Finishing up the year

With the garden planted our focus this week will be our assessment with Dr. Holinga on Friday. You may know that the state requires the kids to be either tested or assessed by a certified teacher prior to notifying for the upcoming year. Those results or assessments will be included with our curriculum plan that we will also submit at that time.

I will gather writing samples, narration samples, current books the kids are reading from, reading lists, sample math pages, and lists of activities and outings we’ve done over the last year. I’ve printed the pictures we’ve taken along the way and I’ll have the girls paste them onto decorative paper, write any notes they’d like to in the margins and place them in plastic sleeves to include in their portfolio (which is a just three ring notebook with sections for each subject, the reading lists, samples, and their lesson plans).

My last task will be to finalize their curricula for next year in a chart for review by Dr. Holinga. Along with the reading assessment and review of the girls work, she also offers assistance with curriculum planning and I want to be sure to get her thoughts on what we’re planning for next year. When I have it finalized this is the chart I’ll submit to the district when I notify for 2008/2009. Finally, I’ll be ordering Makenna’s books (Maddie will be using the Year 2 books that Makenna used last year). Makenna’s ready to move into the next math level for the summer so I better get that ordered soon!

We still have a few more weeks left in this term. It is taking us about 1 ½ - 2 weeks to finish one week’s worth of lessons as we’ve been taking advantage of the spring weather with trips to local farms, arbitrary fields in the Franklin County area, the zoo, the post office, the nursing home, and with the gardening.

Over the summer we’ll continue building on the basic skills—math, reading instruction (Maddie and Maya), and copywork—which should really only take an hour each day. Free reading will be additional time but I haven’t established when we’ll do that exactly and how much time I’ll ask of each girl. We’ll also continue our piano lessons.