Our Homeschooling Curriculum and Goals for this Year

Each year that I homeschool, I learn a lot about being a good teacher. In these early years, I feel that I improve as a teacher by at least 30% each year over the previous year. Most of what I have to learn has to do with time management, setting the right expectations and child behavior patterns–all great organizing lessons. Each year, I try to learn from the mistakes of previous years and try something just a little bit different.

Last year, we focused in hard on the core subjects of math and language arts. We did well in these areas but I felt like we fell down on a couple of subjects, like art, music, and history. So, this year, I made the decision to start each school day with our weakest subjects and save language arts and math for last.

Below is a quick run-down of our typical school day this fall and our goals for the year.

Art

We start our days with an art lesson. While this sounds “fun,” this art curriculum is really quite serious. The ARTistic Pursuits Elementary 4-5 Book One focuses on the fundamentals of drawing. We are training ourselves to see like artists and learning the elements of art that make for more interesting compositions. So far, we are learning about looking for shapes, capturing details and learning about how and when to use shading. It is really a lot of hard mental work. It is kind of a struggle to get excited about teaching these lessons but we are all excited about how much we have learned so far.

Goal: Be able to draw with more detail and sophistication and identify simple drawing techniques in other artists’ work.

Music

Because last year, we kept “forgetting” to do our piano lessons, this year, I built it into the school curriculum. Over the summer, I received an email notice from the Homeschool Buyer’s Coop about an Australian piano lesson curriculum taught completely online. For a onetime fee of $60, you could buy a lifetime subscription to the website simplymusiconline.com. This method of learning emphasizes playing songs rather than learning music theory. You watch the videos online for a quick lesson and then spend the rest of your week practicing on your own. Rather than practice 30 minutes per day per child, we practice only about 10-15 minutes per child. So far, my children are enjoying these lessons and they have both learned two songs already and will spontaneously practice them when they pass by the piano.

Goal: Complete the Level 1 curriculum and learn approximately 11 songs. We hope to perform the songs in an end of year recital perhaps for one of our older neighbors.

History

World geography is the theme for this year’s history lessons. We spent September learning about principles of geography and now are taking an around the world virtual tour. We will be visiting each of the continents and spending a few days in select countries. We created a “passport” that we complete for each country as well as an art project representing each country. We are making liberal use of our library card and our local library system has been amazing in terms of providing wonderful books for us to use.

Goal: Gain an appreciation that the world is a large and complex place as well as respect for different cultures and peoples.

Science

Computer science is our focus for science this year. We started off with some introductory books on computer science, including the history of “computing.” We have now progressed to the K-8 Into to Computer Science Course at learn.code.org. This is an amazing curriculum available to anyone completely free of charge. They provide all the lesson plans for the “offline” activities. My children, however, look forward to the “online” lessons where you get to practice coding through a series of interactive games. The first one we did was based on the games Angry Birds and Plants Versus Zombies. Each lesson is introduced by a video starring computer science greats like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, telling the children in simple terms what they are about to learn. This really is an amazing gift to U.S. schoolchildren and I hope that every school will someday take advantage of it. In addition to our computer science lessons, we are also doing a few pages per day from the study guide for the New York 4th grade science exam to prepare ourselves for end-of-year science testing.

Goal: Have at least a general idea of how one might write a computer program, including some of the language elements and logical constructs.

Spanish

I looked long and hard for a Spanish curriculum I wanted to use. There is a lack of intermediate and advanced language curricula for elementary school students. It is also hard to find affordable programs. I finally settled on the Barron’s Spanish Now! curriculum that includes a workbook and companion CDs. This year, we are trying to focus more on speaking Spanish. I liked that this curriculum seems to have a lot of repetition in the exercises. You use variations of the same phrases over and over and over. The curriculum is probably designed for at least a junior high – adult student. We adjust it by doing only one page per day. The curriculum is similar to what we used last year where there is a story and worksheet pages to follow. We repeat the story every day and do the worksheet page. The CDs are great because they allow us to hear the correct pronunciation of words and also provide oral exercises. The curriculum also teaches Spanish grammar, like masculine and feminine, plurals, etc. So far, my children are handling this curriculum beautifully.

Goal: Improve Spanish vocabulary and understanding. Be able to respond to simple questions in speech and writing with at least a few routine Spanish phrases like “Es posible . . . “ or “Es necesario . . . .”

Language Arts

We are continuing with the Brave Writer language arts curriculum, graduating to The Arrow curriculum. This curriculum uses longer chapter books and provides copywork passages and literary elements for each book. Ideally, you complete one book per month. There also is a companion Partnership Writing curriculum containing several creative writing projects which you would also complete roughly one per month. My only complaint with the Arrow and Partnership Writing curricula so far is that it does not come with any sort of daily schedule or monthly lesson plan as to when to do what. There is a general guide in the Partnership Writing curriculum but it doesn’t cover basics like how many chapters are you supposed to read in a week to make sure you finish the book by the end of the month. I am having to figure that out on my own. In addition to the Brave Writer curriculum, we are continuing with the Common Core Language Arts 4 Today test prep books as well as a vocabulary and spelling workbook. This is also our year to learn cursive writing, which my children have been waiting for!

Goals: Improve patience for longer chapter books. Improve reading comprehension and vocabulary. Continue progress in creative writing.

Math

We are continuing on with the Singapore Math curriculum, levels 2A/2B and 4A/4B. The only change I made this year was that I didn’t order the teacher’s manual for the books this year. In past years, I found that I hardly referred to it. There is so much to complete already between the daily assigned textbook and workbook pages that I didn’t need any other teaching activities to supplement. The only downside is that I don’t get an answer key without the teacher’s manual but the math is still simple enough at this age that we don’t really need it.

Goals: Complete each curriculum. The second grade curriculum requires addition with carrying and subtraction with borrowing as well as simple multiplying and dividing by 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10. The fourth grade curriculum requires multiplying by 2-digit numbers, adding and subtracting fractions, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing decimals and calculating area and perimeter.

Preschool

Another twist this year is that I have one more student added to my homeschool, my preschool-age son! I am still trying to find a curriculum that works for him. I initially planned out a lot of fun crafts but after trying a few with him learned that his dexterity is still quite limited (although he loves painting with a brush) and that he has more enthusiasm for reading, games and playing outside. We are also doing some socialization learning for him through a sports class (more on this in a future post). Formal schooling isn’t necessary for him at this stage so I am not worried about doing a lot but am trying to keep him engaged in reading and learning in general. He always seems to end up in the middle of the girls lessons, whether “helping” them paint or accompanying them during their piano lessons so he is also learning quite a bit by osmosis as well.

This is the most ambitious homeschool schedule we have attempted yet! It has taken several weeks to feel comfortable with it but it is finally starting to settle into a groove.