuesday

AM:  As above

PM

Independent Work:
copywork
math 1 lesson
handwriting 1 lesson
review German vocabulary

Reading:
1. Edmund Campion, Hero of God's Underground 4 pages
2. Carry On, Mr. Bowditch 4 pages
3. The Way Things Work 2 pages

Journal

Wednesday

Morning Basket

Independent Work:
copywork
math 1 lesson
handwriting 1 lesson
review German vocabulary

Reading:
1. Bible:  Zacharias and Elizabeth
2. The Roman Ransom 4 pages
3. Tree in the Trail 1 page

Journal

Thursday

Morning Basket

Independent Work:
copywork
math 1 lesson
handwriting 1 lesson
dictation:  German vocabulary

Reading:
1. Edmund Campion 4 pages
2. Carry On, Mr. Bowditch 4 pages
3. Danny, Champion of the World 4 pages

Journal

Friday

Morning Basket

Independent Work:
dictation:  poem
math 1 lesson

Reading:
1. The First Christians
2. Danny, Champion of the World

Journal

Nature walk/notebook

Booklists: 

1. Morning Basket Contents
Shorter Christian Prayer (3 books)
St. Michael Hymnal
Illustrated Catechism/Biffi
Augustus Caesar's World
George Washington's World
Galen and the Gateway to Medicine
City/Macaulay
The Living Forest
Life of Fred:  Apples
First Whole Book of Diagrams
The Child's Own Book of English
German resources via laptop/BBC languages
Father Four Seasons (Russian Fairy Tales)
A Time to Keep/Tasha Tudor
Seton Art 4 for Young Catholics

2. 3rd Grader's Box
Children's Bible in 365 Stories
Joan of Arc
Book of Heroes/Welborn
Roman Myths/McCaughrean
A Lion to Guard Us
Burgess Seashore Book for Children
Buster Bear's Twins (also Thornton Burgess)
Paddle-to-the-Sea
MCP Math C
CHC Handwriting 3
sketchbook for art
copybook
nature notebook
little Hygloss books for reading journals

3. 4th Grader's Box
Golden Children's Bible
Edmund Campion:  Hero of God's Underground
The First Christians/Hunt
The Roman Ransom
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch
The Way Things Work
Danny, Champion of the World
Tree in the Trail
MCP Math D
CHC Handwriting 3
sketchbook for art
copybook
nature notebook
little Hygloss books for reading journals



As always, subject to revision:  I reserve the right to depart entirely from this plan. In fact, I more or less expect to. But you gotta start with something . . .

Up soon:  Week 1 of Grade 9, also starting next week

UPDATE:  Well, already I have to rethink some of this, because next Tuesday morning I'm driving the college girly to the airport two hours away, because that's where Southwest flies to . . .  A four-hour round trip, devouring the entire morning . . . hm. Time to look at the Librivox audiobooks in my iTunes and plan a morning of car school. Or else just plan not to start till Wednesday.  Is a puzzlement.

* To all the people who blanched on seeing that I had replaced Emily Dickinson with Rita Dove as our poet of the week:  don't worry. Emily will be back next week. Rita's just happens to be the first poem in the book we're using, and I wanted to offer something very different from what the kids have encountered before in the way of poetry . . .  Since I put the Rita Dove poem on the board, we've already had conversations about how you can tell that something might be a poem, even if there aren't any rhymes. Scoresville -- and we haven't even started school yet.