There has been sort of a break at ChildAndMe. We’ve been busy. No, not just with holidays (that are too much of a distraction as well). I am finally taking more organized approach to our learning – defining categories and trying to approach every subject more thoroughly.

Well, our new approach is this: I finally defined the categories that we are learning.
If you want to cut down to the chase, then follow this link to the list of subjects/categories we are currently working on: My Categories.
This is a link to a word file that has all of them ready to be printed (or modified for your own use, if you find this helpful): You can find the word files with category names here: English Category names, Russian Category names.

Some of those categories we are trying to cover every week – reading, writing, math. Others – we take one at a time. So, at the beginning of the week, we pick a category to learn (actually, a week or even a few weeks before, to get the materials ready in advance) and study it for the whole week. In my records, I organize learning units: materials, toys, books, dvds, websites, projects that can be useful that can help us learn a particular topic (unit) of that subject. So, if my son decided that next week he wants Astronomy, I just look into my records and pick a topic (next unit from that category): Solar System. Now we’ll be reading books about our solar system, playing games about solar system, watching cartoons about it, etc. Sometimes I pick the subject: “We are going to the theater at the end of the week, so let’s pick Drama this week as our subject!” Sometimes it is based on materials: “Ouch, library is out of the books that I need and the ones I purchased haven’t arrived yet… let’s leave this category for the following week and concentrate on another one this time.”

To make it even more fun, I printed out the names of categories on the small cards that I keep in a special box, and we display our week’s subject on the fridge. Having card with category names makes it easier for my son to select what subject he wants to learn this week. Every time we finish a week for every subject, I replace this card into another box, to avoid learning one subject for a month, and forgetting about another for a year. This way, we can study this subject again, once we go through every other one on the list.

You can find the word files with category names here: English Category names, Russian Category names.

Please check out our Encyclopedic Knowledge section for presentations and materials for various subjects.

So, here are the categories that we are trying to cover (I’ll be adding the links to the pages with materials for each category, as I create these pages over time):

Subjects for Every Week (Ideally – all of them should be done every day)

Русский язык – Russian Language
Русская Литература – Russian Literature
English
Spanish
Math
Practical Life
Sensorial
Physical Excellence

Subject of the Week: (one from this list for the entire week)

Art
Anatomy
Astronomy
Puzzles, Constructors, Brain Teasers
Botany
Chemistry
Dramma
Geography
Geology: Rock Cycle; Timeline
History
Music listening
Music performance
Physics
Zoology