2021-2022 Planning Post
Grades 4 and 6! I can't even believe it! Our homeschool journey seems richer and richer each year but I also feel like it takes longer to plan and have a guideline for our curriculum. As with many of my previous year posts, using the Delectable Education curriculum templates helps me streamline my subjects and topics for each year. Both Christian and Eva Mae are Form 2 this year. That means more written narrations, independent reading, and additional subjects like real Shakespeare readings, Plutarch, and Latin will come into the mix for both of them!
Instead of a scheduled spreadsheet for each week, I am moving to a notebook system for myself and for the kids. I read this post several years ago - with all of our classes that are happening through the week, I feel that scheduling as we go is going to be the most efficient and consistent for us this year. In this post I will list our resources and links for each subject along with some timeframes that I expect us to complete. For example, we will have a monthly book club that fits with part of our history timeline. I'll need to make sure that we finish the book promptly before each discussion date!
I'm really looking forward to the opportunities in this school year and pray that God will reveal Himself more to my children this year. That we will all fall in love with Him, walking in His will, and devoting ourselves to showing God's love to others in every step of our lives. His Holy Spirit brings us knowledge and we will daily ask for His blessings, wisdom, and strength to walk in obedience!
Curriculum
Our curriculum subjects fall within 3 categories: Knowledge of God, Knowledge of Man, and Knowledge of the Universe.
Knowledge of God
Our subjects are mainly Bible but we also add in catechism and church history. For this school year our Old Testament readings will come from 2nd Samuel and 1st Kings. Our New Testament readings will come from John and the first 8 chapters of Acts. Last year we began reading through Peril and Peace. We will continue these stories of our early church fathers. I HIGHLY recommend this text as a church history text for your children (best for ages 10 and up I think.) The narrative style is exactly what we look for in living books. In fact, when I started watching The Chosen this year I felt that the writing style of Peril and Peace is similar - using what we know about history to make the people in the stories seem relatable. This book deals a lot with martyrs which is a tough subject. It brought about some tears last year and difficult conversations, but conversations that I feel must be had as we strengthen our walk of faith.
A lighter book is Missionary Stories with the Millers. We've read about half of this book and will continue reading the stories. I like how the stories are listed by country. If you are talking about a specific country in your geography or history stream, reading one of these short stories about a missionary to the land is a great addition.
Our catechism last year was a bit sporadic. I bought the student pocket guides from New City Catechism after we had already started our school year and we were able to spend a good amount of time on the first 12 questions. I want to solidify those first 12 questions and have 1-31 memorized by the end of the school year. We are using the music to help us memorize!
Old Testament and New Testament readings will be done each morning together as we read from the same Bible edition. I discovered a few years ago how wonderful it is to read from the same Bible edition and translation together. Sometimes I read and they follow along and sometimes we take turns reading and divide up a chapter between the three of us to read aloud. I stop for narrations and discussion along the way and use YouTube when appropriate to look up something historical or visual to connect with our reading. I do like the commentaries from J Paterson Smyth but I was not always consistent in reading on my own before we sat down together. The Smyth commentary for 2nd Samuel and 1st Kings can be found here.
What I feel is a modern day equivalent to a commentary of the Bible for children is the video series "What's In the Bible?" We have watched all the episodes but will re-watch the videos about the beginning of Israel. I also want to have my children watch some of the Chosen episodes to revisit the stories of Jesus we have read in previous years.
Here is our printable sheets for scripture memory and catechism.
Knowledge of Man
This is the biggest section of our curriculum. History, geography, literature, language arts, music, art, all fall into this feast! I'm excited for the classes we will have that accomplish the principles of being educated in the liberal arts! For music, both Christian and Eva Mae will be in choir. I love that the director incorporates music theory and solfa into the rehearsals! We have our monthly folk songs and hymns to study as well! I've put a post with links and lyric sheets here!
Our composer and artist study lessons will be done at home and in our small co-op group! Here is the rotation we will follow for 2021-2022! I love participating in these riches with others! It makes it so much more enjoyable!
In addition to choir, folk songs, hymns, and piano, Christian will start his first year in band playing trumpet! We're excited about this new addition!
History is a big subject for Form 2. Not only do we have our American history rotation, but we are also including ancient history and British history. For American history we are in 1900-present. Our main spine will be Joy Hakim's The History of US volume 9 and 10. We'll also have some read aloud books that are part of our new book club and some Cornerstones of Freedom books.
Eva Mae will be doing a class that focuses on Tennessee history from ancient civilizations to modern day. We will also discuss some of the American Girl books that come from the historical line. She is really excited! I'm looking forward to this fun history class! Our main Tennessee history will be from the TN History For Kids website! I wrote about this course in this blog post!
Christian already read Our Island Story but I did not read it to Eva Mae so we will begin the book with Volume 2 of the Audio Book by Naxos. Download this guide here! It's wonderful! I know that there are readings on Librivox but I'm much more impressed with the quality of recordings through this production. Bonus for me is that it's on Hoopla for us to borrow!
Our ancient history text is by RJ Unstead. Christian started this book last year and will continue reading it on his own.
With all these interesting stories of history, we'll be entering dates and events into our family Book of Centuries. Christian and Eva Mae are both old enough now to do this on their own. They can look up the pages with dates and enter their drawings and short facts on the timeline. I use the Simply Charlotte Mason pages in a binder.
Another fun little history section I get in during the year is through these entertaining "podcasts" that I found on YouTube! They are old records that have been uploaded and are about 6-8 minutes long. Each episode is about what happened throughout American history in the specific month. We started listening to these in January and will complete the series at the end of this semester. Read and listen to them here!
Geography will be fun this year as we learn more about Europe! Our main resource is Trick Geography. I love how it uses mapping and interesting memory techniques to learn the countries! The books we will use alongside are Halliburton's Book of Marvels Occident, Golden Book Atlas, and Mitz and Fritz of Germany.
Grammar/Language Arts includes copywork, dictation, written narrations and grammar. To get all of this in one place I bought the Gentle Feast Cycle 4 Language Arts book. Because of our American history timeline, I bought guides from Simply Charlotte Mason and A Gentle Feast to tweak for our own curriculum plans. I'm happy with how A Gentle Feast includes everything we need for our language arts and look forward to the daily work in the book! Both Christian and Eva Mae will have their own spiral notebooks to keep written narrations of our history, geography, science and other readings.
Poetry and literature also fall within the language arts category. We will read through the "Halls of Fame" anthology from My Bookhouse and learn about famous poets through the years as well as recite selected poems that will be in our menus. Download our list here. I'm repeating a lot of the same poems we had last year because I feel they are worthy to give another year to study! Shakespeare is on my radar for this year but I don't have a plan yet! I'm hoping we can do something with our co-op! Age of Fable is also on our list for some literature. Everything I read about literature includes how important Age of Fable is to students. I have a copy but have not been pleased with having only text so I've ordered an illustrated Age of Fable to read with the kids this year.
We will have a bookclub that will meet once a month to discuss the themes within each book.
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