Homeschool Goals For December

Seems I was a bit overzealous in what I thought we would accomplish last month. We never made it to a full out study of the Pilgrims, mainly just a discussion on who they were and why we celebrate Thanksgiving. Our focus was mostly on the Native Americans and reading books about them. We also never accomplished any extra inventors, but that's ok. Jakob had a blast with his inventions class and I am sure we will revisit this in the future. Everything else we hit.

So here are this month's Goals

Science: Weather- how to read a thermometer, tracking weather, names of clouds, reading weather on a forecast, climate vs weather, any other boyscout requirements. I am also hoping to get to Stars and Constellations, but it is the Christmas season....

Language Arts: Reading various storybooks on the birth of Christ, Where Saint Nick comes into play, the story of the Candy Cane, The Christmas tree, and so on. I also want him to focus on point of view and rewrite the Birth Story from the eyes of a random character. This we will work on all month, but I have a skit that I want to read to him from Joseph's view that I think he will find interesting.

We have also been talking about parts of speech and I want to fine tune that knowledge by creating posters for nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. I plan to hang them up and we can add to them as we learn new words. (This will also help with spelling so I don't have to spell out loud every word)

Reading- We will continue with Progressive Phonics and begin focusing a lot more on reading cues with punctuation.

Spelling- Will be taken from the words learned in Progressive Phonics and any vocab learned

Social Studies- Being that it is Christmas, Language Arts and Social Studies will mingle. This means I want to look at how Christmas is celebrated in various parts of the world. We will also explore the meaning of the Winter solstice and how that is celebrated. (If you can't tell I like to party :-> ) These are also personal interests of mine and may totally flop when presented but we will see.

Geography- He will Continue with his 50 states discovery at the Library.

Math- We will continue going through Marilyn Burns' suggestions for math as well as officially begin putting those multiplication tables to memorization. There will also be loads of exploration with measuring as we make our holiday goodies.

Bible- We will be following Hubbards Cupboard and their suggested activities as well as our own family traditions. Did I tell you this will be the first year we celebrate at home? SOOOO very excited. Some of these "traditions" will be new to the kids but they are a mixture of memories from my husband and myself.

Art-This will be sufficiently satisfied with Hubbards Cupboard Christmas suggestions

Now looking at all of this is really a lot. Especially since we leave Wednesday to go visit family in North Carolina for a week for an early Christmas. Oh well, it will keep up busy as I am sure the weather will not cooperate for being outside. I mean its 37 degrees right now. BRRRRR!!!