Margaret is a bit more of an unknown. We did do a practice day where I borrowed her from public school for the day. I did a number of activities with her and we talked about them afterwords. We eliminated somethings and add some others. Overall I expect that I will make changes throughout the year as we figure out her learning style better.

Bible

Margaret has been in Catechism, so that will continue. At this level that would probably meet our requirements on its own but we have a couple of other things planned. One of the books she likes the look of from her practice day was Lord, Teach me to pray, For Kids. Since there was an earlier book in the series offered in the package we got How to Study Your Bible for Kids. We will also be using a kids Missal to study each weeks readings. They come with some commentary so that will help with the discussions.

English

I really liked the Student Writing Intensive for Philip. It was his weakest subject and it is not Margaret’s strongest either. The DVD lessons make it a lot easier for me and I was very impressed with Philip’s improvement last year.

For the reading portion we will be using the books that are listed in the social studies section. I like the two birds with one stone idea.

Social Studies

Our broad areas are the Early Explorers to North America, and First Nations. We also have to add some mapping to that but that we will work in to the other stuff. I plan on using a couple of living books, specifically:

The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow
Dangerous Journey : The Story of Pilgrims Progress
Indian Captive
Children of the longhouse
Lost in the Barrens

On the explorers part we have Time Travelers Series : New World Explorers. It looks interesting but it is our first exposure to their products. We will also use researching on Wikipedia.

Science

For science we have Light and Sound, Weather, Food Chains and habitats.

For the weather I would really like to get a digital weather station. Certainly we will keep a log. I also have a friend that is a meteorologist so I am hoping to get a tour of the local weather station. Beyond that I expect that we will do some research online.

I have some cool experiments for the light and sound section. We will play with prisms and shadows and maybe a diffraction grating. I plan on making a tin can phone for the sound part. We will also tie it into the weather with thunder and lightning and how to tell the distance.

For the Habitats we will be using the book One Small Square : Woods. It looks really good and will go well with keeping a journal. We are also going to use Healthy Habitats.

Math

IXL has worked well for Philip so we will start with it for Margaret as well.

Art

My wife has offered to do some music with the kids in the morning. I would like to do sketching everyday. Last year I bought Drawing with Children by Mona Brooks. I did some exercises out of it but I would like to get in to it more this year. Other than that we will wing it.