August Bullet Journal Spreads!

I don't know about anybody else, but I swear July never even happened. How is it almost over? Honestly, our July wasn't great. We still managed to get plenty of fun in there, but there were a lot of bad days with illnesses, poison ivy, and car troubles. No wonder it went by in such a blur. Normally, it's my favorite month of the year, but right now I'm feeling ready for a fresh start (and also really excited about starting school again!) so bring on August!

I got to sit down when I had breaks in my day yesterday and today to do my bullet journal spreads for the upcoming month! It's been almost two years now that I've been 'bullet journaling' and I keep waiting for a month where I'm kinda over it and don't do my pages, but it hasn't happened yet! I look forward to and love the days at the end of one month when I sit down and get ready for the new month! I shared back in January what a bullet journal is and how I set mine up for the year. You can find that here. But today I just wanted to share what my pages for August ended up looking like! I've tweaked things here and there since I shared pictures last and I know lots of people are always curious to peek inside bullet journals, so here you go!

This is the first year I've done a habit tracker and I love it so much. Often by the end of the month I'm not great at keeping up with actually filling in the little square (sometimes I am, but there have been months that I'm not), but just knowing this list exists helps me stay on top of these things!

My cleaning schedule tracker is different now than it was in January. What I had been doing before just looked cluttered and wasn't helpful. This tracker (and the schedule itself!) is working great! Our budget page stays the same. It's just the best way I've found to 'Dave Ramsey' the way James gets paychecks.

Monthly menu and shopping list has stayed the same. I started the year though just using the shopping list page to write out the things I needed for the dinners I had written on the menu. I now put my whole list on this page, not just dinners, because it makes it easier to write out into an organized way in the smaller notebook I take grocery shopping.

Monthly calendar pages still the same. Love this layout, especially the spot for future planning since I don't always have the next month's pages done to jot down events as they come up. This works great for me.

2nd or 3rd incarnation of weekly spreads this year and I think I've finally found 'the one'. I like how simple it is and that the whole week is one page, but I have plenty of room to fill in each days' tasks.

And just some fun pages to show how I also keep other types of lists in here, as needed 🙂 I never make these kinds of pages very fancy, just a little doodle or two if I feel like it. I usually end up with 2 or 3 list or planning pages like this at the end of each month's group of pages. I like doing it this way, rather than keeping my lists grouped together elsewhere (or just in a different notebook entirely) because the lists usually pertain to the specific month they're following after. 

And that's all folks! This all took maybe an hour, at the very most and was split up into little chunks of time here and there over 2 days. It's so enjoyable for me to do it that it doesn't ever feel like a lot of work so I wouldn't even mind if it took longer!

Hope this satisfied your curiosity if bullet journals are something that you're into! Happy Almost August!

'18/'19 School Plans!

I don't exactly know how it's already gotten to be time to talk about our plans for the upcoming school year, but here we are! We still won't start for a few weeks, but I've been getting all of my planning and organizing underway because 1- I love it and 2- I can enjoy the next several weeks of summer a whole lot more without school prep work hanging over my head!

So Sam is going into *2nd* grade. Doesn't that just sound so old? I remember 2nd grade so clearly! *Insert every cliche about feeling old and how fast time is moving here*, but I'm so excited for this year with him! His reading has really taken off in the last 6 months and this school year is going to be a whole different ballgame! We will be continuing to implement Charlotte Mason's methods and will continue to use AmblesideOnline as our main curriculum. This year Sam will be in year 2.

Kate will technically be going into Kindergarten, but we do not do much formal schooling prior to 1st grade. The 2nd half of last year she was becoming more interested in sit down schoolwork, and she's been chomping at the bit to learn to read so I may structure her days some more later on, possibly after Christmas. For now, she and Henry will be listening in when they want and I'll have my usual preschool/kindergarten activities to pull out when they want to 'do school'. For more on how we homeschool preschool, go here.

In year 2, we'll be continuing with some books from last year, mostly for history, as well as adding in some new titles. Here's our book stack!

I didn't include any of the "free read" selections from the book list, but I am very excited to track Sam's free reading this year with how much he reads on his own now!

In addition to our daily readings, each of which will be orally narrated (or sometimes drawn and orally narrated) back to me, each day we'll have: math, copywork, Bible, memory work, poetry, reading, drill, and French. Weekly we'll have: hymn study, folk song, composer study, art study, drawing, nature study, geography, handicrafts, timeline, and piano. Depending on how piano goes, that might change to daily or every other day. A month or so into the year we will be adding cursive practice in with regular copywork.

Since Sam can read fluently, we don't really need to a reading program. I have this book, Discover Reading, which guides teaching reading the way Charlotte Mason did in her schools, and I might do some of the activities from the end of it with Sam, but he's mostly beyond all of it now. Reading out loud at least part of one of his readings each day, plus the 10 minutes of free reading out loud he already does daily will be his reading "curriculum". We are happy still staying a year "behind" with Horizons math since it seems to be a fairly accelerated program. Handwriting Without Tears will be what we use for cursive writing instruction. The Pictures in Cursive book is just extra because I really liked it 😉

Last year I feel like one area in which we were really lacking was our nature study. So this year, in an attempt to be more intentional, we'll be using Exploring Nature with Children by Lynn Seddon. It references the Handbook included in our AO curriculum so it's a great fit! I'm very excited! This will be for everybody, not just Sam!

We'll be learning French without a set program. Last year we were slowly compiling a list of French words that we knew, reviewing them all at lunchtime and adding a new one every now and then. We also started reading an English/French picture book which everybody loved! This year we'll be continuing all of that, plus reading more French picture books, and listening to French stories and fables on YouTube. As we get better, we'll work at translating what we listen to together and I will ask Sam for short, simple narrations in French after listening. 

Ambleside Online provides a scheduled art study for each school year. We study 6 pieces by 1 artist per term and spend 2 weeks on each piece. This year I compiled them all into a photo book. Our art study is still very simple. We'll look at that week's picture and talk about it. The 2nd week I'll give them a couple minutes to look at it, and then take it away and ask them to describe it to me. I'll usually read a short bio of the artist as well.

For memory work this year, we'll be using the memory box method found here on Simply Charlotte Mason. This will involve everybody because we do memory work over breakfast.

For recitation, Sam will have a Psalm, 6 verses from the Old Testament, 6 verses from the New Testament, a poem of his choosing, and a hymn per term to read out loud to all of us. The goal isn't to memorize, but a lot of it will likely end up memorized! He will recite just once a week for about 5-10 minutes, so he won't recite all of these each week.

For year 2, we study one poet per term and the poems for each term are available on the website. I printed them out and put them in a report cover just to make life a little easier. We do our scheduled poetry reading over breakfast.

We are still working on a personal timeline, to gain a better understanding of the passing of time, but we may also begin a simple history timeline part of the way through the year. In the later years of this curriculum, we will keep a detailed history timeline and later a book of centuries, but we won't take on this huge project just yet. We had fun starting Sam's personal timeline last year! I'm thinking around Christmastime (or earlier depending on how the year is going) I will put a fold out timeline in this section of Sam's binder so we can start entering some names and dates from our readings here and there.

I will continue to write out selections from our readings or poetry in Sam's binder for his copywork. His handwriting improved tremendously last year doing copywork and I'm looking forward to seeing how this year goes!

We will listen to a different hymn and folk song each month. Everybody really loved the folk songs especially last year. We don't do anything special with this, just listen. Sometimes some of them like to dance while they listen, sometimes we just sit quietly and listen, sometimes we listen while doing other work, sometimes while eating. The folk songs are pretty easy to pick up over the course of the month, so we're usually singing along eventually!

AO provides a scheduled composer study similar to the art study. We study 6 pieces by 1 composer each term, 2 weeks per piece. I usually read the composer's bio and we just listen at some point during our day. If I can find a video on YouTube of the piece actually being played we definitely watch that!

Handicrafts is another area I felt we needed to beef up this year. Finger knitting and soap carving are 2 high on our list this year. We'll also be trying our hands at paper sloyd using this free e-book. Sam is mostly excited to learn to fold paper into an envelope.

We have a geography reading once a week and we'll also be working on filling in several blank maps I've printed.

For piano we're going to be doing free online lessons with Hoffman Academy. We don't have a piano so the frequency of this will depend on how often we can use my parents' piano or if we get our own piano (or, more likely, keyboard). Just Sam will be learning to play piano, but everybody will be doing some singing lessons following the Children of the Open Air channel on YouTube.

For drawing I'll be getting Sam another Dover drawing book. He really loved the one he used last year. His drawing skills improved a ton and it absolutely helped his handwriting as well. I also want him to start some brush drawing instruction. YouTube has some great tutorials.

Drill is new for us this year. Charlotte Mason used Swedish Drill in her schools for both phys. ed. and cultivating the habit of attention. It's basically more structured Simon Says using movements that improve gross motor skills. It looks so fun. This blog has been really helpful figuring it all out!

Reading over everything I've just typed makes me realize this probably comes off as looking like a lot of work and very overwhelming! I feel like now is a good time to drop the reminder that Charlotte Mason advocated for nice, short lessons at this stage. This curriculum is very rich and full, but it isn't time consuming!

I take the term schedules from the Ambleside site and put them into my own, weekly schedules. I tweaked the template I used last year a bit.

Before starting a new term I sit down with this and input the readings for each week, as well as the scheduled hymn, folk song, art study, etc. and print the whole term (so, 12 weeks) to keep in my binder.

So that's Sam! Like I said earlier, Kate won't really being doing anything formal, but she will end up being a part of so much of Sam's work! I will also be intentionally reading quality books to her and to Henry (using the "year 0" booklist on the Ambleside site, as well as the books in our copy of "Before Five in a Row"), and we'll be starting at the beginning of Discover Reading. She already has a good grasp on a lot of basic math just from life, but I may begin the Horizons K book with her in the spring if she seems to want to.

Bits of our K and preschool "plan". I bought both Kate and Henry their own dry erase board this year. I use one to write important names or details when I'm reading to Sam, to help with his narration, and everybody always fights over it when I'm finished. So now Henry and Kate can scribble away on their own boards and not fight over mine!

All of our school stuff is still kept in what used to be our front coat closet, away from little hands 😉 I still use our 3 tiered rolling cart to hold the books and supplies we use most, but it still isn't safe for it to be left out although now that's less because of Henry and more because of Anna! 

The white shelf holds some free reads, nature journals, field guides, and some little art kits.

Construction paper in the front magazine holder, easily accessible for whenever anybody wants to draw a picture. Behind the nature treasures box is a crate holding paints and colored pencils, another crate with the zippered pouches that have little fine motor games for my preschoolers, and then coloring and sticker books. Above that are reference books, books for future school years, our binders, and the drawers have index cards, stickers, brads, staples, etc. The shelf above that has my two bins for sensory activities. One bin of tools (tongs, scoops, cups, etc) and one bin of materials (beans, pom poms, popsicle sticks, beads, etc)

Math manipulatives on the bottom, all of our books currently being used in the middle, mishmash of frequently used supplies on top.

Flash cards, early readers, glue, scissors, writing utensils. I keep things in jars so I can easily just grab a jar and take it to the desk with me.

This is in our dining room. In the basket to the right I keep my Bible, our kids devotional, and poetry books since that's all reading that we do during breakfast. I'll put our scripture memory box here when it is finished as well.

And that's our plan! Of course it will evolve and shift a lot over the coming months, but I feel confident that the bones of it will work great for us and will stay as is. I feel so incredibly blessed to be able to do this. It is a privilege to get to stay home with my kids and do this, a privilege that I am very grateful for!