Plans for the year until Christmas holidays

A topic came up on a Montessori list that I thought I would think more about here than on the list: what are your plans and goals for the first half of the year?

Our first half really goes until the end of January, but Christmas break provides a nice division so I'll do it for that.

For my dd:

*French*
My plan is to help her build confidence in French reading and writing. She also needs to start a more formal grammar study. The reading will be paired reading, with us taking turns reading to each other; I've found this the best way for her to build confidence and be interested. For her writing, I'll keep using little games and really short story writing and poems for the bulk of it--she loves writing poems, so it's not some horrible thing I've inserted there. ;) I say "keep" even though she's done very little French writing in the past. (Shameful on my part, really, since French is her first language, but she reads more in English, so English writing is what she does 99.9% of the time on her own.) Once she's built up some sort of confidence, then we can look at more complicated writing. Of course, she will have some French writing tied in with her science and social studies, too.

*Math*
By Christmas, my plan is to have shown her work for the following:

• number concepts (reading and writing numerals and number words from thousandths to millions; counting by 25; counting backwards by 2, 5, 10 and 100; rounding),
• addition and subtraction (mainly problem solving, but with some estimating involving rounding; plus her tables--she has good recall of the addition, decent recall of the subtraction, both of which can be improved),
• multiplication (tables, 3-digit by 1-digit multiplication, 3-digit by 2-digit multiplication, problem solving)
• multiples, factors, composite numbers and primes

*Science*
Focus is on learning the scientific method. By Christmas, my plan is to have covered information on the scientific method and how to write up good reports, plus the topics weather, electricity, biology/zoology (classification and research an animal).

*Social Studies*
Geography is our focus this year, tying in things such as cultures, animals, habitats, etc. By Christmas, my plan is to have done general world geography (continents, oceans, seas), North America, South America, Oceania and Antarctica. (This plan is open to change if she gets really engrossed in a particular topic and isn't ready to move on.)

*Art and Music*
I don't have any specific plans here, at least not yet! She is very self-directed in these areas. I do know she wants to work on recorder, so we'll see what kind of plan the two of us can come up with.


For my ds:
*French*
Phonics and handwriting: my goal is for him to know the basic sounds of all the letters of the alphabet and be able to put together simple phonetic words. Also, just general practice for both print and cursive.

I haven't worked anything else out yet for ds! More coming later.

For the 16yo, she will be almost done her social studies, math, chemistry and the first half of her French. She will also either be half-done her CALM course or all done, depending on how she decides to go about it. I also hope that she will have read at least one decent-level book outside of her class work.

For her brother, primary goal is to get the reading and writing going strong, plus his math. For science, do things from his chemistry kit at LEAST once a week, ideally twice, plus have him working with Science for Young Catholics 7. No plan yet for social studies.

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That's it for now, although I have to say I'm enjoying the sun coming up later: my kids are sleeping later! :)