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.
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