Of course, one of the greatest things about homeschooling is that at any time we can change our minds about what path we are heading down. But I like to have a plan and so far this is it.....!
We sit down every morning for "Blanket Time." First we light some candles (for no other reason other than that the kids really like candles and it is an easy way to get them into the room!), then we read some poetry and if the baby is awake, we learn a finger play song and then take turns "performing" for her. Then we read the books that they have picked out from the library basket (some of which are ones I have sneaked in there off of our master book list). The kids can color or work on handicrafts while I read to them. Once we have finished, we blow out candles and then take a break or if they are in the mood to keep going, we start working on our phonics and reading activities. We finished "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" last year and both kids are reading. Jane is more driven to pick out books and sit and read to herself or to me or the baby. Jack is not as eager so he and I have now moved on to "Phonics Pathways" for review and are skipping through that as he has deemed much of it as "too easy." Both kids use the "Expode the Code" workbooks for phonics activities and we work on sight word lists. We do phonics and reading almost every day.
3 days a week we will be using "Handwriting without Tears" to work on our penmanship. This is new as they have been just writing on their own with no real instruction up until now. They really want to jump ahead to cursive so I told them if we like this then once we have completed it, we will jump ahead to their cursive program.
3 days a week we will also be studying early American history using the primary Early American History book from Beautiful Feet. It uses a variety of award winning picture books and then has questions and answers. It has more religious content than I wanted but I love the books it uses.
Once we finish with that, we will move on to "Story of the World" which we will probably work on for the next few years. It is also literature based, which most of our work is.
In addition to that we will continue using our also literature based, Five in a Row, volume 2. Even though it is meant to do all week, we rather like doing it out of the house all in one day when we can, save for any messy art project activities the book suggests.
Through Ambleside, we will also be covering their recommended artists and composers for the year. This year we will study the works of Botticelli, Friedrich and Van Gogh. We will be studying the music of Bach, Liszt, and Mahler and Bruckner. Ideally, we will be hosting tea parties every other week where we will not only discuss our art and music pieces but will be able to use our table manners and good habits. We are really looking forward to this!
We will also be continuing with nature study and science activities out of our science box. We work on handicrafts and art activities weekly, if not daily. Lastly, we are learning French here and there. Right now we are just using some Usborne sticker books and a dictionary and will add something more formal later.
Whew! That sounds like a lot but really we can complete all we want to in a couple hours if we sat and did it straight through. Our goal is to get our work done in the morning so that our afternoons are free for home school PE, piano lessons, dance, museums, park and just plain playing.