Planning for the Upcoming Term Part 2

When the children were all primary age literature and poetry reading happened constantly and easily, for some inexplicable reason it has been far more of an effort and only happened infrequently during the last couple of years:( To facilitate literature sharing I have started planning book and poetry lists. But just as importantly as what is to happen I needed to plan when. Last term I started Circle Time and broadened this to include poetry and picture books with my younger children. At the end of term I was determined to have a read aloud time with my older children, we started hosting this at 10am before our morning tea break, this term I will also include the reading of a couple of poems prior to the Read Aloud.

Poetry for the younger children will consist of
Hilda Boswell’s Treasury of Poetry, Treasury of Nursery Ryhmes and A Child’s Garden of Verse also A Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme. For the older children we will read our way through various works of Australian poets, including of course our favourites John O’Brien and AB Patterson.

Literature will include the following books:
The Children’s Book of Virtues
Tom’s Midnight Garden
Folk of the Faraway Tree
The Treasure Seekers
Goodnight Mr Tom
Red Badge of Courage
This is subject to change but I need to write down some ideas these days. Once I could just pick as we went but nowadays it just doesn’t work for some reason. I have selected a book aimed at each child, all children will listen in. Well most likely the older children will choose to not listen to the younger selections.

Picture Books will reflect an animal theme that ties in with our science theme. I won’t pre-write these as we own plenty, I will just select a basket full at the beginning of every week for us to enjoy.

Maths requires no planning as we use Textbooks, Singapore Maths for the primary aged children and Mathematics.com.au for the highschoolers.

Typing simply consists of the use of a Type Tutor CD so no planning required there either:)

Language Arts is a well oiled wheel now, so planning is not really required as it was in the beginning.
Dictation passages are selected from books of the dc’s choice, as is Copywork. All the children are practicing running writing now, I write the selections for the week on Sunday night/Monday morning for the younger three. The older two ‘translate’ their own.
Avko Spelling will be our new spelling approach this term and requires no preparation.
Grammar/Writing is truthfully an area that I do need to put a little more planning into. Koala will continue using ‘English for Australian Schools Book 2’ by Ronald Ridout, this OOP book combines grammar and writing. We are very happy with it and fortunately Koala enjoys it. Its drawback is there is no answer key. I’m not too stressed about grammar during primary school and as Carpenter is only in Yr 7 I’m not too worried about him yet. I would still like to find a fluency in incorporating writing into our lifestyle, particularly for the older two boys. I have many good intentions but…I fear I may have to explicitly plan here too.