I'm (Finally) Posting Again

I'm sorry I've neglected to post for so long. We had a hard drive crash and I lost all my lesson plans. I was as upset about the lesson plans as the pictures we lost I think! It was very difficult for me to start again from scratch. I really enjoy planning but the mental aspect of losing all that work made it feel discouraging and daunting. We also had some major changes including a move that meant I had to simplify.

Because of that I've veered a little away from Core Knowledge. I still love the program and am using it but no longer exclusively. I just couldn't put the effort back into redoing all those plans. I finished out some US History CK topics and we've done some science. I'll try to put together some of that lesson material to share.

For history I'm moving to ancient history because my boys are showing a lot of interest in that area. I plan to integrate CK objectives into that but I'm also going to lean heavily on some specific history resources. At this point I think we'll align more closely to Story of the World than CK for history. I may change my mind though! We're just doing pre-history right now so I've created that without a spine.

We're still going to use CK for the other topics though I am thinking of branching out a bit with science. Specifically, I'm exploring creating some lessons plans to follow Evan Moore Daily Science workbooks--just the $8 student material workbooks. I'm hoping I can align the topics with CK science topics though I don't have the workbooks yet to see if that will work. Right now I'm using a lot of printer ink printing out lapbook and similar components to help science topic retention. I think the workbooks might replace some of that. It also turns out I have a workbook loving child (who knew!) here so I'm doing it for him as well.

We just finished a short unit on Australia as we're participating in a homeschool geography fair. There is actually a CK Kindergarten objective for Australia. Of course the plans were a little simple but still I borrowed from the Baltimore plans and integrated a lot of video based material and internet resources. We also covered some 3rd grade CK geography objectives on rivers. Anyway, I'll post my plans in case anyone studies Australia and wants to use the ideas or resources.