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!