Themes for 2009

Are you sick of these posts yet? :-) As promised, here are the themes and corresponding books for our 2009 School Year (January - December).

I have not determined how long a theme will last. . . that will be totally delight directed. Also, I have made notations next to the themes in regards to what month would seem to make the most sense BUT this, too, will be determined by delight. If the girls appear to be interested in a particular topic, we will cover that theme then, but if they seem to be open for anything, I can fall back on this somewhat scheduled list! ( I have noticed that often times, their delight is dictated by the theme we are covering. So many things to still expose them to, and there are so many rabbit trails to take within a given theme!)

Again, the majority of these books were listed in FIAR or HSS, so they have corresponding unit studies. Also, at that point I will be supplementing with our Bright Beginnings curriculum, which has so many units that fit perfectly with these themes! I plan to pick and choose between all of the lessons and only cover what fits us best!

Also, throughout the year, we will be adding in extra lapbooks for fun reinforcement of some skills we will be covering (all from HSS, of course) including Counting 1-100, The Grocery Store, Short and Long Vowels, and Poetry.

January
This month we will celebrate Cali's birthday (24), Le Befana (6th), A.A. Milne's Birthday (18) and Chinese New Year(26th). Not sure if we will do a unit for Le Befana or just read some fun picture books (Gregg's family is Italian and I LOVE Italy!)

Ballet Unit: Tchaivovsky, Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, etc; Will probably revisit the Sleeping Beauty Unit I wrote (link in my side bar) and also use the awesome Barefoot Book of Ballet Stories that I reviewed for HOTM (and that I will post here soon!). Will probably also read a few Angelina Ballerina stories, use the tot dance videos we have and get some ballet videos from the library. Possibly go ice skating.

Snow: Snowflake Bentley, Katy and the Big Snow, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, The Snowy Day. Lots of snow crafts (tips I got from Candace's site- tide detergent to make snowmen, shaving cream/glue for snow pictures, paint with marshmallows and q-tips).

Winnie the Pooh: Not sure exactly what we will do for this, besides getting out our big book of A.A. Milne stories and poems and watching cartoons :-) A. A. Milne's birthday is January 18th, and we will do some sort of unit that week to celebrate.

Chinese New Year: Will revisit our favorite China stories and activities from this past year, probably visit the Imperial Garden in Katy, have a tea party, make lanterns, and tons of fun stuff! We loved our China studies this year! Will definitely pull out Daisy Come Home by Jan Brett and Ping. Round is a Mooncake, while it was not our favorite story of that unit, does discuss the New Year, so we will probably revisit that as well. Will look into the recommendations on Dawn's site: Lanterns and Firecrackers: A Chinese New Year Story and Happy New Year!

February
This month we will celebrate Groundhog Day (2), Valentine's Day (14), Mardi Gras(24) and George Washington's Birthday (22). I am pretty sure I will skip a unit this year on Washington's birthday, but we will talk about it and depending on how the schedule is going, may do a few crafts.

Groundhog Day: I know we will discuss this, just not sure how in detail we will go. Might be a short unit, but I saw the following recommendations on Dawn's site: Goundhog Day!, How Groundhog's Garden Grew, and Groundhog Stays Up Late.

Princesses: Will revisit my Cinderella unit (also has a link in the sidebar), and Candace's awesome Princess Unit at HSS. We will read His Princess, The Duchess Bakes a Cake and the Princess Primer I picked up at the Scholastic book fair I raved about! We will go over the Armor of God and do a lot of crafts and activities based on that, as well as talk about castles and Knights. HSS is about to post an awesome unit on Knights that we might use, as well.

Valentine's Day: Definitely will do Cranberry Valentine and Valentine Bears, May read the following recommendations from Dawn's site: Saint Valentine, Love Is. . ., All for Love, The Best Thing About Valentines, The Very Special Valentine, and Franklin's Valentine's.

Mardi Gras: We had a lot of fun going back home for some family friendly parades this year, so I am hoping we will go to New Orleans. Not sure of any books I will read, but will do a lot of cultural things, eat king cake, crafts with beads and masks.

March
This month we will celebrate St. Patrick's Day (17), Dr. Seuss' Birthday (2), Vivaldi's Birthday (4), National Waffle Day (25) and Make up Your Own Holiday Day (26). I had NEVER heard of the last two before Dawn's list, but I LOVE them, ha! Also, we will be celebrating the birth of my amazing husband and His 30th Birthday!!!

Dr. Seuss Week: HSS has an awesome Multi Book Unit on Dr. Seuss, we will also read Horton Hears a Who (and finally see the movie!), Horton Hatches an Egg, Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, and a few others. We will make and eat crazy food and do a lot of rhyming activities! ALSO, since Vivaldi's Birthday lands in the middle of this fun, we will just work him in :-) Listen to samples of his music and hopefully read a picture book or something... any ideas?

St. Patrick's Day: Big Green Pocketbook, That's What Leprechauns Do, Jack and the Leprechaun, and picture books on St. Patrick and Ireland. Dawn had the following on her site, so I plan to look into these: Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland, St. Patrick's Day, St. Patrick's Day in the Morning, St. Patrick's Day Alphabet. I may extend this to two weeks so we can cover Ireland a bit more. Will possibly read Jamie O'Rourke and the Pooka, and Jamie O' Rourke and the Big Potato. Any other great ideas for Ireland studies?

Rabbits: We love our bunny stories! Also Easter will be on the 12th of April, and I plan to do a couple weeks with that unit so this will be a perfect lead in. We will read our favorite children's story, The Tale of Peter Rabbit along with his cousin Benjamin Bunny, and the Flopsy Bunnies. We will also read Velveteen Rabbit, The Runaway Bunny, Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!, The Little Rabbit and a few Max and Ruby books. Most of these will be repeats but we love them! Depending on interest and ability, we might hit into the Beatrix Potter unit at HSS, or just do a really good row of Peter Rabbit, using the wonderful unit FIAR has. Also, this will most likely be the end of the month, which means Waffle Day and Make Up Your Own Holiday will fall in this unit. So obviously we will be baking waffles and creating a holiday of some sort!

April
This month we will celebrate Palm Sunday (5), Easter (12), Earth Day (22) and Arbor Day (24). It is also National Poetry Month. We will probably work in poetry throughout the month.

Easter: As mentioned, I will most likely extend this study for two weeks. We will cover the The Bunny who Found Easter (by Charlotte Zolotow, one of my favorite authors!), Parable of the Lily, The Easter Story, Legend of the Easter Egg, The Very First Easter, and a few picture books we have around the house. We will do resurrection eggs, look at lilies, get Miss Pattycake's Eggstravaganza and have a lot of fun with candy I am sure.

Rodeo: Ok, my well thought out plans aren't so perfect here. The Houston Livestock and Rodeo Show will be held March 3-22, 2009, BUT the units I have planned for March are all pretty secure. My co-op will most likely get a tour and field trip day during the rodeo, and I guess I can pull on their memories of that lol. I will also probably bring the girls to see horses at a nearby ranch. We will cover Armadillo Rodeo and maybe revisit a few of our favorite books from our Horse Unit that we are doing this year, for example Fritz the Beautiful Horse.

Garden Unit: We will work this in with Earth Day and Arbor Day. We'll discuss recycling and picking up trash and hopefully find the Charlie Brown movie about Arbor Day. We will read the Carrot Seed, Franklin Plants a Tree, Tops and Bottoms, Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots: Gardening Together with Children, From Seed to Plant, and several Magic School Bus Books. We will also watch some Magic School Bus episodes and any other videos I can find on gardening. And, obviously, we will ATTEMPT to garden (I say attempt b/c I am a total novice here and have not had much luck in the past but I am working on it!)

May
This month we will celebrate Mother Goose Day (1) My Birthday (2), Cinco de Mayo (5), Mother's Day (10), and Memorial Day (25). Also, National Police Week occurs this month and I hope to work in some service opportunities with the girls. With the different holidays taking up time with crafts and vacation time, and since I picked such huge themes for this month, we are keeping it to only two themes for May.

Art: I plan on having fun with this and probably extending it for a bit. We will cover both making art and picture study of great artists. Will read Harold and the Purple Crayon, The Art Lesson, Purple Green and Yellow, Billy the Bunny (and do the unit I wrote for HSS), and I am an Artist. We will also pick 1 or 2 Big art books and I hope to get some of those wonderful artists board books. We will do lots of crafts and painting and hopefully some Museum trips.

Zoo: There is so much to do here with lots and lots of rabbit trails! If I ran the Zoo, Put me in the Zoo, Zoo Animals on Strike, Giraffe that Walked to Paris, and Andy and the Lion. We will do the big Multi Book Unit on We're Going to the Zoo at HSS. Obviously, we will take a trip to the zoo. This unit may be extended into a larger unit on animals and we can work in animal classification, visiting a farm, etc.

June/July/August
In June, we will celebrate Father's Day (21) and it is National Outdoors Month. In July, we will celebrate the Fourth of July. For the Summer we will probably do school a bit light. We will focus on Insects and cover the Eric Carle books more in depth, as well as some extras -- maybe the Bee Tree, for example. I hope to take the girls to the beach for a day so we will probably do a unit on that. If it looks like we need more structure and units, I will revisit Candace's site and idea -- she covered the days of Creation, based on the Simply Charlotte Mason book -- for an entire summer and, as always, posted some great ideas! Besides that link, Homeschool Share's yahoo group has amazing ideas for a creation based unit study in the files section!

September
This month we will celebrate Labor Day (7), and National Grandparent's Day (13). Autumn also officially begins this month!

Bears: We love Bears for some reason! There are so many cute books written about these ferocious animals! We will be reading Going on a Bear Hunt, Corduroy, the Jesse Bear series, Pocket for Corduroy, and Ask Mr. Bear. We will also look at the HSS Karma Wilson Multi Book Unit on Bears. This will probably be a multi-week unit. May also trail into Winnie the Pooh stories! :-) Will probably read and have a Teddy Bear Picnic, and learn more about this animal in general.

Music: Will flow nicely after Bears as one of our FAVORITE books is Berlioz the Bear! Will also read Zin Zin Zin a Violin, Meet the Orchestra, and Peter The Wolf. I also hope to get some picture books on a few composers. We will get the Reading Rainbow videos on these books, make our own instruments, and hopefully find some good field trip opportunities. Obviously, we will be listening to a lot of music during this study as well! Will most likely be a multi week unit!

October
This month we will celebrate Columbus Day (13) and Halloween (31). Columbus Day really just gives me an excuse to introduce the topic a bit :-)

Science: We love Magic School Bus here! The girls also like experimenting but I don't feel I get an opportunity to focus on this enough, so my solution is to have a couple weeks devoted to nothing but science! We will read LOTS of Magic School Bus books, watch a lot of their videos, Get the Bernstein Bears Big Book of Science, do lots of easy experiments, get a few picture books on various science topics of interest at the time and maybe do a quick lesson/picture book/activity on each of the major areas of science in an age appropriate way!

Halloween: Yes, we celebrate Halloween. It is fun to dress up and go around, meet the neighbors and get free candy. I don't think I am doing permanent damage to my children letting them experience this, but it is definitely a topic that can get heated and is up to each individual family. We will probably do a multi week unit, covering pumpkins and Halloween. We will read It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, Pumpkin Jack, Angelina's Halloween, The Lonely Scarecrow, Too many Pumpkins, and Pumpkin Soup. *Crystal commented with a wonderful choice, The Pumpkin Patch Parable, by Liz Curtis Higgs, whom I love! Thanks, Crystal! * We also have a few picture books on Halloween that we will read. We will get a pumpkin and carve it and maybe try a few pumpkin recipes. We will also revisit the life cycle of the pumpkin and possibly use it as an excuse to watch Cinderella!

November
This month we celebrate All Saints Day (1), All Souls Day (2), Veterans Day (11), National Homemade Bread Day (17), Jordan's Birthday (22), Thanksgiving (27) and Our Anniversary (28).
I am actually leaving part of this month open intentionally... for any delight directed studies, and some free room for any breaks taken during the year. We will start our Thanksgiving unit the week before Thanksgiving, with all the fun of family coming in town the week of Thanksgiving and the cooking festivities!

Thanksgiving: We will read Cranberry Thanksgiving, Give thanks to the Lord, Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, Prayer for a Child, A Turkey for Thanksgiving, The First Thanksgiving: A Counting Story, Franklin's Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Day at our House: Poems of the Very young, and a few picture books we have. We will do lots of fall and turkey crafts as well, and of course, lots of cooking and baking!

December
This month we will celebrate Jan Brett's birthday (1), National Cookie Day (4), the beginning of Winter (21), Christmas (24th and 25th) and New Year's (31).

Jan Brett: We will have fun covering all of our favorite Jan Brett books! We will pick and choose from the different units available but mostly just read some great books this week! We will also cover Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett for National Cookie Day!

Cookies: We will revisit our Cookie unit the week after National Cookie Day (this will kick it off). We will cover Honey Cookies, If you Give a Mouse a Cookie, Milk and Cookies, Who Took the Cookies from the Cookie Jar, The Best Mouse Cookie and Yum! A Tale of Two Cookies. We will be baking a lot this week as gifts to give to neighbors and friends.

Christmas: We will be covering Advent throughout the month and maybe the Jesse Tree as well. We will read Polar Express, Night Before Christmas (traditional and Jan Brett version), Polar Express, Legend of the Candy Cane, Cranberry Christmas, Charlie Brown Christmas, The Wild Christmas Reindeer, Clown of God, picture books on Le Befana, and several of the picture books we have around here. ALSO The Cajun Night Before Christmas -- a MUST! We will have a Birthday Party for Jesus and do a few service projects.

WHEW! That is our year! I would LOVE to see any plans that you have, or hear any recommendations you have for books or crafts! :-)