We're in the start of our third year of homeschooling with Anya. We have grown from using a tiny preschool table in one corner of the loft, to now a big desk and a whole half of the loft for our daily lessons.
And, we've grown from short and hands-on preschool activities and books to six formal subjects.
We're now going into week six so I'll share a little about our regular routine.
Breakfast: We are meditating on Gentle + Classical “morning virtues: joy.” This isn’t school time but just part of our regular morning routine. We’re learning the verses to Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee, memorizing some scripture about joy, and reading from Luke.
Morning lessons:
Morning circle: This is quick and mostly for Alina but it’s a nice way to open up morning lessons. Each girl has her own paper calendar and marks off the date. We sing a few songs, like the days of the week or months of the year, the alphabet, songs I made up for my and Tim’s phone numbers and our address, or our songs from last year about kindness and self-control.
Math: Last year we used Kindergarten Math with Confidence and it worked really well for both of us, so we’re continuing with the first grade curriculum.
Handwriting: We started some very low key handwriting practice at the end of last year, tracing letters. So we restarted that at the beginning of the year but have switched now to sentence copy work. I found some super simple, free tracing pages with silly sentences and cartoons about animals.
Science: We’re using a curriculum from Teachers Pay Teachers about the human body. We’ve done about two weeks each on muscles, bones, and now the heart/circulatory system.
Writing (alternates days with science): I’m coming up with my own “curriculum” for this to cover basics like ending punctuation, capitalization, basic parts of sentences. We are also reading some poetry, practicing writing poetry, and writing stories (Anya dictates, I write).
At snack time, we are alternating some basic music and art appreciation/exposure activities (this is part of the morning virtues: joy). Some days we find YouTube videos of symphonies to watch (the composer this fall is Mendelssohn). Other days we look at and talk about paintings by Mary Cassatt, following a similar format as last year: observing the paintings, making note of one element of art technique, and then turning the painting over and trying to remember as many things as we can. Sometimes our other morning lessons take too long and we skip this!
Afternoon:
Reading: During Alina’s nap, we have our reading lesson, this year from All About Reading level 1. It is all review so far (from last year) and mostly will remain that way for the first half of this year. I was unhappy in the end with the reading program we did last year, and spending more time on some foundational things has already made a huge difference in her reading.
Geography: Tim is starting some geography lessons with her about once a week.
Monday through Thursday this is our routine, and in total daily school time is about an hour and forty-five minutes. Fridays mornings is our co-op.
Stay tuned—I’d like to post about once a week with brief updates of what we’re up to.
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