The Pechan Adventure Academy

The books and other curricular items are packed and ready to be shipped to the boat, but there was one last thing I had to do before we leave.

For California, if you wish to homeschool your children, you must file a Private School Affidavit with the CDE (CA dept of education). This exempts the kids from the attendance laws for the state and will allow us to operate as our own educational institution. So, with the final submission of the forms (easy and all online), the Pechan Adventure Academy was born.  Yes, our school consists of only three students, but at least we are all legit as far as the state and school district are concerned.

The usual filing date is October 1st each year, however, since we will miss August and September, I submitted the form this month to have us covered. Then, when October rolls around, I will re-submit the form to cover us for the remainder of the school year. All of the details are provided in the link above, or feel free to send us an email for more info.

Being as I am a teacher for the district, I had an easier time determining what we would use for curriculum. I chose to follow the same state standards and will use the same programs (with some supplementing, of course) so that when the kids re-enter in the future, they will be familiar with what their peers are using. Here is what the kids will be using:

Math: MY Math for grades 3 and 5, and Big Ideas for 6th grade.

(2018-2019 school year: grades 4 MY Math and Singapore Math. Grades 6 & 7 Big Ideas Math, Singapore Math.

Science: we will follow the NGSS standards (no textbooks for the NGSS yet), have a lot of hands-on science activities, as well as STEAM integration. We will also be participating in a few citizen science projects.

Language Arts: Benchmark for grades 3 and 5, and Study Sync for 6th grade.
(2018-2019 school year: Benchmark for grade 4 combined with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for grades 4/5, and 6. Grade 7 is using an integration of online curriculum such as Big History Project and Study Sync.

Social Studies: Scott Foresman for grades 3 and 5, and Study Sync for 6th grade.
*In our district, 6th grade has a CORE class consisting of ELA and History. Study Sync incorporates both.
(2018-2019 school year: Scott Foresman grade 4, Ancient Civilizations supplemental curriculum for grades 6 & 7, as well as Study Sync.

Foreign Language: Duolingo (a great app and lots of fun) as well as interacting with people we meet on a daily basis.

I have quite the collection of supplemental materials in my classroom library. I plan to bring these along to use when appropriate (and will write about them in separate posts).