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 ♡