Our Weekly Rhythm: How Often We Learn Each Subject

September 25, 2024 Sarah @ Homeschool Glue

Balancing homeschool with three kids, a baby on the way, watching kids before and after school, running my online business, and doing other work on the side as well can be a bit chaotic at times! However, we have a solid daily and weekly rhythm that really helps everything get done without too much chaos most of the time.

I thought it would be helpful to lay out what subjects we do daily, weekly, and every once in a while. It doesn't feel like we do that much learning in one day, but when I started writing out everything we do in a week, it really is a lot! Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy is based on spreading a feast of many subjects, but relying on short lessons that a child can actually gain some ideas from and start making connections between subjects. This is how we can tackle so many subjects in one week - we don't go super deep into any one subject and overwhelm them, but instead are diving into many, many subjects over the course of a week and giving them enough to ponder and digest without overcrowding their brains and overwhelming their nervous systems.

We homeschool 5 days a week, but we are only doing 4 full days of homeschooling, if that makes sense. Two days of the week, we have extra things happening: co-op/hike and my work day. On my work day, my kids go to my parents' for a few hours so I can really focus on getting some work day. On those two days we don't get a full school day in, we do half of one day. On one of those days, we do just our family subjects (which I'll share later in this post) and on the other day, we do only their individual subjects (which I'll also share later in this post). Altogether, we do 4 full days of homeschool every week, but we are having school five days.

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DAILY FAMILY SUBJECTS

MORNING MENUS

We use our Morning Menus 4 days a week (a full school week). We do them right at the start of our homeschool time and talk about the date (having each child write the date on a calendar and then have different pages for each child to write the date according to their writing ability), weather, moon phase, mood, etc. Usually two days a week we will work on other pages like spelling the days of the week in cursive or print (for my older daughters), practice our letter sounds (with my 4 year old), and other extra pages that are included in the Morning Menus set.

DAILY RICHES

We also use our Daily Riches curriculum four days a week, as it is outlined. This is a family-style curriculum that includes many subjects: Bible study, prayer, Scripture memory (we skip this - more on that next), poet and poetry study, hymns, folk songs, picture and artist study, virtue study, composer study, handicraft, copywork, and narration. That's a lot! We use Daily Riches this every morning right after our Morning Menus and are learning so much!

SCRIPTURE MEMORY

Although Scripture memory verses are included every week with Daily Riches, we attend Awana classes every week where the kids learn scripture verses and have to work on them at home every week. We usually do this as a family in the morning to make sure it gets done.

LITERATURE + NARRATION

As a family, we use much of the Kind Kingdom curriculum by Peaceful Press. We are reading through the entire Chronicles of Narnia series through this curriculum four days a week and other literature as well such as Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare for Children and Grimm's Fairy Tales. After we read anything, I have my children narrate (or tell back) what they remember from what we read. For longer chapters or stories, I will stop throughout the reading to have them narrate as they build their narration skills.

WEEKLY FAMILY SUBJECTS

HISTORY

European history is included in the Kind Kingdom curriculum a couple times a week. We mainly read living picture books for this subject, but I have decided to read as much of Our Island Story as we can, as I'm trying to move toward implementing Ambleside Online in the future (although I really love family-style learning) and students read through that book in the early years, so it's perfect for our first and fourth graders. We are reading one chapter 2-3 times a week.

ART

We learn art one time a week using Living Art Lessons by Master Books. I'm not following the timeline included in the schedule for this book because it moves super slowly, so we are doing about one-two weeks' worth of work in one day. We have loved learning the different elements of art and creating our own simple artwork based on the principles we are learning!

GEOGRAPHY

We learn geography one time a week. The Kind Kingdom uses Draw Europe, which has been an amazing resource to learn where all the countries, mountains, and seas are in Europe. It's been really fun to draw it together using this really simple but effective resource!

SCIENCE

I have some other science curricula in the planning stages behind the scenes, but for our own family this year, we are reading the books and doing some of the activities outlined in the Kind Kingdom curriculum (about 1-2 times a week) and have added in reading 1-2 chapters of The Story Book of Science once a week along with a video or activity that fits what we learned about.

ILLUSTRATED/WRITTEN NARRATION

I haven't been good about implementing illustrated/written narrations other years, so this year we are starting with one a week. Basically, the girls will illustrate and write about something that happened in our current Narnia book (or if they want to do it about another subject's reading, that would be fine too). Then they write about it. For now, since my 1st grader is still learning to read more complicated words, I'm writing what she dictates to me, but as she gets better with writing, I will start writing it and having her copy and then slowly have her start writing it on her own. My 4th grader writes it on her own. I will likely have her type some and print them and glue just for extra typing practice.

NATURE STUDY

Currently, once a week we do a nature study where we go out on a hike or just around our yard/neighborhood and we observe one specific part of nature. Sometimes we do one that is the same for all of us that we were specifically looking for and sometimes they choose. Then they write a little bit about it. We haven't been the best at this in previous years, so we are working up toward better nature journal entries and doing more with our nature study over time.

COPYWORK

This is part of the Daily Riches curriculum, but I wanted to include it separately since it's a Charlotte Mason staple. Twice a week we do dedicated copywork practice. One day, they copy part of the poem from the week. The other day, they copy the scripture verse. Currently, my first grader traces the words already on the page for her as she gets stronger at writing neatly. My fourth grader chose to use the older student print version for her copywork, where she writes the passages on blank lines since she is doing cursive handwriting practice on the other days and could use more practice with print writing. I have horrible handwriting and I'm trying to make sure my daughters don't have the same issue!

CO-OP BIWEEKLY SUBJECTS

Every other week, we attend a Charlotte Mason co-op. It's our third year being part of this co-op and we were one of the families that helped start it with friends who came up with the idea. We all participate in singing hymns and folk songs, recitation (where kids can come up and recite something they've memorized at home), prayer, composer study, and nature study (they read a book about a topic and can share their nature journal entries), and Swedish drill (a version of physical education). Both girls do narration, but my fourth grader is reading a biography and my first grader is reading a fictional book. They both are also learning watercolor for our handicraft this term, but they are learning at their own levels. Co-op is a wonderful way to add some learning we do not do at home and to strengthen some of the learning we are already doing at home!

PRESCHOOL INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTS

Our 4 year old is attending a Christian preschool two mornings a week this year, more to make friends and to have some extra time to do some weekly subjects with my older daughters while my youngest does something age-appropriate at school. School is reinforcing all kinds of things she is already learning at home, but we do not do a whole lot of dedicated school at home because she is so young. What we do mostly is lots of reading, talking about the world around us, exploring nature, sensory play, and occasionally a work book here or there when she requests to "do school" where she can practice letter sounds, tracing, and that sort of thing. If going to public school, she wouldn't start kindergarten for two more years since her birthday is just a few days before the cutoff of September 1, so we would be "holding her back" a year anyway. Our main goal for her is regulating her emotions, reading lots of great living books, talking to her, involving her in our daily life, and giving her opportunities to learn through play.

1ST GRADE INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTS

Our first grader has a few subjects she does that are just for her. She does all of them with me currently as she's not quite ready to do any of them completely independently. We use Explode the Code and do 2-3 pages out of there four days a week. I have her read a book or two from a phonics reader. We've really been enjoying the Usborne My First Reading Library books. We use The Good and the Beautiful Math 1 and do one lesson a day, four days a week. She also does one page of manuscript handwriting practice every day while I'm reading books to my 4 year old before we start our main homeschool time together. I found myself really longing to read the Burgess Chapter Books that I read with my oldest when she was in first grade, so after my first grader's lessons, I read one super short chapter out of one of those books (we have quite a few) and have her narrate for extra narration practice. They are just the sweetest books and I didn't want her to miss out on reading them!

4TH GRADE INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTS

Our 4th grader does a mix of individual subjects with me and on her own independently since she is old enough to start taking on some of her own learning. One of our goals in homeschooling is for our children to learn how to teach and learn without a teacher guiding them every step of the way. I of course look over all her work, am available for help, and will step in when needed, but she's done a great job taking over a couple subjects.

She does math pretty independently this year using The Good and the Beautiful Math 4. She usually lays on our bed and watches the video and then does the lesson practice and review while I'm doing individual work with my 1st grader. We then do Learning Language Arts through Literature together which is a new change for this year. I'm not sold yet on if I love it or not. She does not enjoy writing or spelling, so having her write more this year through this curriculum has been good (albeit painful for both of us sometimes - ha!).

She also does cursive writing practice about 2-3 days a week. After our dedicated homeschool time, usually during our quiet time, she will read for at least 30 minutes. She has different choices I give her to read more about our history topics or I pull books from the Ambleside Online Level 4 Free Reads list. She usually reads far more than 30 minutes in a day, but she is allowed to read her own book choice after those 30 minutes are completed. Typing is another subject she does independently 4 times a week using Typing Club. She does one to two lessons a day. To strengthen her spelling skills, she does one page of a spelling workbook each day as well. And lastly, she practices piano for 15-20 minutes a day. Whew - that seemed like a lot but it all fits into our day seamlessly!

Wow - writing it all out it sounds like it would take this all ten hours a day! It's amazing what we can fit in in just about 2.5-3 hours a day of dedicated homeschool time! My oldest does do some of her individual subjects outside of that time, but we normally homeschool from about 7:40am to about 10:15/10:45am depending on what we have planned for the day. Sometimes it's even less! And then, obviously on the days when I split our subjects between two days, we are done by about 8:45/9:15am depending on the day and what we have going on.

As I was writing out this post, I realized that it is likely really easy for other homeschool families, especially newer ones, to read this and think, "I'm not doing nearly enough!" First of all, you are probably doing WAY more than you realize and if you had to photograph it all and write it all out, you would see that! Also, this is our fourth year of officially homeschooling, but I was doing a lot of homeschooling in many ways since my oldest was very young, as I had my own in-home daycare, did a preschool curriculum, read with the kids, gave them opportunities to learn through play, etc. So, this journey is not new for us and I've added SOOOO much over time! Our first year when my oldest was in first grade, homeschool was much more scaled back and it only took an hour to an hour and a half a day. The beauty of homeschooling is that you can change at any time and it grows with you as you learn more and as your kids grow!

I hope this was encouraging and helpful to see how often we do subjects. Remember, most of these subject are SHORT. Think 5-15 minutes for most! Phonics/Language Arts, Literature, and Math take the longest time for us. All the other subjects are typically bite-sized which is how we can truly spread the feast before our kids. We don't want their plates overflowing with every food offered at the feast. We want them to have the right portions of each and to be exposed to all sorts of foods (or subjects)! Happy homeschooling!

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