Oak Ridge Academy: September

A new year has begun and I’m really excited about it.
We are following an informal classical homeschooling style and I used that as my guide while I was picking out this year’s curriculum. For more information on Classical Education please click here.
I began my research for curricula about 6 months prior to the beginning of the school year and finally settled on:

Core

The Growing with Grammar (Level 1) series for Language Arts.

I chose to start Hayzel in the 1st grade level although he already had completed a 1st grade language arts curriculum last year. This curriculum is way more comprehensive than the previous one and it fills in a lot of the gaps I didn’t even know were missing.
I like the way the lessons are set up. Each Lesson is broken up into 5 days with weekly spelling tests every Friday and periodic exams after every major section in Grammar. This portion of Language Art usually runs about 45-60 minutes. Additionally, I have set Hayzel up with a few pen pals which he will be writing to throughout the year and will be included with his LA portfolio. For Spanish immersion Hayzel will be learning the alphabet in Spanish as well as their phonetic sounds.

Saxon Math 2 for Math.

I had a hard time deciding which type of math to teach. My husband helped me and we ended up choosing a mastery approach because it made the most sense for Hayzel’s learning environment. Prior to purchasing, Hayzel did a placement test and tested into the middle of 2nd grade level for Math. However, I am making him start the book from the beginning as he could always used the review. There is a lot of repetition on concepts Hayzel has known for years such as the days of the week, month of the year, and saying and recognizing the numbers from 1-100. Instead of making him repeat this stuff everyday in English, I changed up the lessons by making Hayzel learn and review them in Spanish.

Odyssey History: Ancients Level One for History

This curriculum took a lot to get started because its more a guide rather than curriculum. I had to buy quite a few difference resources in order to use this curriculum. They included:

So far its been well worth it and we’ve been using all the resources to complete the lessons. To help with Spanish immersion, I try to teach Hayzel as many Spanish words as possible throughout the lesson such as tribe= La tribu civilization= la civilización ancient= antiguo

Finally, R.E.A.L Science Odyssey: Life Level One for Science.

This curriculum is a lot of fun and is easily adaptable to Hayzel’s level. He is able to read most of the content and do all the labs with no problems. It consists of lots of experiments and crafts. Science days are his favorite so far this year. For Spanish immersion Hayzel watches science video related to the subject of the day in Spanish and practices science Spanish words.

Extracurricular

For Physical Education Hayzel is enrolled in various sports. At the end of summer he was given a choice between soccer and baseball and he chose soccer. This is third season and he aged of the division he was in last season. This year, not only is he required to participate in all practices and games (per mom’s rules) but he is being held accountable for being a team player and contributing to his team by cheering for them and being an active participant during playtime. That means that when before he was allowed to goof off and have fun, now he is expected to listen to the coaches, do what they ask of him and strive to become a better player. We will also be learning more about soccer as a sport (mom needs an education too!), how to be a good or bad loser, and the value of good sportsmanship.
Aside from soccer he is also doing a basketball clinic in preparation for the winter league where is learning the fundamental of the sport such as dribbling, passing, and shooting. Finally he started Karate over the summer and will continue to learn it year round.
I tried my hardest to be part of a co-op this year, but all my plans for that fell through at the last minute. Instead Hayzel is currently participating in 2 classes which take place once every other week. The first one is called Wee Wonders and is offered at our local Audubon Society. Wee Wonders is a series of classes that takes place every fall and spring and combines hands of activities, crafts, stories, and outdoor discovery. For the fall the series will be focusing on Autumn in New England, and exploring the color changes in the leaves, animal migrations, and animal harvesting for the winter.
The other class is called Brickapolooza and it is extremely interesting. It’s pretty much a Lego building class. The classes are themed and encourage the kids to think creatively and collaborate with their mates to come up with unique solutions to solve a variety of problems. The first series of classes will be focusing on Machines. I’ll be posting more on that later. The class is run by Eric the owner of Brickapolooza in Tyngsboro, Ma. He drives up to our area and brings all the supplies the kids need. He is pretty amazing and Hayzel loves the class.

That pretty much sums up Hayzel’s curriculum for this year. So far I am pretty happy with my choices and Hayzel seems to enjoy them too.

September at Oak Ridge very science heavy. Along with 2 (!!!) science co ops, we also did plenty of science here at home. Actually, maybe science is the wrong word. We did a lot of art projects based on science. I found a neat way to incorporate a lot of different things around a central theme. In the homeschooling world this is called Unit Studies. I mostly focused on art because that is one of the things that Hayzel’s curriculum is lacking. This month our focus was on Oceans and Marine Animals. We did a lot of activities that I found on Pinterest associated with this topic. As you’ve seen in previous posts we did:
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