Well we don’t really have a standard day. Last year I started out with a schedule and more than a few spreadsheets. That lasted about a week and then it started slipping. I pushed on for a couple more weeks before going to a new plan. It was sort of the start of our eventual method but was still a little rough. Philip is ADD and thus schedules are just stress. That said there still needs to be some guidelines or it would be chaos. Where we ended up was semester goals based on the portfolio that we needed to do and weekly goals for the journey to get there. That freedom to set his own schedule made a world of difference.

This week I sat down with each kid and discussed our goals for this first semester. The hard rules are that we must meet the Prescribed Learning Outcomes (PLOs). These are government rules. I find them to be minimal so we go deeper but that is another story. The second hard rules is the requirements for the portfolio. I must supply three samples for each subject. The shortcut is that I can double use samples so for example if he writes an essay for Social Studies I can also use it as a sample for English. After I explained these rules to the kids I sat each of them down with the PLOs open and we came up with our goals for this portfolio. Now these are just our goals, we still need to learn and do stuff before we complete them.

Note for Math we use IXL and I just let them plug away at it. It is designed for practice but they are both very good at math and they can ask me if they get stuck. It covers more than the PLOs so they will ended up doing more than required. However in the last semester I make a list of the PLOs that they have missed for them to do.

So for Philip we have the following.

English

Essay looking at possibilities of the life in our solar system. What Planets or Moons could support life? Why? Most Likely? Negatives? (This one comes from the Science requirements)

Essay on a book. Possibly C.S. Lewis

Compare Technology, Economy, Population and settlement patterns of Canada, China and Pakistan. (This one is from the Social Studies.)

I also included a spelling test and a log of what he has read.

Science

Essay looking at possibilities of the life in our solar system. What Planets or Moons could support life? Why? Most Likely? Negatives?

Sketches of things looked at through the microscope.

Examples of single cell, Multi-cell organisms. Example from each of the 5 kingdoms. Map of different levels below kingdom

Social Studies

Compare Technology, Economy, Population and settlement patterns of Canada, China and Pakistan.

Map of Settlement patterns in the above countries.

Table of Economic Factors in the above countries.

Bible

Read Christian Heroes: Then and Now – C.S. Lewis

We are trying something new this year in Bible so we are not as well planned here. I also use some stuff that they do in Catechism.

As for Art and Health and Career, those basically take care of themselves for the most part. Art I just pick a couple examples of their work. I would like to get them doing more sketching this year. For Health and Career I just look at the PLOs and talk to them about it and some of it gets covered in how they use their time and plan their portfolio goals..

Margaret was tougher to come up with a plan. She has some good ideas but we really need to get some days under our belt.

English

Report on some animals, What weather they like and dislike, why, how to they avoid weather they dislike. (From Science)

Paragraph on why they were exploring. Viking and European (From Social Studies)

Rolf and the Viking Bow

Science

Keep a log of temperature, precipitation, cloud cover, wind speed and direction.

Report on some animals, What weather they like and dislike, why, how to they avoid weather they dislike.

Draw some food chains.

Social Studies

Map of Early Explorers of Canada and of BC

Paragraph on why they were exploring. Viking and European

Rolf and the Viking Bow

I have a couple of different ideas for her for Bible. I need to let her try each one out and make some choices. We simply have not got enough information yet to plan. A couple of weeks in and we will have a better idea of what we are doing there.

Overall this is a good start. I now need guide them a little with the weekly goals so they meet these overall goals. As always I expect plans will change and somethings will disappear from the portfolio to be replaced with others. Wherever the journey takes us is good but I like starting with a map and compass.