Schedule for this year

This is my first year to make my own curriculum schedule. The past two years we have used Sonlight 1 and 2 with Peanut. This year, in an effort to get both kids on the same page in some subjects, we are combining Sonlight 1 and 2 in one year, but making a few changes. It will be a review for Peanut, but I don’t think it will bore her. We are going to add a few more activities and switch to The Story of the World, instead of the books that Sonlight recommends.

Sonlight sells a conbined schedule for doing 1 and 2 in one year, but I waned to make some changes, so I made my own schedule. It was kind of a confusing experience, but I finally have made a schedule that will take us almost to Christmas. I got us through the first volume of Story of the World, anyway.

Here is what we will be using:

Bible and Bible Memory	Will follow Sonlight 1 & 2 schedule loosely. The kids will probably do AWANA at church as well.
History and Geography	The Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer and Missionary Stories with the Millers by Mildred A. Martin.
Science	Considering God’s Creation by Betty Smith and Susan Mortimer.Eagle's Wings
Math	Singapore Math – Primary 1A for Junior, and Primary 2B for Peanut
Phonics	Explode the Code 3 and Really Reading(free resource!) for Junior.
Language Arts	Doing my own based on Ruth Beechick’s 3-R’s series “A Strong Start in Language” for Peanut. More on this later...
Handwriting	Handwriting Without Tears – My Printing Book for Junior, Cursive Handwriting for Peanut.
Spelling	Peanut - finish Sequential Spelling Book 1, then begin Book 2
Latin	Prima Christiana for both kids. These are short, sweet lessons. The goal is just to teach the basics of Latin to help with vocabulary later on.
Character	Character Building for Families Vol. 1 by Lee Ann Rubsam
Copywork	Will usually come from the Character lessons or Bible Memory.
Reading	Start out with The Beginner’s Bible for Junior. I am still working out a list of books and a schedule for Peanut.
Music and Piano	We will use My First Hymnal, then go to the church hymnal from there. Every 6 weeks, we will do a unit on a different composer. We will start out with Bach, then Handel, the Mozart, and that takes us through December. For Piano, we are using Alfred’s Prep Course: A for Junior, B for Peanut.
Read-alouds	This will follow Sonlight 1 and 2 loosely. We will have to leave some out, but at least since Peanut and I did these before, we have an idea of which books we could skip, and which books are must-reads. Since they are old to Peanut, we will probably select some really good books for her bedtime, that way she has something new.

This has been a tough job and I am just half-way through. Scheduling is not easy. For one thing, there were too many chapters in The Story of the World to get it all done in 18 weeks, which is the goal. So I had to go through and cut some chapters. Then with science, I started out just going through the book from the beginning. That was fine until I got to Plants. I figured out that we would be starting on that at the end of October. So that would make it difficult to go out and find flowers, leaves, etc. So we will need to do the chapters on plants first. I hope that the second half of the year is easier.