2022-2023 School Planning
Planning out an entire year of school is a pretty daunting task, but I love every minute of it! I love reflecting and watching how each year has grown and blossomed in its own way, yet always toward a destination of adulthood for my children. I see my failures as I reflect but also see the beauty of this process of education for my children. I have hopes and dreams for them and pray every day that the ideas cultivated through the living books and experiences will continue to shape their character and being. I pray that they won't forget the tears that I have shed in the many read alouds and times of worship with them, and pray they always remember the laughter and joy that we share within our rich community of friendships!
I have a lot to share in this post and look forward to revisiting it again next year as I see what goals we have been able to achieve through consistent practice and work. Something Cindy Rollins said at a Wild + Free conference several years ago was "inspect what you expect." I think that is the constant state of a homeschool mom. Either feeling relief and contentment knowing areas of growth are because we have been able to inspect our child's education. Or doubt and guilt when the "inspection" hasn't really happened and we see that we need to do some course correcting. No one is perfect and we must realize that "however imperfectly" we are spreading a feast for our children and cultivating their hearts, minds, and hands.
"Let us try, however imperfectly, to make education a science of relationships—in other words, try in one subject or another to let the children work upon living ideas. In this field small efforts are honoured with great rewards, and we perceive that the education we are giving exceeds all that we intended or imagined." - Vol 3 p163
Knowledge of God
We will be focusing on reading through the book of Acts as our Bible time each morning. Understanding the missionary journeys of Paul is something I would like to dive into with the kids this year! I bought Bible Maps Then and Now for our reference and will be using the sections on the New Testament during our Bible reading. I also have included recitation and catechism as part of our Bible subject. I also really like the Bible Project videos on Acts and the missionary journeys. We will work on memorizing Hebrews 11 and Proverbs 3 this year. Also, each month I will write a Bible verse on our chalkboard to go with the attributes of God. I wish I could say that we have been able to do the Charlotte Mason method of memorizing verses but it just has not happened for our family. For those of you that are able to use the box method and stick with it, my hat is off to you! Here is a link to the verses, catechism, and scripture recitation! If you want to learn more about the Charlotte Mason box method of memorizing scripture, click here! Also, if your children love learning to music, the New City Catechism is what we use to memorize! Here is the YouTube playlist.
Stories of Church History and missionaries are also a part of our Knowledge of God. We are continuing with the book Peril and Peace this year, along with some shorter stories of Hero Tales. I really like this book because there are family discussions after each short chapter! After talking with my husband, we are going to anchor our Monday night dinners with a reading of this book and then a board game together! (Some of our other nights will be discussed later!)
The hymns we have chosen can be viewed at this blog post! I've printed the lyrics and music to several hymns and look forward to spending time teaching my children about the tradition of Sacred Harp singing!
Knowledge of Man
We'll start with history for this branch of our feast. This year we will have a ancient history stream (Greece), and an American/British history stream (ancient-1600AD.) Some of the books used for this stream are Greek Myths (Bulfinch/Sewell) Odyssey and Iliad (Sutcliff) Our Little Spartan Cousin and Our Little Athenian Cousin (Cowles). I have the old Bookhouse volume "Halls of Fame" that has a section on Epics. I plan on scheduling that during the year for the kids to narrate and discuss after finishing the Sutcliff books.
For American history, we will be using the D'Aulaire biographies again (mostly as assigned readings for written narrations) along with some in depth study on DeSoto and other explorers. I also have included some Native American historical fiction for our No Frills Bookclub this year (Which also counts as our literature.) To see a list of our monthly books click here! I'm including some British history with a study on the life of Shakespeare this year. We'll use both the Diane Stanley and Aliki books.
Geography is such a fun subject at home and one that we haven't branched out and done anything with community - although I'm thinking of ways we might be able to incorporate it with others this year! What we've found that works well for us the past several years is the program "Trick Geography!" I love the way the kids eat it up! I also pair living books with the subjects. Richard Halliburton is one of my favorite authors! This fall we will finish The Occident and solidify our mapwork with Eastern Europe. In January we will begin work on Africa. Some of the books we'll use for Africa include The Orient by Halliburton, and Ashanti to Zulu.
Science, Latin, and Plutarch are three subjects we will be enjoying with a monthly academic co-op! The way we will structure our meetings is through singing, reading, narrating, and experimenting! We will begin each day with a Latin gathering song then work through lessons using the Charlotte Mason Plenary Plutarch guide on Pericles. After Plutarch, we will do several fun science experiments on weather and chemistry. We are reading through the books All About Weather and Marie Curie for Kids. I really like the activities outlined in the Marie Curie book! I've read through the weather book to combine some TED-ED videos and resources as well. It's going to be a great class! We will also be going on some weather related field trips and reading some supplemental weather books like the fiction book Shouting at the Rain, How and Why Weather, and Golden Guides to Weather! Latin will be some fun classroom type activities following the Minimus Mouse curriculum. I love the teacher guide with all the extra printable resources! Christian has already learned a lot of what is in this new book, but it is a great starting place for Eva Mae and something he will enjoy doing too! Each chapter also has some Greek/Roman mythology as well!
Shakespeare this year will be in the original language! I tried to do it last year but we just never got around to it. However, when I approached Nick with the idea that we could do it as a family together after dinner he was so excited about it and picked As You Like It! I will be printing the scripts from the Folgers website - one for each of us. We'll let Christian and Eva Mae each pick their character and Nick and I will take turns reading all the others! This will be our Tuesday post dinner activity! I'll keep a recording in the car of the Arkangel production so we can listen and discuss after we've read!
Composer Study, Folk Songs, Artist Study are all the topics of our Feast of Riches co-op! We met together to decide on dates for all our co-op meetings and what songs, composers, and artists we will choose! For folk songs, we chose one per term for our group. At home, we all do different songs according to our curriculum guides. This is what our family will be singing this year! Our composer study is following Composer Study Companion and the 4th Volume of the Thomas Tapper biographies, Chopin, Schumann, and Wagner! The artist rotation is the same as Ambleside Online - Van Gogh, Sanzio, and Singer Sargent. I like A Humble Place Blog because she usually has free prints for you to use in your home study!
Poetry is also part of our co-op. We all choose something to recite. This year, we are going to focus on the poetry of Rudyard Kipling in the first semester and Shakespeare in the 2nd semester. Here is a printout of the poems we've selected for our morning time!
Music is both composer study, folk songs, hymns but also solfa and playing instruments! We are continuing with Harmony Homeschool choir on Monday mornings where the kids warm up with solfege exercises and perform beautiful choral repertoire at the end of each semester! Christian will be playing baritone with the Overture Music Academy and Eva Mae will continue piano and recorder lessons with me!
Language Arts is comprised of spelling, grammar, composition, and handwriting. For these subjects we'll use a variety of resources recommended by other Charlotte Mason homeschoolers! For composition we are starting with The Lively Art of Writing. I am really excited about the guide I found to go along with the book! These were posted by Quark on the Well Trained Mind message board.
Christian will be using the Emma Serl Language Lessons and Eva Mae will be using the Karen Andreola Simply Grammar. They will be writing passages in their notebooks to practice copywork and handwriting. I will also be using some dictation and spelling resources this year. I also love that with Latin they are getting some English grammar as well. Each week they will be writing a narration of their school readings.
Knowledge of the Universe
I already listed the science that we will be doing with our co-op. Other Knowledge of the Universe subjects are math, nature, physical education, and scouting.
Math this year will be to finish Miquon with Eva Mae and Saxon 7/6 with Christian!
We will also continue with our monthly Herb Fairy class and Nature Adventure class. I love these outdoor lessons and enjoy seeing their nature journals grow each month! Check out all our past lessons here!
Our scouting group will continue to work through the Wild Explorer assignments. We have some fun trips planned for our group as we share the activities that we complete at home and with our group!
I do have an additional science book not part of our co-op. It is Archemedes and the Door of Science. This is a blend of both science and history.
For physical education I'm thinking that we just need to wake up earlier every day, put on our sneakers and sweats and get out for 30 minutes of jogging. This is going to be the best way to start the day and get the physical work in that we need to do! I wasn't as consistent last year as I wanted to be. I do love DareBee and will continue to use this with the family.
I keep a spreadsheet of all my books and schedule but also like to have a broad idea of what is expected of our family each month as we gather with other families. This is where that "inspect what you expect" comes in handy! Having accountability with others has been a key to successful homeschooling for our family! In addition to these wonderful subjects we will also have folk dancing, field trips, handcraft fairs, book clubs, and more throughout the semester! I love sharing pictures on my Instagram and Facebook and will be back again to evaluate in December and May to see how our education has been an atmosphere, discipline, and life.
If it helps to see how I plan out the year in one sheet, you can download the PDF here! I still need to go through and actually plug in a monthly schedule. Once I get the big picture, the monthly and weekly is a lot easier to plan! Click here for the PDF
Here is what Christian and Eva Mae looked like at the start of the 2022-2023 school year!
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