Homeschool Plan & Curricula: Our 2021-2022 School Year

Homeschool Plan Goals

I wanted to have a very realistic homeschool plan for this school year. I have a first grader, a young kindergartener (who wanted to begin school like her sister), and a 3-year-old preschooler. Coming along for the ride are our 1-year-old son and our foster baby.

My main goal is to point my children to Christ, for them to know the gospel, and for them to be very familiar with God’s Word. The next goal is to develop good habits in my children including obedience, health, attention, and thankfulness because these are skills that will last throughout their lives. My final priorities are academic and related to reading and math. For reading, these are to strengthen my first grader’s reading skills, get my kindergartener reading, and for my preschooler to know her letters and letter sounds. For math, I just want to lay a good foundation for everyone in understanding the basics.

We have many more subjects such as history, science, poetry, art, handicraft, music, and Spanish. These are secondary priorities. I want my children to have a rich education, but I do realize there are limits when I am parenting so many small children all at once! Next I will list out our weekly homeschool schedule so you can see what our daily lessons include.

Homeschool Schedule

Monday
Morning Basket
Literature
Bible
Math
Reading
Handwriting
Habits
Science
Poetry

Tuesday
Morning Basket
Literature
Bible
Math
Reading
Handwriting
Music
Foreign Language

Wednesday
Morning Basket
Literature
Bible
Math
Reading
Handwriting
Habits
Science
Art

Thursday
Morning Basket
Literature
Bible
Math
Reading
Geography
Foreign Language
Handicraft

Friday
Morning Basket
Literature
History
Math
Reading
Nature Study
Fun Friday Activity

UPDATE!:
As of January of 2022, I have implemented a loop schedule for our subjects that are more secondary. I am 7 months pregnant and parenting 5 small children, including 2 infants currently, so I needed to simplify our homeschool plan a little more and relieve some of the pressure I was putting on myself. There are 2 loop days, Tuesday and Thursday, and the subjects that rotate on the loop are music, art, poetry, science, handicraft, and Spanish. These subjects were getting neglected, so putting them on a loop helped me to still accomplish them but at a more doable pace. This has relieved the pressure and helped me to make sure I’m accomplishing the most important lessons.

Homeschool Plan: Curricula

See our morning basket videos HERE and HERE where I share what we’ve done this year. You can see us doing it in action! Morning basket is our time of family devotion and our literature read-aloud. You can read all about it in this blog post.

Reading

1st grade: Simply Charlotte Mason – Delightful Reading Level 3 + Pathway Readers
Kindergarten: (Already knew letters and letter sounds) – Delightful Reading Level 2
I’m a huge fan of the Simply Charlotte Mason Delightful Reading program! The video below shows my older daughter doing a lesson last year with Level 2.

Math

1st grade: The Charlotte Mason Elementary Arithmetic Series Book 1
Kindergarten: Counting activities with number recognition

UPDATE!:
As of October of 2021, we switched our math curriculum in our homeschool plan! We decided to switch to Math U See.
Here’s my video explaining the switch!:

Handwriting

1st grade: Delightful Handwriting and A Child’s Copybook Reader. My daughter finished up her Delightful Handwriting from last year, and then continued on with the copybook reader. The copybook uses sentences that she is learning to read and copy so that she can begin to learn grammar and punctuation. The copybook reader is full of beautiful poems and Bible verses for her to copy. This is so she is not copying something random. Instead she is copying something with beautiful ideas that I want feed her mind with.

Kindergarten: Delightful Handwriting. My kindergarten daughter is learning to write her letters with Delightful Handwriting, and I am using the Teacher Guide to help make sure she is forming the letters properly.

History & Bible

Family all together: We are using Simply Charlotte Mason’s History and Bible series beginning with Ancient Egypt and Genesis – Deuteronomy. This includes about 3-4 days per week of Bible study and 1 day per week of ancient history. This curriculum includes studying Ancient Egypt as well as other parts of the world. The Simply Charlotte Mason history cycle is 6 years long (as opposed to many history curricula that are 4 years long). This is due to having 3 full years of Ancient History separately covering Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and Ancient Rome. The books of the Bible were written during these eras, so the students study the Bible alongside the history of the time period to give an even richer understanding of the Biblical stories and passages.

Geography

Family all together: Our Geography is also from Simply Charlotte Mason! This year we are learning all about Africa which fits in well with our history. Visits to Africa includes map work, additional reading from living books to learn about a few different African cultures, and exploring 2 fantastic books Hungry Planet and Material World. These books have been incredible to learn from for my daughters and for myself. We get a really good understanding of what life is like in these different countries around the world and it gets us out of our American “bubble.”

Music

Family all together: For music we decided to use a small company called SQUILT developed by a previous music teacher and homeschool mama. We selected a composer to study for the year which was Mozart. The curriculum is fun and engaging, but it was also very easy to implement. After Mozart, we plan to do Bach and then possibly start my oldest daughter (6) on a musical instrument.

Art

Family all together: For art the plan is to study ancient art and architecture using Simply Charlotte Mason’s The Stuff They Left Behind from the Days of Ancient Egypt. In addition to this, I will find watercolor and pastel tutorials for kids on YouTube to let the kids try it out.

Science

Family all together: For science, I chose Exploring Nature with Children from Raising Little Shoots. This is a nature-based curriculum with seasonally specific living books, learning activities, and guided observation. There’s also seasonal poems. This is a really fun, low-maintenance science curriculum for all ages.

Poetry

Family all together: We’ve picked one poet to focus on throughout the school year. This year we picked Robert Louis Stevenson. Simply Charlotte Mason has a wonderful series of books called Enjoy the Poems. We keep this very simple and read one poem together per week. It’s an enriching experience for our children to hear the beautiful language.

Handicraft

In a Charlotte Mason education, there is a special time dedicated for handicrafts. This is something that is to be handmade and useful for the family. At this stage in our school, I have not made this a priority. I am looking for more handicraft ideas for my children’s ages. I currently have a latch-hook pillow kit for my 1st grader. If she can complete this one project, we will call that a win for this subject!

Foreign Language – Spanish

Family all together: We decided to study Spanish for our foreign language. It is the most prevalent language in our area besides English. The curriculum we chose is Speaking Spanish with Miss Mason and Francois from Cherrydale Press. The focus is on learning a new language the way a small child learns their native language. There’s also an audio file that we can listen to in the car. We’re looking forward to learning Spanish as a family.

YouTube Videos Explaining My Curricula Choices: