“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers”
~Anne Shirley
We are having the most glorious October here in Denver. The trees are bursting with brightly-colored leaves. The skies are sapphire blue. The clouds are few and wispy. The wind is gentle, coaxing just enough leaves to the ground just often enough to make you feel like you’re in a postcard. And the temperature has been, if anything, just a touch too warm. But I’m definitely not complaining.
These are the kind of days that make me glory in being alive. They are days made for being outside and soaking in the beauty of it all. I am beyond thankful to be able to take this season and wring every possible drop of goodness from it. It is definitely one of the great benefits of homeschooling.
In two short weeks, we will turn back the clocks and I will be returning home from co-ops and preparing dinner in the dark. The days will get shorter and shorter until the Light of the World comes into the world on December 25. I guess it’s really only 8 weeks, but man those 8 weeks can feel like an eternity. And there’s so much to be done!
It’s time to start making a plan for November and December.
Homeschooling is a full-time job. When I remember this, and plan accordingly, my life, including homeschooling, goes much more smoothly. Homeschooling isn’t something that can be squeezed into odd moments. It doesn’t have to take all day every day, but it does require intentionality, planning, and yes, time.
We have other demands on our time as well – cooking, cleaning, laundry, appointments. And now we add preparing for holidays. How do we do it?
It can be done. And it can be done well, and peacefully.
It starts with prayerfully considering what God is asking from us in this season, on this day. Then we need to ask the Holy Spirit to show us how He wants us to fulfill these responsibilities. Then we need to ask HIm to pour out His gifts on us so that we can, with His help, do what He’s asked us to do.
I have a process I use to think through all of this, and I’d like to share it with you. I’ve described it a bit here. I plan to walk you through it more thoroughly in a series of blog posts I’m working on.
Because everything is more fun with friends and good food, I’m also hosting a workshop where we can all do this work together. It will be Saturday, November 9 from 9:30-1:00 at my house. If you’d like to know more about that, click here.
I hope you are soaking up these days of sunshine and color to fortify you during the dark, cold days to come. And I hope, whether you join us November 9 or not, that you will plan well to be a good steward of your family and homeschool in the months to come. God pours out His blessings on us in every season, let us turn to Him with open arms to receive them.
Refresh, Reset, Refocus: Workshop and Mini-Retreat
Finally! I’m ready to share the curriculum and resources we are using this year with our 5th grader, 2nd grader, and preschooler. In this post I’ll share what’s in our Morning Basket.
Morning Basket Resources
As far as I know, Jennifer Mackintosh over at Wildflowers and Marbles invented the brilliant idea of Morning Baskets. If you’re not already familiar with the idea, head over to her blog and check it out. You’ll also want to spend time just combing through the hundreds of pages of amazing resources she has there. She’s a genius.
The quick version is this. A Morning Basket is literally a basket filled with good things to share with your children. It’s a place to put all of those delicious subjects you never seem to fit into your day – poetry, Shakespeare, composer study, etc. On a “bad day” your Morning Basket can stand alone as school for the day.
There’s no end goal for these books. The idea is to savor each one and have it be as enjoyable as possible. So if people start to get fidgety, we just stop and pick it up again the next day. We’re not doing everything every day but rather plan to work through these by the end of the year. For example we’re starting with The Song of Hiawatha and when we finish it we’ll move to the Oxford poetry book. The Shakespeare is worked on for a couple of weeks at a time, and then set aside for a week or so.
Here’s what’s queued up right now, but it could easily change with my fancy. Clicking on the book image for most of these will take you to amazon.com, but there are no affiliate links on this page.
How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig
This is on recommendation from a friend who always recommends the most wonderful resources. If she says a book is good, I just get it. This one is fabulous. It teaches you to help your children memorize carefully selected passages from Shakespeare. And Mr. Ludwig’s website has a bunch of fun extras to help you out as well. My kids (and I!) have already memorized this passage from a speech by Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows. Where oxlips and nodding violet grows, quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine. with sweet muskroses and with eglantine. There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, lulled in these flowers with dances and delight. And there the snake throws her enameled skin – weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in. And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes and make her full of hateful fantasies!”
I typed that from memory! Even my 4-year-old has memorized the first half of it. And it was painless. And fun!
The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Illustrated by Margaret Early
I wish that picture was bigger. I picked up this book at our local Goodwill without realizing how amazing it really is. Having read Paul Revere’s Ride last year, I was eager to share some more Longfellow with the kids. Ms. Early’s illustrations are a perfect complement to Longfellow’s beautiful words. We read just a page or two a day, studying the pictures, reading the poetry, and then narrating the story together. It took the kids a few days to get into it, but then they couldn’t get enough.
Wee Sing America
This is part of the Book Shark curriculum. Because it only takes a few minutes a day and it’s fun for everyone, I’ve put it into our Morning Basket. We’re learning a song a week. I love that we’re expanding our repertoire of singable songs.
The Oxford Illustrated Book of American Children’s Poems Edited by Donald Hall
This is also from the Book Shark curriculum. We’ll select a poem a week to enjoy and maybe memorize. I’ll probably follow the suggested schedule in the Book Shark curriculum guide.
My Path to Heaven: A Young Person’s Guide to the Faith by Geoffrey Bliss, S.J. and Caryll Houselander
A dear friend brought this one to my attention and I picked it up at the Rocky Mountain Home Educators Conference a few months ago. I cannot wait to share this one with my kids. It’s a guide to Ignatian Spirtuality for young people. Each section has an elaborate line drawing with hundreds of little details and one simple thought to ponder. This is followed by a couple of pages of simple text to help one reflect on the idea. For example, the first idea is that everything in your life was placed there by God to help you to better love Him. I have been pondering this for weeks after reading it in this book. I plan to read a passage a day, or maybe just one a week, while the kids look at their own photocopy of the image. They’ll be invited to color it if they like.
American Tall Tales by Mary Pope Osborne wood engravings by Michael McCurdy
This is another Goodwill steal. It will be a perfect complement to our American History studies this year.
Praying the Rosary with Mary by Angela Burrin, illustrated by Maria Cristian lo Cascio
We’re not one of those families that prays the rosary together every day. We do that in my fantasy family, but in my real family, it just never happens. But I do want my kids to have some familiarity with the rosary. This is a nicely illustrated book in which each of the mysteries is explained through the voice of Mary. Each mystery ends with a short prayer asking for Mary’s help with a particular virtue. We’ve been reading one mystery a day and saying one Hail Mary. It’s been a gentle introduction to the devotion of the rosary.
Memory Work
Latin responses for the Mass. We attend a New Order Mass done in Latin and so I’d like to work through memorizing the plain chant version of the Latin responses for the Mass. I found a little booklet to help us with this. It’s a little slow going.
Math Fact Memory Work. My oldest is dismally behind on math fact memorization. I don’t want to make the same mistake with the other kids, so we’re adding this to our morning basket routine. We went way back and started with the “plus 1” facts. I’m following the order recommended at Mrs. Houlin’s eSchool Class blog. I really like what she has to say about memorizing math facts.
Although this seems like a lot, it actually takes very little time and I’m looking to add to this part of our day because everyone really enjoys it. I’ve decided I’m going to add in some basic grammar instruction and I’m looking for some appropriate Saint study resources. I need to shop my shelves for those. It’s also a great time to share favorite picture books because we normally do this work all snuggled up on the couch together.
It’s taken me awhile to implement Morning Basket time for our homeschool, but I am so glad we’re doing it because it really is the best part of our homeschool day.
So now that I know what I want to teach and how I’m going to structure my year. It’s time for me to choose the curriculum, books, and other materials I will use to facilitate our learning this year.
For a detailed list of the subjects and goals I’ve identified for each of my kids, see this post.
A detailed list of the books and curriculum I’m using will be in a future post.
This post is about the process I use to decide what materials I will use to teach the subjects and meet the goals I have planned for the year.
I will admit that I got stuck here for awhile. I am a big picture kind of girl. I love dreaming and I hate implementing. Because, as I mentioned before, I want to do it all. It is in this step that I start to face the reality of having to say no to some awesome things. I hate that.
As you know, there are an overwhelming number of curriculum options available to homeschoolers these days. Catalogs, websites, blogs, Pinterest, curriculum fairs, friend’s recommendations. They can leave me feeling like I’ll never find the perfect curriculum. Like I’m missing out on all kinds of great things. Like I’ll never teach everything I want to teach. Guess what? I won’t. There’s no such thing as the perfect curriculum, and I can’t possibly teach my kids everything I want to teach them. I don’t know if that makes you feel better or worse, but it’s the truth. And it’s true for you too.
So how do I narrow down the limitless possibilities to the few things I can realistically use?
Consider what I find appealing
When I start looking for resources to teach something, the first question I ask is “what appeals to me?” That’s right, me. I don’t first consider my kids’ preferences or learning styles or anything like that. I’ve learned that if I don’t like using the material, I won’t. If the curriculum never comes off the shelf, it’s not helping anyone learn anything.
Being able to identify material that is definitely not my style has been a huge help in getting clear about what will work best for me and my kids.
Consider what has (and hasn’t) worked in the past
Some of the best homeschooling advice I’ve received is this: When you find something that works, don’t change it! Every time a friend or a blogger or, yes, even an advertisement raves about how incredible a curriculum is I’m tempted to scrap what I’m doing and try something new. But each time I try something new I begin a new learning curve – for me and the kids. I’ve found that if something is working well enough, it’s best to just keep going with it. Again, there’s no such thing as perfect and I’ll make myself (and my kids) crazy looking for it. So I’ve learned to stick with what has worked well in the past.
By the same token, if something really was a bad fit for us, I will abandon it with no qualms.
Consider what is available for free or cheap
I start with my own bookshelves. I’m a homeschooler. I have loads of cool books and games and kits and manipulatives that I’ve collected at garage sales and thrift stores and used book sales over the years in the hopes that someday they’ll be just what I need to teach somebody something. I go through all of these resources and pull out the things that will meet the goals and subjects I’ve planned for this year. I also use this time to clean out stuff I’ve learned will most likely never get used.
Another source of free curriculum for us is our public school enrichment program. We are allowed (but not required) to borrow curriculum to use with our children each year. They have a wide variety of material to choose from. This is how I found Book Shark. This has been a huge blessing for us. I have always been drawn to a “living books” curriculum, and the folks at Book Shark have done a really good job of choosing great books and providing a schedule and format that feels really good to me.
I will add one caveat here. Sometimes it’s worth spending money on quality curricula and materials. I won’t use something just because it’s free or cheap. But I do consider those free and cheap resources before I shell out money for something I think I have to have. I’ve wasted a lot of money on curriculum that now gathers dust on my shelves.
Find out what others like
Once I’ve gotten clear about what I like, identified what’s worked in the past, and gone through what’s available free or cheap, I figure out what I still need to buy. This is when I start googling, searching blogs, and asking friends both online and “in real life.”
I have to be very careful here, because I can get sent back to Teach All The Things mode if I don’t practice extreme self control. I can easily get sidetracked by all of the wonderful things other people are doing. I have to work super hard to stay focused at this point. I remind myself that I’ve followed a solid process to select our goals for this year, and there’s always next year.
When it comes to choosing material, I’ve found that going with what’s popular is often a good choice. If it seems everyone is using it, it’s often because it’s high quality and user friendly. Not always, but often. If there seem to be a lot of good choices, I try to choose one that someone like me loves. So even if someone is absolutely raving about program, if it’s a curriculum that requires a ton of hands-on time or prep time or craft time I know it’s not the program for us.
Buy what I need
Once I’ve gone through the above process, I make a good list of what I need. I try to have this done before the annual conference I attend with an amazing used curriculum sale. What I can’t get there, I generally buy on Amazon or straight from the publisher. I also fill in with picture books from the library.
Whew. Once I finish this step I am finally ready to start planning lessons. I’ll talk about how I do that in an upcoming post. But first, I’m going to share the curriculum we’ll be using this year. I’m getting pretty excited about it!
I promised I would share the subjects I’ve chosen for my homeschool curriculum this year. I will be teaching a 5th grader, a 2nd grader, and a 4-year-old preschooler. I want to offer the disclaimer that this is in no way what I think you should be teaching your homeschooled 5th grader, 2nd grader, or 4-year-old preschooler. Your kids are not my kids. They know different things. They have different strengths and weaknesses and different interests. And you have different strengths, weaknesses, and talents than I do!
I’m sharing this because I always find it interesting, inspiring, and informative to know what others are doing. When I read or hear about a bunch of different people doing a bunch of different things, it helps me realize there’s no one right way and I feel a little less anxious about what I’m doing. If reading what I’m planning to teach is going to make you all angsty, skip it.
When I completed the process I described in this post I had the following list:
Henry (Grade 5)
Improve spelling
Write a solid paragraph
Complete Singapore 4A
Memorize all math facts
Improve handwriting
Work more independently
German (with dad)
Helen (Grade 2)
Sacramental preparation
Phonics
Addition/Subtraction fact memorization
Character virtues: responsibility and humility
Thomas (Age 4)
Become more “regular” with eating, sleeping, and daily rest periods
Improve mental flexibility, be less bratty and demanding
Learn to ride his bike
Scale back on screen time, limit exposure to Henry’s screen time
Share good picture books – including alphabet books
Expose to preschool fine motor opportunities such as playdough and drawing
Preschool field trips with mom and buddies on Fridays
All Children (Stuff we’ll do as a family)
Note: This is a sort of “inspire don’t require” time of our day. I’m hoping the content and material will excite and delight my kids. I’m going to try really hard not to force anyone to participate in this part of our day but rather to make it something they don’t want to miss out on.
Participate in daily family prayer time and catechesis
Gain an age appropriate understand of US History from Civil War to Present Day
Gain an age appropriate understanding of electricity and astronomy
Memorize some Shakespeare
Share good literature (favorite picture books and novels, history related literature)
Nature Study
Poetry
Folk Songs
Memorize Parts of the Mass in English and Latin
This comes pretty close to being All The Things. But there are some things I did leave out rather intentionally. For example, I won’t be studying grammar as a stand alone subject with any of my kids. I’m not adding handicrafts to the list of things I feel required to do. We’re not studying Latin as a stand alone subject this year. Picture Study didn’t make the final cut, though I long to make that happen at some point. I don’t have any specific, do-or-die reading or writing or math goals for my 4-year-old. (If you haven’t read my posts on a relaxed approach to the early years, check them out here.) There are times when I get all heart-poundy about leaving out these things. That’s why I’m being very intentional about setting my goals this year. It doesn’t mean we’ll never study grammar or Latin or handicrafts. It just means that this year, I’m not holding myself accountable for these things.
Also, there are a few things on this list that are a little aspirational. I really would like to do some sort of nature study this year, but I’ve never managed to make it happen in the past. I’m hoping to figure out a way to make it less overwhelming and more fun. I’ll share more thoughts on that later. Also, memorizing the parts of the Mass is something I see going out the window on all but the most perfect days. I’m hoping to figure out a schedule that makes sure that doesn’t happen.
In the next post, I’ll talk about my process for pulling together all the curriculum, books, and other resources I’ll use to teach these subjects.
So what are you excited about teaching this year? Anything you’re intentionally letting yourself off the hook for?
As homeschoolers, we have the freedom of structuring our year and planning our homeschool calendar any way we want to. In my state, so long as I provide 172 days of instruction, I am free to choose any 172 days I wish. Which means if I want to take a whole month off at Christmas I can. It’s totally up to me.
For the last several years, I’ve simply followed the local public school calendar. I didn’t do this blindly, but rather because my kids are good friends with the neighbor kids and I wanted them to have freedom when their friends were free. Also, having lived according to the traditional school calendar for much of the first two decades of my life, thinking in terms of two semesters felt natural to me.
The fly in the ointment for me was that it seems that public school kids around here have a lot of random days off – especially in the first half of the year. I found it really hard to get into a rhythm and to get my kids on board with a regular routine. Also, I hated letting someone else dictate my family’s schedule.
More recently, I’ve been noticing how other homeschoolers, mostly bloggers I respect, plan their homeschool calendar. This brought to my attention a number of intriguing possibilities for organizing our school year.
Sarah Mackenzie (I know, I I’m always talking about Sarah, but she really is that great) at Amongst Lovely Things organizes her year into two month terms. Her goal is to school for six weeks out of every two months leaving 2-3 weeks of break every term. She can take these breaks in a chunk, or simply take days off as wanted or needed.
Mystie Winckler at Simply Convivial does something similar using six-week terms. She schools for six weeks and then takes a week off. She takes longer breaks at Christmas and in February (because February blues) and takes off the entire month of June. This differs from Sarah’s approach because Mystie pre-plans the weeks she will take off rather than using the days as she needs/wants them.
I know others who are less formal in their approach and just school year round without any need to break up the year into any official terms. These people tend to create their own curriculum or maybe lean toward unschooling, but for these families a school day is not all that different from a “day off.” They are always schooling and never schooling and truly integrate living with learning in a seamless sort of way. These people are probably not reading my planning posts. 🙂
Then there’s Melissa Wiley who coined the term “Tidal Home Schooling” to describe how her family tends “to ebb and flow between periods of ‘high tide’ times of structured learning . . . and ‘low tide,’ which looks a lot like unschooling.” Her words are beautiful and inspiring and worth a read.
Personally, I’m loving the idea of two-month terms with a focus for each term. We’ll start in August. August/September will be our easing in back-to-school term. October/November is our fall term with a full week off for Thanksgiving. December/January is our Advent/Christmas term. February/March is our Lent term with a full week off for Holy Week. April/May is our Easter/Spring term. June/July will be our summer term.
I’ll keep a simple calendar to mark off the days we do school and make sure we get in 6 weeks every two months. Our kids do an enrichment program one day a week making me responsible for 4 days a week of homeschooling. So I’ll need to make sure we do 24 days of school every two months. There are 43 weekdays in August/September. Taking out the Fridays (when the kids are in the enrichment program) leaves me with 35 days. Schooling for 24 out of 35 days. That seems doable.
Thinking of things this way gives me a lot of freedom to CHILL OUT when thinking of planning. Most homeschool curricula are based on a 36 week calendar. Many are based on 4 days a week leaving day 5 for co-ops and such. So this schedule allows me to finish any curriculum should I choose that route, while also allowing lots of freedom for field trips, play dates, movie days, sick days, snow days, and I-was-up-all-night-with-a-teething-baby days.
I’m the kind of person that functions best within a well-defined structure. But I also need lots of margin or I feel like I’m always behind, always failing. I am hoping that this approach to planning our year will help me feel simultaneously organized and relaxed.
In this installment of the planning series I discuss how I choose the subjects I will teach this year.
Is there anything more exciting than looking at all of the pretty curriculum catalogs and homeschool blogs and Pinterest boards and curriculum fair materials and thinking about all of the wonderful joyous time you’re going to spend with your cherubic children teaching them all the things?
That is, for the few brief moments before full blown panic sets in and you think “how in the world am I going to teach my little monsters anything at all let alone All The Things?”
Experiencing the bi-polar emotions of homeschool planning is one of the most challenging parts of homeschooling for me. I want to do it all. And I want to do it all in picture-perfect blog-worthy style filled with hot chocolate and hand-crafts and great living books while snuggled up with my precious children on the couch.
Sigh.
It happens.
It is in my personal nature to have the above picture-perfect homeschool fantasy, realize that that’s never going to happen (at least not on any sort of consistent basis), and decide if it can’t be perfect than I might as well not even try.
That’s not the holiest part of my personal nature.
Over the years I have learned from some wonderful homeschooling moms, both online and in-real-life, that doing a little every day, even if it’s not perfect and even if it’s not “all the things,” can build something truly wonderful in you homeschool and in your family.
We have had our moments through the years.
And so, as I enter the phase of my yearly planning where I choose the subjects, I take the advice I learned from the great Sarah Mackenzie in her book “Teaching from a State of Rest.”
It’s hard, oh so hard, to take that advice. Because I want to do picture study and composer study and nature study and Shakespeare and a rich science curriculum filled with hands-on projects and all the language arts – grammar, spelling, mechanics, essay composition, dictation, copywork – all of it! I want to fill the days with handcrafts and fine art and rich, deep history unit studies and amazing field trips and music lessons and daily mass and service projects. I want to do it all!
My husband is an economist so he’s always telling me that choosing one thing necessarily means not choosing something else that may be equally good. For him, this is simply applied logic. But to me it is THE great unfairness of the universe that makes me cry out to heaven, “But I want to do it all!!!!!”
Unfortunately, God in His wisdom has not seen fit to provide me with more than the 24 hours a day he has allotted to everyone else, and so I must learn to spend these precious hours wisely. I should not try to cram them with all the things. Nor should I allow them to simply fill up with crap because I failed to plan to fill them with Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.
And so, as I plan this year, I am prayerfully discerning what Major on the Majors means for each of my children. I decided to ask the Holy Spirit to guide me in making a list for each of my kiddos for the next year. I didn’t get all fancy about it, I just opened a google doc for each kid and started typing.
I was surprised at how quickly this distilled and clarified things for me. (Not sure why I am always surprised by the good things that come when I ask the Holy Spirit for guidance. I really should call on him more often!)
I have a second grader who will be preparing for her first reconciliation and first holy communion this year. So that’s of prime importance. She also needs to continue to strengthen her reading skills – that’s goal number 2. For math, I want her to memorize all of the addition and subtraction facts. Sure, we’ll work on other stuff, but if she knows those facts cold by the end of the year, I’ll call it a success. Finally, I asked what character traits this child needs to concentrate on at this time. I didn’t think long. The answers were fairly clear to me – responsibility and humility.
So boom. There I have it. Four Majors for my second grader. Could I fill up our schedule and stress myself out over at least a dozen other subjects? Yes. And honestly, I probably will. But at least I have this list to come back to and say “if you’re doing this, you’re doing enough. Everything else is gravy.”
Also, now I know that even if I teach her how to knit a sweater and she memorizes all of the presidents in order and she learns to speak fluent Swahili, if I haven’t helped her to improve her reading or helped to teach her responsibility and humility, I haven’t done what the Holy Spirit asked me to do for her this year.
Once I’ve clarified the fundamental goals for each kid, I make a list of all of the subjects I want to teach or feel like I should teach. This includes stuff like science, history, Shakespeare, poetry. This list can end up being All The Things. At this stage of the game, I’m not ready to completely give up on that fantasy. But that’s ok. I’ll get more realistic in the next couple of steps, and I have my list of Majors to guide me.
If you’re interested in what this process yielded for me for this year, stay tuned! These first posts will talk about my process – then I’ll share with you the results.
In the next post I’ll share the process I use to decide how I will plan my year once I’ve decided the subjects I will teach.
In the mean time, tell me, how do you decide which subjects to teach each year?
List Links to other useful posts on this subject:
If you haven’t read Sarah Mackenzie’s posts on Simplifying the Curriculum or Planning to Teach from Rest go ahead and click on those right now. They’ll open in a new window and you can read them now or save them for later. They’re very good and they’ve inspired a lot of my thinking about this.
It’s July and my thoughts are deep in planning mode for our next school year. This is my favorite part of homeschooling because I get to reimagine a flawless future in which I teach All The Things and my appreciative, well-behaved children dutifully and joyfully soak up the amazing lessons I’ve prepared for them before heading off to spend the afternoon designing a device to help blind kids learn braille.
What? That’s not your favorite part of homeschooling?
I think of planning in three steps. First, is the research and discovery phase. That’s where I comb blogs, read books, search pinterest, visit curriculum vendors online, and add 203 books to my Amazon wishlist. At the end of this phase I want to know two things:
1) What subjects I want to teach and
2) How I want to organize my year.
The second phase is where I narrow down the curriculum/resources I want to use and map out my year according to the organizational structure I chose in Phase 1.
The third phase is where I get down to the nitty gritty of planning our weeks and days. It’s my least favorite phase because my fantasies of teaching All The Things to appreciative well-behaved children is replaced by the reality of needing to feed people, take care of the house, nurse a baby and still teach my sometimes reluctant, sometimes bratty children.
He’s totally going to do whatever I tell him to. Same with the little guy in the background.
But I’m still in Phase 1. Hooray! And here I will share some of the thoughts and resources I’m finding useful in case you want to fantasize – um, plan – along with me
I’m going to break Phase 1 into two posts – Choosing Subjects and Organizing the Year. Sit tight. There’s more to come!
