2013 - 2014 Curriculum

We are going to spend the summer reviewing basic concepts and doing other fun activities. In July, I will be homeschooling a 9th grader, 6th grader, two 3rd graders, two 1st graders, and a preschooler. Normally I create our entire curriculum myself. However, due to homeschooling seven kids as well as being in college myself I no longer have the time to create it all. This year I will be using some online classes as well as pre-made curriculum.

Crystina

Crystina will be my 9th grader. We are beginning to work on the high school transcript this year. For her courses she will be taking:

Art Appreciation and Techniques

English Composition I

Ancient Civilizations

Beginning Algebra

Spanish

Introduction to Molecular and Cellular Biology

Driver's Education

Health and Physical Education

All of these except for the Driver's Education are free. 

Carolyn

Carolyn will be my 6th grader. I could not find a math curriculum that I liked so for now, her math will be created by me. I will be using Easy Peasy for everything else. The Easy Peasy Math used Khan Academy which is Common Core aligned. I am against Common Core, so there's that. Otherwise, the rest will be from Easy Peasy.

Ancient Art

Biology

Ancient History

English - 6

Health and Physical Education

Math (Designed by me)

Caitlyn and Charlotte

Caitlyn and Charlotte are my twin 3rd graders. Their curriculum will also be from Easy Peasy. 

Ancient Art

Zoology

Ancient History

Math - 3

English - 3

Health and Physical Education

Cheyenne and Courtney

Cheyenne and Courtney are my twin 1st graders. Honestly, they lucked out. They learn so much just by watching and listening to the older ones. All of their curriculum will also be from Easy Peasy.

Ancient Art 

Zoology

Ancient History

Math - 1

English - 1

Health and Physical Education

Connor

Connor is my 3 year old. I will be working on the Getting Ready 1 curriculum from Easy Peasy with him. This is actually for a 4 year old so I don't know how it's going to turn out. 

I will be combining some of the younger kids for classes. For example, Ancient Art. Five of the kids are taking it, so it will all be done together. However, each child will do the assignments for their grade level. We are also doing smaller units on U.S. Geography and the U.S. Presidents.

I was skeptical when I first heard about Easy Peasy months ago. I never desired a "boxed curriculum". Hopefully I will be pleased with it because it sure is a time saver!

Well, hello....

I am HORRIBLE at blogging. I have learned this. For some reason, I never have any time to blog on any of my blogs. I thought about combining my blogs but quickly shot the idea down. I love that each blog has a different audience and that readers do not have to sort through posts to find the genre they are interested in. So, I am going to attempt {please don't hold me to it} to blog more frequently.

We recently {well 2 months ago} took a trip back home to Louisiana. I will be sharing some pictures from that as well as projects and activities the kids did in relation to the trip. We did a lot of fun activities on vacation! We saw Monster Jam truck show, met Darren Sproles from the New Orleans Saints, went to a New Orleans Hornets game, visited the zoo and aquarium, walked the French Quarter and more. Of course, we lived in Louisiana for awhile, but visiting New Orleans never gets old or boring!

Here's to hoping to seeing you much more frequently!

Home School Group Meet and Greet Brunch {Plus a couple of Pinterest Links}

Today we went to the Home School Group Meet and Greet Brunch at our local park. For my brunch contributions, I took:

Sausage Cheese Puffs

Source: plainchicken.com via Crystal on Pinterest

Pumpkin Coffee Cake

Source: sixsistersstuff.com via Crystal on Pinterest

I also took Blueberry Muffins. 

The kids had a blast! We spent 4 hours there with the other families. Tina, Carly, Caitie and Charlee all made friends and were running around with them. Chey and Monkey preferred to stay alone although they did run around other kids and such. CJ was devastated. His Tina was ignoring him to play with other people. He tried all the time getting her attention as she ran by. He would point to himself and shout out "Nina! I right here! I right here!" Then look defeated as she continued on. He also has the "Mine" theory going on. I guess it's because at home, the girls have their toys and he has his and his alone. We need to work on this. I didn't get to snap too many pictures because I was busy chasing CJ around and watching him slide - over and over and over again. I did manage to get these two, one of Monkey and one of CJ as they were drawing with sidewalk chalk. This was before he decided to color his entire body BLUE with the chalk. 

Monkey

 

CJ

The Start of the 2012-2013 School Year

I never seemed to have time to keep up with this blog. However, I am going to start trying to be better about it. I plan to use this blog as a way to keep family and friends updated on the kids' year.

This year we have:

- Tina -- 8th grade
- Carly -- 5th grade

- Caitie and Charlee -- 1st grade (this is the grade they would be in if they were registered in school; they do a    mix of 1st and 2nd grade work)

- Chey -- Kindergarten

- Monkey -- Pre K (even though she and Chey are twins, Monkey is a little behind. However, she does the same concepts with her sister)

- CJ -- Pre K2 (I invented a grade for him. He's 2 so all we work on is letter recognition, numbers, basic counting, shapes, and colors for now)

Our school year started on September 4th. I am currently working on our week in review post.

Update on Us

I have not been keeping up with this blog like I should have been.

I have only have 1 post on this blog since I changed over from my other blog. I no longer have access to that blog which is another story altogether.

We changed the name of our home school. We were formerly "The Swarmer Academy". The name has changed to "Bayou Excellence Academy".

We now have 7 "enrollees". Well, still technically only 4 but 3 that will be coming into school soon. They are:


Tina, age 12, grade 6
Carly, age 7 (8 in September), grade 3
Caitie, age 4 (5 in October), grade PreK
Charlee, age 4 (5 in October), grade PreK
Chey, age 2 (3 in October)
Monkey (Courtney), age 2 (3 in October)
CJ (our only son has arrived!), age 5 months


With the newest addition to the family, we have changed our mascot and school colors. We decided that the Unicorn was an appropriate mascot when we were an all girl school. Now that we have a boy around, we took a new vote. The kids decided to honor our new home in Louisiana and selected the ALLIGATOR. Our colors had formerly been pink, baby blue and pale purple. The kids have decided to honor their new favorite holiday of Mardi Gras and selected purple, gold and green. I must say, at least they have made it easy to dress and decorate for anything!

I do have some pictures of where we did some "experiments" at the Gulf shore back in April. I guess I will post them soon.

I am currently planning out the school year for 2010-2011. I know that in reality I will never manage to stick to it, but I want at least a guideline of what needs to get accomplished.

Till then.......

INTRODUCTION

Hello and welcome to the official blog of The Swarmer Academy! We are a private home school that specializes in independant thinking and learning. We have a staff of 2 and an enrollment of 6; almost 7. Our staff consists of Chris, the "princiPAL" and Crystal, the "teacher". The staff also takes turns as bus driver and it has been known for the "principal" to be outside participating in physical education activities with the girls. Our students are Tina (11; 5/6th grade), Carly (7; 2nd grade), Caitie (4; pre-k 4), Charlee (4; pre-k 4), Chey-Chey (2) and Court(2). Baby Boy will be arriving in March.

We don't have a set curriculum. We do alot of "crafts" through learning rather than worksheets. We are beginning to start doing lapbooks. I think these are great visual ways of learning rather than looking at a school book and memorizing its contents.

The girls took a vote (with the youngest 2 using smiles as "yays") and our official mascot is the unicorn and school colors are pink, baby blue and purple. The man of the house thinks it's "girly". I asked him what did he expect from a house of girls?? LOL I think the mascot and colors may be changing soon.

That's us in a nutshell and this is where all our school progress will be posted.