21/22 School Year Plans

 I clicked publish on my last blog post, detailing our 20/21 school year plans, then I turned my head to answer a kid's question and by the time I turned my head back, it was time to write the 21/22 post. That's seriously how it feels. Yesterday we started the 20/21 school year, this morning we started our summer break and now tomorrow we start the 21/22 year. Sam's last year of elementary school, Henry's first year of Kindergarten. Sure. Ok. Fine. It's fine. I'm fine.

I probably say this every single year, but I'm feeling especially excited to start this year! I've put a lot of work into planning and reworking things. I like to sit down at some point, not long after we start summer break, and look back over our year to find the weak spots. Then while I'm getting our curriculum and book lists in order, I can put my focus on those weak spots and try some new things. This year our big changes are in history, art and music, organization, and scheduling. I'm feeling confident about the changes I've made and I'm really looking forward to getting started!

So this year Sam will be in 5th grade, Kate in 3rd, Henry in Kindergarten, and 2 little tag along sisters. We are still homeschooling using the Charlotte Mason method, which means formal lessons start at age 6. For Sam and Kate, with summer birthdays, that meant 1st grade. Henry won't be 6 until later in the fall, so this year is Kindergarten for him, but we will do a little more structure than we have for Kindergarten in the past. I'm not following any specific curriculum for him, just piecing a few things together, starting off easy, and increasing the amount of work he does as the year goes on. 

For Sam and Kate we are still mostly using Ambleside Online, though this year I have deviated from their schedule and book list more than I ever have in the past. The biggest thing I did was remove the main history spine they use and replaced it with some of our own things. For Kate it's a lot of smaller books instead of 1 and for Sam I chose to switch to Joy Hakim's History of US series. My main goal in tweaking the history choices is to make sure they're hearing from a variety of voices. Including indigenous and Black history is important to me because indigenous and Black history is American history. Sometimes history is uncomfortable to read. Often it's ugly. I don't want to whitewash over that. 

I've also chosen our own folk songs, hymns, artists, and composers. Ambleside has some great schedules for these subjects, and they aren't always only white men, but there were some artists that I really wanted us to cover this year and I just wanted some more control over the music, hoping the kids will connect a little more than they have in the past.

I'm organizing our school things a little differently this year too. I got plastic milk crates for their binders, math books, etc. We're going to keep those in the dining room, planning on doing most of our work in there this year. Julia is not content to play somewhere where she can't see me and/or the big kids. In the dining room she (and Anna if she wants, though she's better at independent play) can color or play with play doh or puzzles while I'm doing Kindergarten work with Henry or reading with Kate. Sam largely works independently now, but he has lots of quiet places to go to after going over things with me at the table. I also got us a big dry erase/bulletin board to hang in the dining room during school time. I thought it would be nice to be able to keep our art study displayed there all week, instead of only bringing it out while we're studying it. I will also keep our weekly schedule here, and write the date, plus our composer and artist with their dates of birth. I got us the coolest lazy susan caddy to make supplies like pencils and markers easy to access at the table. It makes my school supply loving little heart so very happy.

It's so cute and colorful!

The crates are here for now and I hate it. When we put the high chair away soon though, they'll have a more tucked away corner to live in.

This marketplace purchase last year is still amazing. All of our books are here.

In the cabinet of the big shelf I have all of our math manipulatives and all of the toddler/preschool fine motor games and activities that I've put together over the years. 

I've also solidified our schedules a little bit. I kept a lot of flexibility in some of our subjects we only do weekly before, and that was fine, but it made it too easy to skip things. Making a schedule doesn't mean I can't still be flexible, but I usually do better with a firmer plan. I also made daily and weekly schedules in page protectors inside Sam and Kate's binders, so they can check things off themselves as they go. I tried this for Sam last year, but put it up in his room at his desk. I really thought he'd utilize that quiet space every day, but he didn't do even 1 minute of school work up there last year, so the schedule went unused. This year it's right inside their binders, so it will be visible for them no matter where they do their work. I've kept our weekly reading schedules the same. Not going to fix what isn't broken. I sit down on Sundays and assign a day to each reading, based on what our week looks like.

This will go on our big bulletin board.

These are in my binder alongside the attendance and book logs we need to keep to comply with the PA homeschooling laws.

Kate's schedule in her binder

Sam's schedule in his binder

Last year, after our Bible, poetry readings, and memory work during breakfast, we split up to get dressed and do chores, then met up for Swedish Drill (I've talked a little about drill before, but it's basically structured Simon Says, gross motor skills to stretch their bodies and get the wiggles out, plus good listening practice). We followed drill with some folk tale or ancient history study all together. I really loved starting our day together like that last year, so I made some more intentional plans for group reading this year. I have 2 plans from Amber over at the Heritage Mom Blog, Melanated Tales we started and loved last year, so we'll finish that up this year. The little kids especially really loved the African folk tales. I also have Amazing Africa and we'll use that for a deep dive into the continent in the 2nd half of our year. We'll also use this time to read folk tales from other cultures and biographies of interesting people from history. I'll utilize the library heavily for this, but I have some already planned and ready to go.

We'll also continue to do nature study together (I cannot even fully express my love from Exploring Nature with Children, even 3 years in now). Sam and Kate will also be doing their own nature study using a guide from Blossom and Root to plant their own garden plot. I had planned to do this with Sam last year, but it just didn't happen. I purchased the curriculum as a pdf and actually had it printed by The Homeschool Printing Company this year and I think that will make me much more likely to actually use it.

The big 2 kids have their own geography to do, their own chapters to read, their own maps to fill, but we also do some geography all together. I love this beautiful Maps book we have. It has been out every day the past week that we've been watching the Olympics, learning the flags and locations of the countries we see competing. 

We'll continue our dabbling in French together. We've mostly just been learning words and short phrases here and there, reading a few French picture books. We'll continue with that and hopefully add in a little more later in the year.

We will also continue experimenting with handicrafts together. Last year finger knitting was a huge hit. I'd like us to do more watercolors and pastels this year. Sam has also been very into whittling and wants to try some bigger projects this year.

For 5th grade this year, Sam will be studying history from the end of the 18th century, up to the start of World War I. That's a wide span of history, but this won't be his first time through so we don't need to hit absolutely everything that happened. Hoping to give him a balanced, diverse picture of the main points. He will continue mapping and entering things into his book of centuries. Last year he ended up still using our big roll out history timeline, but this year I think he's ready to move onto his own book of centuries. All of his history readings, like his readings for all of his other subjects, will be narrated either orally or on paper

For Language Arts he has literature to read and narrate, copywork, cursive practice, journal writing, grammar, studied dictation, plus he will be doing 2 written narrations per week at the beginning of the year, hopefully working up to 3 per week.

For science, Sam will continue studying Physics and Engineering, moving into human anatomy by the end of the year. He started this curriculum from Blossom and Root last year, but we went through it slowly on purpose to make it last 2 years. He's really been enjoying this and I'm glad I embraced his personal learning style and preferences last year to deviate from Ambleside's science. This is such a good fit for him.

We are continuing with Horizons for Math, typing.com for typing (he really loved this last year!), and Getting Started With Latin. He only dipped a baby toe into Latin last year and we're feeling ready to get more into it this year. He also has drawing practice, piano practice, and weekly recitation. His crate is much more full that Kate's or Henry's. Our one binder system has worked great up until now, but last year his binder just about exploded, so this year he has a 5 subject notebook for written narrations. His binder will still have space for copywork, blank maps, math drill sheets, and blank paper for recording his science experiments and labs. Journaling is new for us this year. Everybody is excited about it so far because I let them get any notebook they wanted for it. Yes, even characters. If Mario and Luigi on the cover will get Sam excited about journal writing, I am here. for. it.

For 3rd grade, Kate is focusing on the 15th and 16th century. We're taking a new approach and using several different shorter books with pictures. I think this is going to be a good fit for Kate and it's going to help us read a wider variety of perspectives from this time. She will continue narrating orally only, mapping, and recording events on our big roll out timeline.

Kate's Language Arts will be reading and narrating literature, copywork, cursive work, and journaling. Kate is reading really well these days, so a big goal for her this year will be to start doing a few readings on her own. 

For science, in addition to our group nature study and her garden plot with Sam, Kate is studying animals and habitats. She'll also be using Drop of Water to do some fun kitchen experiments and learn some basic water science. She's excited about this because she remembers when Sam did the experiments.

Kate will also be using Horizons for math, we've been so happy with it so far. She will have weekly recitation, piano practice, and drawing practice as well. Her binder has space for copywork, blank maps, math drill sheets, and blank paper for making any extra notes or drawings for drawn narrations or geography lessons.

My Kindergarten plan for Henry is pretty simple. Phonics, math, some basic copywork, lots of nature study, tons of reading. He already knows how to write all of the letters and knows several of their sounds, so we are on our way to more regular copywork and early stages of reading. We'll start the year playing games to solidify all of the letter sounds before moving on to blends and starting to fill his word notebook and read some simple readers. I used Discover Reading with Kate and loved it so much. I am very excited to use it again with Henry. He's very excited too which is the most important thing for sure! I am going to focus on multicultural picture books for him this year, loosely using Beautiful Feet's Read Around the World program and our library. For the first half of the year we'll just read, but after Christmas I'm going to have him try orally narrating a couple times a week since he'll be 6. I'm excited because Kindergarten is exciting, but also because so far the hardest part of homeschooling has always been the kids who aren't actually doing school work. Henry starting school this year is one less non school kid to keep track of during school hours and that's no small milestone in this house!

So there we go! As always, I expect this to change and evolve quite a bit as the year goes on, but I feel confident and ready to start our year with these plans as they are. We are hoping to get some more field trips in, as safe as we can, this year. We've really missed them the last year and a half. We're getting back into extra curricular activities this year too. We are having a nice summer, but the thought of structure and planned activities and routines is so attractive to me right now! Can't wait to dive in to what will surely be another wonderful school year!

2020/2021 School Plans!

 August is my New Years. I've said it before here. I feel much more of a 'fresh start' feeling in August than I ever do on January 1st. This year, in this strange, pandemic induced, groundhog day sort of limbo we're in, August is feeling like even more of a fresh start than normal. Our final term of school last year, while nowhere near as disrupted as non-homeschoolers, was kind of an anxious mess and we hurriedly finished school 2 weeks earlier than originally planned with a gigantic sigh of relief. I threw myself into making the summer count, despite knowing it wouldn't look anything like the summers we're used to. We did it up big. Movies every afternoon, so many nights up past bedtime, camping both in the yard and at an actual campsite, loooots of marshmallows, ice cream sundaes, bubbles, hours in the pool, baking, obstacle courses in the yard, hiking. By the time we made it to August, I was feeling pretty tired and desperate for a routine, and I don't think I was alone. 

Falling back into our school routine always feels good after a summer of no (or at least less) routine. This year though, it feels like taking a stand and establishing ourselves. Okay Covid World. Let's do this. This is what our days will look like this fall and winter. We are ready. Let's do this. We know our local, not overly populated hiking trails. We know how to work the library's curbside system. We've got our masks when/if we need to go out in public. Let's go.

On top of those feelings, I'm feeling so excited for this school year because I'm changing up aspects of our curriculum. Some things I have changed or added to in order to make sure the history my kids are getting is less whitewashed and Euro-centric. I am so grateful for the homeschool bloggers, FB groups, and friends out there also on this journey that have helped me find such awesome books to enrich our schooling and bring more truth into everything we're learning. 

I also reminded myself that Ms. Charlotte Mason herself said, "Children are born persons." Not, "Children are born ready to slot into the curriculum you choose and stay there fitting happily for the rest of their school career, happily followed by each of their siblings in the same exact way." First of all, that's nowhere near as snappy and second of all, how silly is that? Of course kids are going to change and be different from one another. So, remembering that my children (namely Sam in this case) were born persons, I decided to veer off from our usual science plans and found something that looks more interesting to him while still fitting in with our family's philosophy on education.

Now, without further ado, here's our round up of school plans for this year! For reference: Sam just turned 9 and is in 4th grade, Kate is just about to turn 7 and is in 2nd grade, Henry is 4 and considered 'pre-k', Anna is almost 3 and considered 'preschool', and Julia is 9 months old. Only Sam and Kate are formally schooling this year. In this post I talk about what we do for preschool thru Kindergarten.

4th Grade

We are still largely using Ambleside Online as our main curriculum. I am substituting some free reads and have incorporated some different history spines into our schedule to make sure we are getting a full picture. Some of these history books I will later begin in 1st grade, so to catch Sam and Kate up to the sections I've marked off for 2nd and 4th, we are reading the parts marked for 1st in the morning before splitting up to individual tasks. One of these books is Turtle Island: The Story of North America's First People by Eldon Yellowhorn and Kathy Lowinger, another is African Beginnings by James Haskins and Kathleen Benson. African Beginnings is the first book in a series that we will use coordinating with that grade's history period, Turtle Island is a longer book and I will use different portions for different years. We are also flipping through Joy Hakim's The History of US series as we do our other history readings. It's important to me that we read as much of an unbiased history as we can, but also be able to point out and call out biases when we do come across them. As part of his history instruction this year, Sam will begin keeping a Book of Centuries, marking well known people and events under the appropriate time.

We are still using copywork for handwriting practice and learning sentence structure and basic grammar. I found copywork books on Amazon this year that Sam and Kate have so far been enjoying. When those run out I'll go back to writing out sentences or short passages from other school books or poetry for them to copy. Sam already knows cursive, but prints his copywork. I have cursive practice books that he will start using later in the year to keep those skills sharp. I don't like to introduce everything in the very beginning of the year. We hold off on some things until Christmas or after. 

New for Sam this year is more formal grammar instruction. We are using grammar cards from The Good and the Beautiful and will also start playing Mad Libs later this year to work on those skills.

Horizons is still our math curriculum of choice. We are doing it a year behind so that we match up with when Horizons stops their math levels and I want to start Teaching Textbooks for higher math. However, we've been going through lessons fairly quickly, so we may skip ahead a little and start a split year. Half the year a year back, half the year on 'grade level'. We'll see how that goes.

Sam is starting some very basic Latin this year. He is pretty excited about this since he is so interested in science and animals. He has been telling me all of the Latin words he already knows so I can't wait to see how he does with this program. Getting Started With Latin comes highly recommended by other homeschool families.

For Geography, in addition to reading through the scheduled lessons in Elementary Geography and Charlotte Mason's Geography and mapping his other readings, Sam will be starting map drills this year. When I ordered The Good and the Beautiful's grammar cards, they came with a set of geography cards as well so we will use those as well as geography games from Seterra.

We'll continue with our recitation rotation of a Psalm, a passage from the Old Testament, a passage from the New Testament, and a poem to work on public speaking skills, memorization, and reading fluency. We'll also be adding in studied dictation this year. I've typed out some short-ish passages, one per week. Sam will read each passage carefully throughout the week and then will copy it down as I read it every Friday. We'll use this to make up spelling lists and to further work on grammar. 

For science and nature study this year, I've pre-ordered the 4th grade science and nature study from Blossom and Root. We haven't received the actual curriculum yet, but have purchased the books to go with it (it's a Charlotte Mason based program, so of course there's a good stack of books!) and Sam has been poring over them in his free time. He'll be studying engineering and anatomy and his nature study will be yearlong care of his own garden plot. We can't wait to get the curriculum and dive into that!

He is going to continue working through Art for Kids: Drawing and he has asked for a simple Dover drawing book for fun/extra practice.

The biggest hit for Sam after finishing our first week of school seems to be typing. He's been showing some interest in the computer after using so much Zoom all spring and summer, so I figured now was a good time for him to learn how to use it. We're just using the free program on typing.com (which I can't link to because the site is undergoing maintenance until Sunday. I'll come back to edit and link on Sunday if I remember!) It's simple and so far so good!

2nd Grade

Kate is also using mostly Ambleside Online with the same history modifications, just tailored to the period of time she's in right now. I'm also using Exploration and Conquest by Betsy Maestro because it presents a more balanced view of white people coming to North America than the books already scheduled. She is going to continue with her personal life timeline to work on better grasp of the passage of time, but midway through the year she will start marking historic events and notable people on our roll out timeline already begun by Sam.

Kate is capable of reading well, but struggles with the confidence to make her a very fluent reader. So we're using phonics cards from The Good and the Beautiful and a movable alphabet (there are some beautiful wooden ones on Etsy, but due to financial restraints, we have a foam and magnetic version found on Amazon). We also use Banagrams tiles for word building. I want to spend the beginning of the year reviewing all of the rules she already knows and then work on confidence reading simple picture books and chapter books together. She read Psalm 23 in its entirety just this morning for her weekly recitation and needed very little help. There's a fluent reader inside her, we just need to coax it out this year.

She will also be doing a copywork book I found and then copying things I've written out for her once the book is completed. Handwriting Without Tears sells great primary lined paper for handwriting practice and I like their workbooks too for extra practice. Kate will be using their beginner cursive book later on this year.

Kate's geography will also be from Elementary Geography, Charlotte Mason's Geography, and mapping her readings. We will also work on filling in a few blank maps to help her learn all of the continents, oceans, and states.

She is going to use a Dover drawing book for drawing practice, we just haven't picked which one yet!

Last year Kate memorized a poem each term for recitation, but as her reading improves, she'll move into the same recitation rotation as Sam (with her own passages) reading weekly out loud from her recitation folder.

All Together

We will be continuing our routine of Bible reading, devotions, prayers, poetry, and memory work all together over breakfast as well as our art and music study over lunch. For music study we will loosely follow Ambleside's scheduled hymn, folk song, and composer studies, but will substitute sometimes to make sure we're presenting a diverse field, same for our art study. Right now they look at our current art study on my computer while listening to the music. I read them artist and musician bios, but keep it brief. The main point right now is appreciation. Sam and Kate are also going to make their way through Alfred's beginner piano book for kids. We started it last year, but then abandoned it when end of pregnancy and then baby and then pandemic (yikes) just got to be way too much.

We have been slowly working through Cherrydale Press' French together. It's simple and very basic, conversational French. The have suggestions for more advanced instruction later on, but for now this works. We will also listen to French songs for children on YouTube.

Sam does have his own specific nature study this year, but he will still participate in our family nature study. We follow Exploring Nature with Children which has a different theme for every week of the year. We read the blurb in the main book, borrow books from the library that are on theme, and bring our focus to the theme while we're playing outside or hiking that week, marking notable finds in our nature journals.

Some handicrafts we are planning on doing together this year are continuing with Paper Sloyd, sewing practice, watercolor, pastels, soap carving, and finger knitting.

This year I purchased an African Folktales curriculum from Heritage Mom Blog and all of the beautiful books on the booklist she includes. We are reading through those together in the mornings.

We still begin our days with Swedish Drill (basically structured Simon Says). I've thought about moving it to after school, but it just works so well to get us started.

I have played around a little bit with how I schedule things this year. Sam will be more responsible for keeping track of his own tasks. I'm keeping his weekly task sheet, as well as the daily and weekly task sheets I keep for both of them in page protectors so I can just mark things off with a dry erase marker and then start fresh each week. I still keep the scheduled readings in my binder along with our attendance sheets and book logs.

This year I tried to organize and freshen up our collection of quiet baby/toddler/preschooler activities to try and give us a smoother year. I want to very strongly emphasize that I do not do any of these activities with my little guys. I still very firmly believe in staying pretty hands off until they're 6. But these are some fun activities that make them feel like they're part of our morning. I've made most of them with scraps from the recycling bin and my ideas are 100% from Pinterest. We're only a week in, but so far everything I've pulled out has been well received and helpful in buying me at least a little bit of time.

And where do I keep all of this? I change that up every year it feels like, but this year feels like the most streamlined our school things have ever been! I found this bookshelf/cabinet combo on FB Marketplace last weekend and it fits all of our stuff, plus looks pretty! I have been loving not only having everything in just one spot, but also having everything easily accessible by the kids so I don't always have to be the one fetching everything (but the 2 littlest girls can't quite open the heavy magnet cabinet doors, which is also a win!)

I think that's about it! Our first week has gone really well and I am so excited to learn alongside these kids this year. 

(Hopefully) Helpful Homeschooling Resources

With more schools and businesses closing their doors everyday in attempts to slow the spread of COVID-19, families everywhere are being thrown out of their usual routine in a time of heightened anxiety. I know that personally, my anxiety feeds off of a disrupted routine and I know that I am not alone in this. I want to share today how we structure our day as homeschoolers, as well as a list of free resources that I love and social media accounts that I have found helpful in our homeschooling journey, in an effort to hopefully help some people out there navigate their new normal for the next several weeks. 

Before I start, I do want to be sure to say that I don't think you have to come up with a plan at all. Some people I know will be happier to take things day by day as far as any structured learning activities and others will be happier just enjoying a nice long spring break. I don't think there are any right or wrong answers in this situation, and think that different families will all have different ways of coping that work best for them. But if you are looking for some structure or ideas for a plan, I hope this helps!

First I'll share what a typical homeschooling day with no outside of the house activities looks like for us. We don't have a set schedule exactly, but more like a loose outline. It's too hard for us to stick to an actual schedule because babies and toddlers complicate things, but an outline at least gives the bigger kids a sense of what's going to come next. I have found that the more you try to structure your day like a typical non-homeschool school day, the more you will frustrate yourself. There are so many disruptions and distractions when schooling at home, it's just easier to stay flexible! 

We start our school day over breakfast. For us it's an easy way to get some reading done without too many interruptions since everybody is occupied eating! We do poetry, Bible, and memory work at this time, but any reading out loud would be an easy thing to do. After breakfast we clean up, get dressed, AM chores, all that good stuff.

Once everybody is dressed and chores are done and the baby is either down for a nap or up for a nap and fed (depends on the day right now because we are at the mercy of the 4 month sleep regression) we start our big chunk of school time. We always start with a gross motor activity because it's really hard to go from playing with your toys in your own house to doing schoolwork immediately. We do something called Swedish Drill which is basically a formal Simon Says, but in the past we've done freeze dance, stretching, skipping around the room or house, or red light green light across the room. 

Once we are finished some sort of movement, we settle into the sit down work. I have out puzzles, books, or sometimes a fine motor activity for the little guys (I have a whole post about homeschooling preschoolers and toddlers, check that out here), but mostly they just play. I try to alternate independent work and one on one work with the big kids, but sometimes they'll need to wait for me and then they go play. 

The breakdown usually looks like this:

-Phonics lesson with Kate/Sam copywork and 1 independent reading

-Kate copywork/Sam narrate independent reading and 1 reading and narration together

-Kate reading and narration together/Sam math lesson (we go over it together first) and mapwork, history timeline, nature journaling, or drawing

-Kate math lesson (go over together first and map, timeline, nature journaling, or drawing/Sam reading and narration together

-Repeat same sort of thing for whatever is left

Over lunch is when we often do music and art appreciation study and in the afternoon we do more crafty things or go outside or nothing structured and just play. 

Everything we do follows our curriculum, but there are some aspects of it that could be easily adapted for temporary homeschooling. In particular:

Copywork- We start copywork with just the alphabet. I write it out on primary lined paper and they copy it out slowly and neatly underneath. Then we move up to words and eventually sentences. I pick the sentences from their poetry books, but you could choose them from any books. Sam right now either does copywork that I have chosen or he chooses a couple lines from one of his books and copies them straight out of the book. When he's doing copywork that I have chosen and already written, he covers a few words at a time with an index card as he writes them down. This helps him with spelling. Copywork helps with handwriting obviously, but also sentence structure and punctuation without having to really drill it. Next year Sam will start studied dictation, which is something else that could easily be used in a temporary situation. I will choose a short passage from one of his books and he will have the week to read over it and get to know it (including punctuation) and then at the end of the week he will write it out as I slowly read it. Any misspelled words will go onto a spelling list and any missed punctuation will be highlighted and worked on.

Narration- Our curriculum is literature based, so we don't have textbooks. I read out loud from a history, science, geography, etc book and afterwards they orally narrate back to me what I read to them. The science behind narration boils down to the fact that telling information back after hearing it helps lock it into your brain. Sometimes for fun they'll do a drawn narration. Next year Sam will start written narrations. It's sort of a gradual lead into learning to write essays. It can be done with any book that you read to them or that they read to themselves. It's a really good brain exercise for everybody! Sometimes when I'm reading a heavier book I challenge myself to narrate it back to myself. It's hard! But it really does lock the information in there and makes your brain work in a different way while you read, organizing everything. I try not to ask any leading questions before they narrate. Just simply, "Can you tell that back to me?" or, "What can you tell me about what we/you just read?"

Mapping and timeline- Keeping a big map and a history timeline is a really fun accompaniment to any reading that you're doing. A timeline especially (we use a big long piece of paper, but you could just use any notebook with each page showing a hundred years) is super interesting! It's cool (and often surprising!) to see which historical figures actually existed at the same time. After we read something about any historical figure or event, we write it on our timeline and mark it on a map. Just a good way for kids to get an idea of some basic geography and a sense of how the passage of time works. Before we start the history timeline (end-ish of 2nd grade-ish), we do a personal timeline and they just mark what things happened in their own life in what years.

The advisory board who created the curriculum that we use created an emergency curriculum plan several years ago, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It has many free resources and ideas for homeschooling through an abnormal season of life. I'll link it here.

https://amblesideonline.org/HELP.shtml

Some other great resources:

Librivox- free audiobook versions of a lot of titles, particularly older books.

Libby- app that connects to your library system so you can borrow e-books and audiobooks

https://www.myteachingstation.com/ - good resource for printable worksheets. I like to laminate them or put them in a plastic page protector so the kids can use a dry erase marker and use them multiple times

Hoffman Academy- online piano lessons. Their full program costs money, but they do have a free program as well. 

https://afterthoughtsblog.net/2016/07/beginning-swedish-drill-videos.html - this is a blog post that explains the Swedish Drill (structured Simon Says) that we use to start our school day

Some social media accounts that I like following for inspiration and ideas (most are on both Instagram and Facebook) I'm going to type their names with spaces to make them easier to read, but on Instagram obviously you'd need to take the spaces out:

TheDadLab

Play at Home Mom

Modern Miss Mason

Learning Well

Charlotte Mason IRL

Home Ed Printables

The Conscious Kid

Read Aloud Revival

A couple other companies offering free resources right now (I think there are a lot more, but these are 2 that I've heard of today that I can vouch for)

Raddish Kids

Logic of English they are putting out a series of new videos in the next few days that will be free for the duration of all of the closures

Pinterest is also a wealth of information and ideas. Craft ideas, fine motor skills ideas, printables. I have quite a lot of homeschooling related pins on my Pinterest organized into boards by subject. You should be able to find me on there just by searching my name!

Here are a couple other blog posts I've written about our own homeschooling journey.

Our Daily Routine at the End of 2018

'18/'19 School Plans

How We Homeschool Preschool 

What's Working and What's Not

Homeschooling Looks Like

Lastly, if I can, I want to offer some slightly more personal advice. Don't stress yourself out about it. There's going to be a different dynamic between you and your kids than there is between them and a teacher. There's going to be more tension and awkwardness because the whole world is tense and awkward right now and kids are feeding off of that. It's really okay to stop a math lesson smack in the middle because you're at each other's throats. It's okay to leave it for later that day and it's also okay to leave it for another day. It's okay to say, "This just isn't working today." and go outside instead. Or watch a movie. It's okay if that movie is a Nat Geo documentary, but it's also okay if it's not. It's okay if you have a schedule and stick to it and it's also okay if you just leave books and paper around your house and let them do with it what they will. And it's okay if you do both of those things over the course of a week. Homeschooling your kids, whether it's for a month or for 13 years, gets to look like whatever you want and need it to look like.

I'm here to talk anytime ♡

'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!