Tori's 2008-2009 School Year Plans

Tori will be doing the following.

Starting 7th grade in Sunday School. LOL We so don't follow "years" here. But for the outside world... she's in 7th grade.

She will finish up Creation to the Greeks with us and begin Rome to Reformation unit. This includes:

Bible/History

• Rome, the life of Jesus, early church history, Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation from a Christian perspective.
• Bible readings and memory verses.
• Hands-on projects: Make a Roman writing tablet and enjoy a Roman feast, construct a Roman arch, sample foods from the Middle Ages, play Medieval games and more.
• Learn to play chess and construct a cardboard castle.
• Map work, history notebook, and timeline.
• Library book. Daily reading out of the book basket!
  

Science

• Human body - participate in simple experiments and demonstrations as well as make simple models of body systems.
• Astronomy - explore the universe from a Christian perspective. Includes hands-on activities.
• Weekly nature walk and nature journal.
• For 7th and 8th graders, enrich science topics with library books or add a grade-appropriate science course such as Apologia. So she will be doing Apologia Exploring Creation with General Science on her own.

Read Aloud

• Selected books that are integrated with the study of history to inspire and develop godly character. We will use The Bronze Bow, Twice Freed, Dangerous Journey, and Door in the Wall.

Art and Music

• Enjoy hands-on projects from history.
• Art lessons include drawing as well as Roman, Early Church, and Middle Ages art from a godly perspective, using God and The History of Art .
• Music appreciation lessons focus on Haydn, Beethoven, and Mozart.

She may be instrumental in these 2 classes, gathering supplies and making the class run more smoothly. I haven't discussed that with her yet. I would like her to start taking a more active role in helping to teach the youngers. I think this would really benefit her in the long run.

Of course vocabulary lessons focus on Latin roots using English from the Roots Up. I don't know about the kids, but I have really enjoyed using this to learn some Greek roots this year.

Those things are all things she will be doing WITH us. We set up our school like a one room school house. Combining as many things as we can. The rest of the list with be done alone, or one on one with Mom.

She will finish up Saxon 7/6 and then begin 8/7. I'm getting the D.I.V.E. CD for her so she can do more of this on her own.
She will do two units of Progeny Press using the books Holes, and Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Writing Strands #3 will be another language arts aspect we will be including in her school year.
She will be doing book G of the Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting series.
She will continue to do piano lessons on Monday, which includes 30 minutes of piano practice each day.
She will continue on with the Intermediate Language Lessons, hopefully finishing that book this year.
Last but not least - she will continue to do spelling using the Spelling Power system that we started this spring. We do this together - one on one.

That seems like a TON of stuff. What I love about My Father's World??? They have it all scheduled out for me. I've done some switching over this year -- so everything lines up with MFW and it's all planned out for me in daily lessons.

I take the Teacher's Manual and go to the white board and under each student's name I write down what I expect of them that day. If they can do the work and show me the work and it's satisfactory - then their free time begins. I include their chores on the white board too. Sometimes the day seems sort of long - but MFW is designed to be done in a 1/2 day. I try to start them EARLY so they can have some time to be KIDS!

One new thing this year -- we are opening enrolling her into the Knoxville School District. We will be dual enrolling her so she will be able to participate in athletics. Cross Country is our first option. If that goes well -- she gets her school work done as well as practice each day, then we'll decide on the next sport. That would be basket ball. Then in the spring softball and track are available. I LOVED watching her learn how to play softball and I think she would really be a benefit to their team, but we'll see. I don't think she was as excited about softball as I was. LOL

So -- that's Tori's year. I look forward to coming back to this post in June 2009 to see how much of it we accomplish in 9 months time.