It’s that time of year again, where summer is wrapping up and all things back to school are in your face. Lucky for us homeschoolers we don’t have to do the whole new clothes and backpack and, and, and… BUT, we do have to figure out what we are going to learn for the rest of the year. No pressure.
As our family is making sure to fit in a few camping trips and outings before we get back into full homeschool mode, I’ve been working on planning for our homeschool year. Lots of reading and research and looking into new fun curriculum.
Over the past few months I’ve taken a deep dive into the works of Charlotte Mason, and I am in love. It fits our style of living so well, I can’t believe I hadn’t jumped into it sooner. Lots of great reading, nature study and short lessons?… Sign me up!
I’m still taking the eclectic approach to the Charlotte Mason style, but it’s definitely helping to guide my choices for the year. I suggest reading For the Children’s Sake to get an idea of the style, and then if it peaks your interest, there are lots of books that Charlotte wrote her self, and also this great book that kind of wraps it up into a more manageable chunk. I still want to eventually read all of Charlottes books, but my to read list is a bit long! Oh, and Laying Down the Rails by Simply Charlotte Mason is a great one too, I’m currently making my way through it.
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So, how how do you plan for the home school year?
Start with what you want to cover and see if it all fits, get rid of what doesn’t, and fill in the gaps. You can always skip things or add them in as the year progresses, but having an idea of what you want to do helps set you at ease. Some people like to plan out details like daily lesson plans, but I just get the general idea of what we are going to work on and go from there.
I may be overly ambitious since we tend to end up flying by the seat of our pants more often than not, but here’s what I’m wanting to include this year. I’ve linked as much as I can so you can check it out if anything sounds fun to you.
Language Arts
Brave Writer – We will be doing some of the Darts and also working through the Jot it Down program with both my 5th grader and 2nd grader, and just scaling it to each of their levels.
Poetry, Fables and Folk tales – We are making this part of our morning time routine and also still having a poetry tea time a few times a month in the afternoons. Some of our favorite books we use are Shel Silverstein books, Grimm’s Fairytales, and these books with a collection of poetry here, here, and here.
Copywork – I’ll be pulling copywork from books, poems, songs, whatever we are working on.
I might continue using the Good and the Beautiful Language Arts with my 2nd grader too, she has made a huge jump in her reading ability though, so we may just skip it.
I would love to introduce Shakespeare this year too! At least a little bit.
Math
For the 5th Grader: We are trying Saxon 5/4 this year. I picked this because it’s straight forward, has a lot of review mixed in with new skills, and what I think is great and should be on ALL curriculum, little notes indicating the lesson that problem was taught in.
For the 2nd Grader: We actually have a little bit of Math 1 from the Good and the Beautiful left to finish up, and then we will continue on to Math 2. The beautiful imagery and the games in this curriculum keep her interest even if she ‘doesn’t want to do math’
Social Studies
America’s History from the Tuttle Twins. If you haven’t read any of these books, give them a try! We have the whole series and are using their History curriculum this year.
We are continuing with Story of the World this year too. It might seem odd, but I think we can do both ancient history and America history and it not be conflicting. I have them both on our loop schedule.
Unit Studies
This is a big one for us. I love to dive into a subject and use it for all subjects. We usually tie our science into our unit studies too.
My favorite resource is still Harbor and Sprout. We have done a few of their unit studies and really enjoy them. You can try them out and save 10% with this link. We take about a month, sometimes more, to finish a unit. We almost never do everything in each unit, but if you do it pretty much covers all your subjects.
I just ordered another fun Harry Potter themed full year study from The Waldock Way. I’m still not 100% sure how I’m going to use this, but I know my kids are going to love that it feels like Hogwarts! I might use this as the base of our school year and add in the stuff I have planned already. Last year I got buy in from the kids by gifting them a real feather quill and parchment to write with, so I think this will be a hit.
Spanish
We started with Talk Box.Mom at the end of the school year, and really fell off practicing all summer, so we are going to dive back in this year. I really like how you just jump into talking with this program, there are no worksheets or conjugating involved. You can get $15 off your first box with this code REFW56346ZPHG .
Art
We are using the Art and Composer studies from Ambleside Online. It’s free to use and has great links and timelines. They actually offer a FULL Charlotte Mason Curriculum all laid out for free, but I decided to just pull from it along the year.
Handicrafts – I love crafts! My kids love crafts only IF it’s their idea, I’m hoping to change that this year. I want to introduce new crafts throughout the year, like watercolor painting, knitting, origami, woodwork and even metal work in the shop with dad for my oldest. They have dipped a toe into most of these, but I want to really dive in this year.
How does this all fit into our day?
The short answer is with a loop schedule. You just can’t fit it all in everyday.
I’ve planned to do our school in two chunks, Morning and Afternoon (hopefully while the 2 year old naps). In the morning I want to hit the everyday subjects like math, Spanish and our read aloud and daily language arts, copywork, our current unit study, and a subject from our morning loop. The afternoon is more for outside time, handwriting, reading, projects and our afternoon loop which has things like handicrafts, nature journaling and poetry tea time.
Notice that the only subject that is separated by student for this school year is math?
Yay for family schooling! While I am doing the math lesson with each of them, I plan to have the other doing free reading, handwriting or typing practice. Everything else we do together and adjust it to their level. This saves SO much time and sanity!
Now for the wildcard… the 2 year old. There are a few things that hold his attention long enough for us to focus with out interruption, play dough, a sensory bin with scoopable material like oats or rice, water play and sometimes coloring will buy us a short amount of time too. I like to head outside to keep him occupied too, but my big kids tend to get distracted outside, I’m hoping we can incorporate it a bit more this year.
How do we keep learning fun?
We have a STEAM co-op that we meet with each week on Fridays, so we just do the basics in the morning on Fridays and then have a fun afternoon with friends. We also plan field trips and all day outings with our homeschool group and just pickup where we left off the next day.
One more thing I try to work in regularly are games. We have so many games that have educational value in one way or another, and having a game break in between subjects is a great way to keep the spirits up. If we are off to a rough start I like to say ‘Okay, let’s do our language arts and then we can play a game before we move onto math.’ And on a really ‘don’t want to school day’ we might only read and play games, and I’m fine with that. After all, I got most of these games to sneak in some math practice.
If you are still planning for the homeschool year and want a simple tool for planning out a loop schedule I made a Homeschool Daily Checklist to make it easy for you. I list out all the daily activities I want us to do, including outside time, reading and a walk, and the Loop subjects that we do less often. Use this to check off as you go, and you can either print one for each week, or laminate it and wipe it off and start again.
On a scale of ‘every day is planned for the next year’ and ‘I’m totally winging it’ Where are you on your planning timeline? I’ve been about where I am now to winging it for sure! It’s all good at the end of the day as long as there is learning happening and you aren’t going crazy. If you want some more homeschool resource ideas you can checkout this post here.