Sunday, August 17, 2008

Preparation

I am in the process of preparing the lessons for this coming years courses. Thankfully I don't have to worry about Chemistry and Geometry. Both of those are SOS so all I have to do is put in the start and end date and any holidays. Then the program does all the rest. It will assign a lesson for each day that class is in session. I think the same will be for the online Photography course my son is taking. I will find out more when I enroll him in it. So right now all I really have to work on is the plans for U.S. History and English. English isn't going to be all that hard. My son is using a textbook, so it's pretty much a lesson per day, maybe longer depending on what all the lesson requires. U.S. History is another story. For this class I have made up my own curriculum. I have found some wonderful resources on the internet and have saved off any lessons, tests or facts that I think would be useful. I also have some great websites for my son to use for researching certain elements of each area that I feel he needs to learn about in more depth. I have to be honest, I have not read any of the books that my son will be using. I don't pick up much when I read. I'm more of a visual person. I get so much more out of watching a video on a subject than to read about it. I'm still trying to figure out how my son learns. I think he's a little bit of each. Anyway, I have managed to find some great outlines of U.S. History that I am going to use. We will skim over certain parts of U.S. History and delve more into others. I'm hoping that by doing this, my son will learn the actual facts of our nation's history and not so much what is politically correct now a days. He is also going to be learning about foods and nutrition. There's a couple of websites that will teach him about cooking and baking. They also go into food safety, planning and more. Current events and critical thinking skills will also be included. Of course he will get his P.E. from bowling and judo. Not too stringent of a schedule but enough to keep him busy and hopefully not too bored! :-)