I have been diligently planning and shopping for next school year since December/January (that's when I finally allowed myself to actually make decisions, anyway), so I'm giddy with excitement to share what we are using for next school year! At the start of our next school year, I will have a 4th grader, 1st grader, and a first year preschooler! You can read about everything we used this school year in this blog post to get a sense for what worked and what didn't that definitely steered the direction of what I chose for next year.
Just to get a sense of how we homeschool, I try to do as much family-style as possible both to save time and money but also because it is incredibly fun to learn together as a family! We absolutely loved learning in this way last year and plan to continue next year. Also, we are big followers of Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy and methodology, so that drove a lot of the decisions as to what books and curricula to use.
The core of our morning family time together that is the foundation of our homeschooling is our prayer, bible, and theology study. We always start with prayer, and this year we used three different prayer books (rotating out a weekly prayer we would learn) and then would say our own prayer over the day, loved ones, our learning, etc. after the written prayer. The three prayer books we used this year that we will likely use here and there next year are Little Golden Book Prayers for Children, Praying the Prayers of the Bible for Kids, and A Book of Prayers for Kids. Additionally, I found 365 Prayers for Children on our bookshelf, so we will use that as well.
As for bible reading, we will mainly be using our family journaling bible that we recently started working through from the very beginning. After we discuss, I try to add a little blurb in the margin about something the girls said to look back on as we read through again and again over the years. I will likely also read 101 Favorite Stories from the Bible to my younger daughters that I read to my oldest when she was in first grade. It's a great storybook bible that we really enjoyed reading. This might be a great thing to incorporate into lunch or supper time as a family.
Lastly, I bought this More than Words bible curriculum book a couple years ago and never ended up using it. It might be a great thing for my oldest to do with me or even independently to dive more into the word on her own for the first time.
The main curriculum we chose for this year as the spine for our family-style learning is Kind Kingdom by The Peaceful Press. We used Playful Pioneers by The Peaceful Press last year and loved it so much, so it made sense to move on to the next resource in The Peaceful Press' family-style curricula lineup. We will be learning about European History for the first time, and my girls cannot wait to learn about kings and queens, castles, medieval times, and the history that started before our American history that we've learned so much about for the last few years.
This curriculum covers SOOOO many subjects, but I will break them down individually to share what we will be doing so it makes more sense.
The main spine of the Chronicles of Narnia series. Because this guide also covers European history (more on that later), we are also reading Grimm's Fairy Tales and Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare this year, both of which I'm extremely excited about as a former English teacher!
A Charlotte Mason education, which is our educational philosophy includes lots of narration, so along with our readings, our girls will be doing oral, written, and illustrated narrations (a varation each week). More on that later in this post.
The way Peaceful Press curriculum guides work is that many of the books, copy work, artwork, recipes, geography, etc. all work together to give a larger picture of that particular geographical area's history that we are studying that year.
Our notebooking goes along with narration but also works with many subjects. After reading The Living Page by Laurie Bestvater this year which is all about keeping notebooks from a Charlotte Mason perspective, I decided to be more strategic about our notebooking this year. I bought these sketch pad books and a straight line stencil to act as our main notebooks this year. I may buy multiple - I haven't decided yet. We likely will use one for each girl for their nature journals (more on that in a bit), one for their narration journals (when they do written/illustrated narrations that are not in their student notebooks that come with the Kind Kingdom (shown in the photo above), and perhaps one for history/science/geography. I do not want to get too carried away with notebooks when my girls are still very young, but I would like to incorporate more notebooking in nicer journals they can draw or paint with watercolors in to help them really retain what they are learning and have something to come back and reference throughout the year.
For history and geography this year, we will be studying European history. We will be reading Our Island Story, as well as many living picture books for our history learning. For geography, we will be using this Draw Europe book which I'm excited about because I've never been good with geography! We will be notebooking about what we learn and filling out timeline cards as we go. The Kind Kingdom also includes many activities to deepen the learning and just make homeschooling more fun, which we sometime skip but sometimes do and my girls have always really enjoyed them.
For nature study, we will not be doing anything super formal, but I aim to do at least one nature study a week where we will go out either on a hike, in our neighborhood, or just even look out our window in the winter and will draw something we see. This could be a flower, a tree, a bird, a frog, a stick, or basically anything we see. I have some field guides we can also use as a reference and this Handbook of Nature Study and this How to Teach Nature Journaling book. We will also be trying to press more flowers and other things we find in nature to physically add to our nature journals this year.
While I love all the artwork we were exposed to with the Playful Pioneers curriculum by Peaceful Press this past school year, and I'm excited to study more artists and their artwork in the upcoming year, I wanted a little bit more art instruction for my daughters for this year. I spent months trying to find an art curriculum that was simple but taught technique and basics of art. I've been giddy to start Living Art Lessons with my girls. We will do two lessons a week, one where I typically will introduce an element of art and another lesson where we will do an art activity. They are all simple and use mainly things we already have on hand, which I love! My girls are all very artistic so they do tons of freestyle arts and crafts throughout the week as well that is completely child-led.
Our Kind Kingdom student notebooks include a lot of copywork, but we will also be using handwriting workbooks to refine their handwriting. My oldest daughter will be using Spectrum Cursive Handwring book for her second year of cursive. My first grader will be using the Spectrum Manuscript Handwriting book. My youngest, if interested, will be doing The Good and the Beautiful Doodles and Pre-Wrtiting for Little Part 1 handwriting book that we already had for our middle daughter but never used.
My oldest started typing for third grade and will continue by doing 5-10 minutes of typing each school day on Typing Club, an online typing resource that is free! We have loved it and she has learned so much with just 5-10 minutes a day!
We will be continuing using Explode the Code for my first grader this upcoming year. We switched mid-way through the year to Explode the Code and she has been flying through it. We just started the third book and will continue with some practice a couple days a week this summer. We also have been reading Bob Books every day as well which we will continue next year along with other early reader books we have.
As for language arts, this is where I am stuck with my fourth grader. She's about half a grade "behind" (I hate that word but don't know a better word to use) and is in the middle of Good and the Beautiful's Language Arts Level 3. I do not hate this program, but I've been wanting to switch to a different Language Arts program for a few reasons. Firstly, we already do geography and picture study, so those parts of this program I believe are redundant for my daughter. They take extra time that she could be doing something else quite frankly. Secondly, we are not Mormon and we want to get away from this curriculum because as she gets older she will do more independently and I have heard some of the Mormon beliefs creep in in the older course books. We plan to finish level 3 by the end of the summer or in the early fall. After that, I am not sure what we will switch to. We will want something with grammar and writing for sure, but I am unsure yet of what we will go with. If you have any suggestions, send them my way!
While we plan to move away from the Good and the Beautiful for Language Arts, so far I don't have anything bad to say about their math program. I don't think I've seen many, if any, mentions of faith or God at all in the math program which honestly is fine. I don't need our math program to discuss Christianity. I think math speaks for itself with how creative our Creator is - we don't need the curriculum to tell us that. I have really appreciated the hands-on nature of the curriculum as well as the real-world application in every single lesson. For these reasons, I plan to use The Good and the Beautiful Math Level 1 for my first grader next year. We already have the math box, so we plan to just print out the course book for free which saves us money!
I looked at so many different math programs because I wanted to see what else is out there and I also wanted my daughter to start to become more independent in learning math since she excels at it and eventually I want my kids to take more ownership over their schooling because I want them to learn how to learn on their own as a long-term skill as they grow older. I looked into a few online-based and video-based math curricula before learning that The Good and the Beautiful Math Level 4 actually is student-led with daily videos that teach the lessons. So, we are going to try that out this year and see how it goes. I am not sure if we will continue with it long-term, but my daughter absolutely loves their math program and has learned so much, so I don't want to change it if it's been working so well for her and she enjoys it.
Our youngest daughter will turn 4 just a few days before the school year starts, so we did decide to enroll her in a Christian preschool. Our main reasons for doing this are for her to make friends (and strengthen friendships she already has since we know a lot of the kids going to that preschool) and to open up more focused time at home for my older kids for things like art and science projects that are hard to get to with a preschool-age child at home. My youngest daughter has grown leaps and bounds and does really well during homeschool time lately (that hasn't always been the case), but I know now that her sisters are getting older and I want to be doing more school projects and things that take more time and focus, that it will be hard for her to participate and stressful on me to help the olders and figure out a way for my youngest to be involved but not disruptive. So, preschool is a wonderful way for her to spend time with friends in a positive learning environment while we fit in those subjects that are harder to fit in when she is home.
We will be continuing to attend our little friend-started and friend-run Charlotte Mason co-op. We haven't met to decide what it will look like for next year, but last year it included Latin and science for the older kids (I believe my oldest will participate next year), and prayer, folk songs, hymns, recitation, narration, Shakespeare, handicraft, composer study, nature study, and nature hikes. I imagine it will be very similar next year. We can't wait!
I don't have a lot planned in terms of extracurriculars for next year other than knowing for sure all three girls will attend Awana at our church weekly, our weekly church service, Sunday School, and then a monthly craft class if that is still happening next year. My oldest will continue private piano lessons and I plan to use Hoffman Academy for my first grader to help her learn piano. Beyond that, we will likely try some community ed classes, perhaps gymnastics, and see what the girls are interested in this fall.
I believe that is everything we have planned so far for next year! I always enjoy the planning process so much and am already looking forward to starting in a few months!