Homeschool Plan 2020-2021

Where has the summer gone? It seems this summer (2020) has faded almost as quickly as the cool wet footprints on the hot dry sidewalk. I’m not quite ready to give it up yet. How about you? Did your summer fly by as fast as mine did?

Our new hometown is hot during the summer months. We’ve had many days 100+°F.

I recently read this great poem that pretty much sums up my current mood. I found the poem in the book, Sing a Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Each Day of the Year.

August Heat

In August, when the days are hot,

I like to find a shady spot,

And hardly move a single bit –

And sit –

And sit –

And sit –

And sit –

Anonymous

Ready or not, our charter school’s official start date is just around the corner, so I thought I’d share our homeschool plan for 2020-2021. I want to qualify this entire post by saying that the following ideas are merely tools, they are certainly not mandatory. That goes for me and anyone else who might be reading this. If you homeschool, your curriculum will probably look quite different from ours and that is the great thing about homeschooling! Every family is different. If you’re homeschooling, you need to make curriculum choices that are best for you as the teacher and your kids as the students. As a general rule, the only parenting advice I give to anyone asking for parenting advice is that “you probably know what is best for your kid”. So please don’t look at my list as an example of how to do it. My list is just how I think I might do it this year… 😉

Our kiddos are 6-years-old (1st grade), 8-years-old (3rd grade), and 10-years-old (5th grade). Here is a list of educational activities I have planned so far…

Morning Time: Morning Time is an idea made famous by Pam Barnhill, you can visit her website for all the details about how to start your own: Your Morning Basket

Here’s a version of Morning Time that we did in the RV: Morning Time in Our RV

Our morning time will be a bit different this year with a little less than we’ve done in the past. We will sing a song, say a prayer, say the Bible memory verse of the week, and the kiddos will listen to an American Girl story that I read aloud.

American Girl: We will finish up reading the American Girl: Felicity series and begin the American Girl: Kaya series in the fall, next we will read the American Girl: Kirsten and American Girl: Samantha series. While we read each series of books we will dive deeper into that era of American history with additional books and hands-on activities. My goal is to write up posts for these unit studies for anyone who might be interested.

Seat Work: “Seat work” is a phase we adopted after reading it in one of Beverly Cleary’s “Ramona” books, it refers to schoolwork that is completed while seated. It basically means, school work that we do out of workbooks. We won’t do all the workbooks every day. Our every day workbooks are math, spelling and nature journal then we will add one extra workbook per day as time, energy, and motivation levels permit.

We have enjoyed the following curriculum workbooks and we will continue using them again this year. The first 3 workbooks are grade specific.

• Math Lessons for a Living Education (Level 1, 3, and 5)
• Coloring Squared for extra math practice
• Evan-Moor Daily Spelling Skills (grades 1, 3, and 5)
• Evan-Moor How to Report on Books
• A Reason for Handwriting Border Sheets for handwriting and Bible verse memorization. All three kids use the same border sheet, and sometimes I will shorten the memory verse for my 1st grader. The quality of the work will vary by age and motivation level.
• Write About Me & Write About My World (all 3 kiddos have the same workbooks)

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We are trying some new additions to seat work time and all three kiddos will be using the same workbooks. The quality of their work will vary by age and motivation level.

• The Good and the Beautiful Handwriting Level 3: Cursive
• Fun-schooling Nature Journal
• Teach & Learn Spanish

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Kits: We have a few leftover Ivy Kids Kits and Kiwi Co Atlas Crates from last year that we will finish up in the afternoons as time allows and energy/motivation levels permit. We have re-ordered a subscription to Raddish Kids Cooking Kits for the year and we have registered for two Zoom courses with LitWits.

Read Aloud Books: We try to read aloud together as a family (almost) each weeknight before bedtime. We usually read a Bible story, a few poems from a poetry book, a picture book and a chapter from a longer book with few illustrations. Most of our picture book are from Five in a Row. This year we are starting 4 new series of chapter books and we will be alternating between them; Detective Zak by Jerry D. Thomas, Sam Campbell’s animal stories volumes 1-12, and Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, and a set horse stories by Marguerite Henry that I just picked up at Costco. We will see how far we get…

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We’ve almost finished The Bible Story series by Arthur Maxwell and I haven’t decided if we will start the series over again from the beginning or use something else for Bible. I’ll keep you posted…

The following are my “lofty goals”, these are ideas that I’d love to do and they sound like fun and look good on paper but I don’t know if I’ll actually follow through on them. Generally speaking, one of my [ah hem] “very few” personality flaws is my propensity to overbook, overplan, overcommit, and bite off more than I can chew. So here I am, admitting that these ideas will probably be too much for us to do with any real consistency.

Cookie of the Month: The first Monday of each month (or thereabouts) it would be fun to bake a batch of favorite cookies or try out a new cookie recipe.

Picnics at the Park: Tuesday lunches could be eaten at a local park.

Tea Time: Wednesday afternoons may be reserved for tea time.

Wall Timeline: I found a great article about making a wall timeline that I used for the timeline in our formal dining room turned kids book zone. There really is no sense in reinventing the wheel with project like this.
https://mamaofletters.com/2015/09/22/how-to-make-a-big-history-timeline-for-your-wall/
We will start the year with a blank timeline and then we could fill in historical figures and events as we learn about them. I really don’t have a solid plan here, I just stuck a timeline on the wall and we’ll see what happens. I used this Biblical timeline for the beginning: https://amazingbibletimeline.com/timeline_online/

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Travel & Camping: We hope to load up the Minnie Winnie and go somewhere to do something somewhere else about every 6 weeks or so.

A final note on homeschool planning, is the concept of the Minimum Viable Day (MVD). MVD is the least amount of schoolwork you can do in a day and still count the day as a school day. MVD will be differ between families, and for our family, it’s a page from the Spelling workbook and a page from the Math workbook. If past behavior predicts future behavior, we will have a good hearty share of MVD days in our year!

☀️ As always, that you so much for following us or popping by for a visit. Stay tuned for more homemaking, photography, homeschooling, and traveling adventures!