A New School Year Part 3: Things I forgot

Since I wrote the first two posts without looking at my notes I failed to mention some things that we are doing. I thought I'd go ahead and let you in on them....

Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization by IEW 

"Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization provides a system to reintroduce you and your children to a vital but often neglected source of powerful and sophisticated linguistic patterning available to children: memorized language, especially memorized poetry."

So the idea behind this is to improve writing by improving what the children hear and memorize. We have put this to practice in our preschool years and we have seen our little ones develop an amazing vocabulary by reading them the Ambleside Online K books from about age 2 on to 1st grade. I won this product at our local homeschool  convention and we will use it in the morning during our morning gathering. I plan to spend no more then 15 minutes a day on this program. 

Presentations & Field Trips

There are two additional activities we will participate in with our PE Co-op. First, we will be doing monthly presentations in our PE Co-op. Each month we will pick something from our homeschool and the kiddos will do a 'speech' to some of the other members of the co-op. I am really excited about this because it meets our homeschool distinctive of raising competent communicators for Christ. Additionally, we will also attend their monthly field trips! 

Contests:

Bullet will participate in two Essay contests and one art contest. These contests are another way to improve their written and artistic communication skills. 

Pictures from Proverbs

The last thing I didn't mention is our Pictures from Proverbs.

"The answers to the questions are on the back of each card for the parent or teacher.   In addition, there is an explanation of the analogy, a Bible illustration of the proverb and questions to ask.  For the younger children, you may purchase a matching coloring book of these proverbs." 

We really enjoy studying a proverb in depth each week. After our study I like to post them on the fridge as a little reminder of the proverb. You'd be amazed at how many times God provides examples of that proverb during the week you study it.