June - December 2008 Book List and Unit Study Plans

I recently finished an article for Heart of the Matter's June edition about how I plan for our preschool. Many of the ideas I listed were things that I have talked about on this blog tons of times before, but other ideas are recent editions that I am excited about! Jocelyne and Dawn have both really inspired and re-energized my lesson planning!

Jocelyne gave me the idea of writing all the books down that I wanted to cover and picking loosely from those. I will take one week a month to prepare for the month ahead, choosing the books to cover and pulling lesson ideas together. Dawn has inspired me by her Themes and Plans posts to really incorporate more holidays and celebrating life into our homeschool! As each month comes, I will post about the books I plan to cover, any ideas for lesson plans and the ideas I am using from Dawn's amazing site!

Next year, starting in January, we will follow a theme based schedule. My brain seems to work better that way and it was easy to put together those themes based on my overall book list that I wanted to cover for the next year and a half. The remaining awesome books will be what we read for the rest of the year, June - December 2008. I have roughly planned this out -- just to make sure that the number of books I had left would fit in the number of weeks left -- but, besides this month and November and December (due to the obvious choices that fit better with those holidays), I plan on keeping it loose.

While I have gotten a few from other sources (like the Prep Curriculum book list at Letter of the Week), the majority come from FIAR lists and HSS, which means they have corresponding unit studies. While a few of the book choices are stand alone options, I have learned that I love supplemental tag alongs, so I have included those as well. Also, it should be said that while some of these are in a group with other books, it does not mean this will be the only time we will cover these books. For the FIAR books in particular, I have found that exposing the girls to them and discussing them lightly now works best since they are still a bit young, and then really going over the meaty lessons at a later date.

Here are the wonderful books we will be covering for the rest of 2008 (I will be updating as we go along, and all books that have been read or covered will be highlighted):

• Fish Out of Water (June)
• Jamberry (June)
• Caterpillars and Butterflies Week (I know this isn't a "book" but we have tons of books that we will be using this week and I will list them all then! Also a June study)
• Caps for Sale and Hand, Hand, Fingers Thumb (another June study on Monkeys!)
• Bees! (yes, again, I know this isn't a "book" but we have tons of great books we will be using, along with their love of the Bee Movie and The Magic School Bus episode on making honey! This will finish out our June studies, carrying into July)
• Family Relationships (this was a surprise unit with TONS of books, listed in its own post)
• Rainbow of My Own (they ended up not having this title at my library but we did a multi-week science unit on Rainbows using lots of other resources listed in its own post)
• Katy No Pocket, Wombat Stew, and Does a Kangaroo have a Mother, too
• Beach Week (Tons of books listed in that posting)
• Bedtime for Frances, Sister for Frances
• Olympics/China unit
• Pets Week (This week we will revisit some of our favorite stories from the past and a few new ones on pets -- Angus, Harry the Dirty Dog, Comet's Nine Lives, Three Names, Salamander Room and MANY others)
• Camping Unit (To go along with our family camping trip!)
• Transportation Week (Little Engine that Could, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, Mr. Grumpy's Motor Car, The Glorious Flight, Choo Choo The Runaway Engine, Thomas the Train books and using components from the Homeschoolshare Lapbook on Transportation and on Trains!)
• Horses Week (Fritz the Beautiful Horse, Twist and Ernest, Calico the Wonder Horse or the Saga of Stewy Stinker, Old Thunder and Miss Raney, Robert the Rose Horse, The Sleep Ponies)
• Madeline (learn about poetry, human body, how God made us special and France)
• Autumn! Learn about leaves, apples, colors and seasons. The highlight book will be Leaf Man.
• Circus Unit. While there is a lot of books and resources we will use, our "quality literature" book will be Mirette on a High Wire
• Halloween Unit (Angelina's Halloween, The Pumpkin Patch Parable, Too Many Pumpkins, Its a Great Pumpkin and a few other fun books we have in our library)
• Give Thanks to the Lord/ Prayer for a Child (in November to prepare for Thanksgiving)
• Cranberry Thanksgiving (in November to prepare for Thanksgiving)
• How to Make an Apple Pie, The Duchess Bakes a Cake, Cook a Doodle Doo (Cooking Unit around Thanksgiving to incorporate learning into the massive cooking/baking extravaganza!)
• Cookies Unit to use while baking for Christmas gifts (Gingerbread Baby, If you Give a Mouse a Cookie, Honey Cookies, Milk and Cookies, Who Took the Cookies from the Cookie Jar? The Best Mouse Cookie, Yum!: A tale of two cookies)
• Cranberry Christmas, If Jesus Came to My House
• Christmas Unit (Polar Express, Nutcracker, Charlie Brown Christmas, Twas the Night Before Christmas, If Jesus Came to my House, Jan Brett's Night Before Christmas, Legend of the Candy Cane, The Wild Christmas Reindeer)
• Winter and Inuit Unit - Mama do you love me, The Three Snow Bears, Very Last First Time

Next up, I will be posting the Themes I have planned for 2009, along with the book choices. Then I will be done - I think (lol) - with the posts concerning all of my HUGE planning. I will start posting about our Weekly Plans and overall plans for the Month of June!