Homeschooling Plans

I have decided to use this forgotten (in favor of his facebook page) blog to post our beginning adventures in homeschooling. Xander is still in school (grade 1) full-time (an English school with 100% French in the classroom). I am hoping to be homeschooling full-time in a year and a half, after graduating from McGill's school of social work. At that point we should be in Ottawa.
In my research there are a few alternative elementary schools there that look quite promising. These might be good fall back schools.

I am currently useing Rebecca Rupp's "Home Learning Year by Year: How to Design a Homeschool Curriculum from Preschool to High School" as a starting point to one: see where he is at in terms of his current skills (from a home learning perspective) and two: to guide my planning. I have discovered that homeschool curriculum is much more advanced than the average school. Which is gratifying.

In my initial (ground zero) informal evaluation (going through the Kindergarten section) he has finished all kindergarten skills in reading and writing (most of which he accomplished long before he started formal schooling). This is (among other things) letter and phonics recognition and understanding.

Math of the other hand he understands maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the K math section's skills. Some of what is put there he is doing now in grade 1 and some he won't do until next year (gr. 2) in the regular school he attends currently. Some we have been doing just because it is natural for us to do it. Ex: When I sign him in in the morning I ask him to tell me the time. So he now knows to tell time to the hour (a K skill) and is working on the minutes. I see this as similar to us using our time wisely when he was a toddler (2) counting the stairs as we made our way up to our apartment each day. Learning happens so easily in life!

This book divides up skills into history (American/Canadian, world), geography, science (again divided by physical, life, earth/space sciences), foreign language (taken care of in school and when we get to Ottawa I will join a French homeschool association as well as an English one to continue his exposure), art, music, health and physical education.

It has been an invaluable source already. I only wish she would make another edition as to include more recent resources. To supplement i am also using the home learning source book by the same author.

I can't wait to give him all these new challenges as he is starved for interesting challenges that go beyond the "sit at this desk and fill in the blanks on these worksheets" type stuff which has annoyed him (and me!). We shall see how it goes. I am sure there will be some initial stumbling blocks especially as he is still in school and has learned to hate learning. But I am determined to make learning fun again and get him back on track!
melissa