Home Schooling Journey
We jumped into homeschooling this year and I quickly took a deep dive into the work and life of Charlotte Mason, an English educator who lived and taught around the turn of the twentieth century. I had heard of and read about the Montessori and Waldorf philosophies but I had never heard of Charlotte Mason’s methods. If you’re interested in learning more, I suggest starting here and if you want to take a deep dive (like I did) then check out this podcast series that I found informative.
I am NO expert, but after reading and listening - the big ideas that I plan on weaving into our school day are:
Exposing my kids to a wealth of topics and subjects in short lessons (20 minutes or so)
Getting outside a bunch
Incorporating a ton of classic literature to all of my kids
Reading aloud alot
Introducing my oldest (10) to a wealth of topics that I hadn’t considered before, like Shakespeare and Greek Mythology
Considering what Mason referred to as living books to be the spine (the main text) of a subject matter as opposed to a written prescribed curriculum or textbook
Incorporating copy work
Investing time into reading and discussing poetry in a big way
Spending time defining best effort with each kiddo.
Encouraging my kids to memorize classic texts and poetry.
My research brought me to Amblesideonline, which is a free resource to help people educate themselves about Charlotte Mason’s methods and provide schedules and resources for full curriculums. Their site is clunky to navigate but everything you could ever want is there if you’re interested. So after all the reading and discussion I decided to form our own schedule, loosely (maybe, some would say- very loosely) following Ambleside’s curriculum, combined with a bit of Montessori and Waldorf woven in. Our schedules are below, and they look like a lot, but we are done by lunch everyday and no one is stressing if we don’t get to it all. I wholeheartedly believe that during a crisis, as is such this year, we will take it as it comes.
All that research and as much as I loved the idea of floating between classic texts, I know myself. I need a schedule, a sequence, a map, or else who knows where I will lead us all! I felt this especially hard with Language Arts and Math. So I sought out a more formal curriculum that borrowed ideals from the philosophies that I had fallen in love with.
LANGUAGE ARTS: Before I found the free Language Arts Curriculum from The Good and the Beautiful below, I bought the Language Arts from Blossom and Root. Here is the link to the first grade reading curriculum that my 5 and 6 year old are both loosely doing together (heads up - it's a confusing shop page, you have to scroll a bunch). They also have a curriculum available that includes all subjects for grades 1-3rd that I’ve heard really good things about. And, everything is on sale till I think September. In my opinion it's a gentler first grade curriculum than the one below. Most of it revolves around read alouds, re-telling, and some light writing - it is quite lovely.
HISTORY + SCIENCE: I also purchased their history and science curriculum and our whole fam is doing the 3rd grade year together, which we are really enjoying.
LANGUAGE ARTS: We settled on using the Good and the Beautiful Language Arts Curriculum, which you can download for free this year for ages 1st-5th. It takes my kids about 20 minutes a day and I feel like it keeps us on track combined with more reading on their own. It's pretty open and go. This is a curriculum that references Christian history and ideas, but I don’t find it distracting. I really like that it has some classic education, like diagramming sentences for 5th grade and a strong base of phonics for first. I feel like in the three week alone, my first grader has made crazy strides. Of course - he could also just have been at the magic moment where things start to click, but I’ll take a love and success in reading any way I can get it.
Side note -The Good and the Beautiful also has some cool Science units. and the Marine Biology one is a free download currently. First Grade Language Arts Curriculum and the Fifth Grade Curriculum
Beware, it's expensive to print when you just do the download and purchasing directly from them is probably cheaper than printing everything by yourself. Unfortunately, they are currently sold out but working on restocking all levels.
As for printing, the cheapest printing I've found (by far!) is from here: However, with the rush and increase in homeschooling, they are 3 months out to ship - yikes!!!! I’ve always had great service at our local Office Depot here in Downers Grove, and I’ve just chosen to print a bunch of items in black and white and we have survived just fine.
PRE-K LANGUAGE ARTS: There is a full PreSchool Curriculum that I've heard good things from here: https://wilkinsonnest.com/a-year-of-tales.html . It uses Beatrix Potter books as a base for a yearly curriculum. You can buy the whole curriculum to download for around $15. I just looked up her book list here and I am loosely following the schedule and checking out the extra books she recommends for something special to do with Milos. I don’t feel like we need another curriculum at this point!
MATH: I bought a Math curriculum from Singapore for Auggie and Mary just because it's what Mary was used to and Auggie likes it so much. It's a bit intense to be honest. A bunch of higher thinking skills are used, I think they are learning a lot but not my favorite thing to teach (no surprise there for anyone that knows me). I've also hear incredible things about Beast Academy for Math (looks so cool - that I think I will end up using to help Mary get through Algebra)
I've heard awesome things about Wild Math, and I know a lot of locals are using this combined with Blossom and Root curriculum: https://www.wildmathcurriculum.com/
We are just piece-mailing writing, using old Brain Quest Workbooks for jumping off points - but I know a few people have raved about this: The Night ZooKeeper.
If you’ve made it this far and still want to read on, below are some books that we plan on using heavily this year. Please know, we are a HUGE book family and fortunate to have room to house them. Most of these books we already owned, and they helped shape our decisions on what we were going to read and study this year. We also plan on taking full advantage of our local library (we currently have 92 items checked out -eek).
Mostly for Mary (10)
SPINES: Books + References that we own
Mostly for the boys (5+6)
SPINES: Books + References that we own
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Whether you’re homeschooling or remote learning setting up a new space is sometimes difficult. Check out this if you’re looking for help on how to transform your space to serve as a play, living, and educational area https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc7vFzb2w94kHGUMnZZtUgjI5O-wuqHepyfQtoJCrn_h7yGng/viewform?usp=sf_link