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Our Homeschooling Plans for 2017-2018 (With a 3rd grader, a 1st grader, and a preschooler)

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Anybody out there scrambling to put together your homeschool curriculum and plans for the new year? You’re probably already done with your plans since the new school year is almost upon us but I just really started thinking about it last week so I thought I’d share what I came up with for us for next year.
We actually do a lot of school during the summer, partly because it’s so dang hot in Texas in June and July and partly so that we have the freedom to skip school and go to the zoo or go out of town or take off all of Advent or whatever the case may be. Inability to stick to a rigid schedule, thy name is Haley. One of homeschooling’s biggest perks for me is it’s flexibility and schooling through the summer really helps with that for us. But we will be beginning a few new subjects in September. Ok here goes…

Our Curriculum Plans for 2017-2018

For a….

-3rd grade boy

-1st grade girl

-preschool girl

Our homeschooling method is VERY laid back. We’re of the opinion that young children naturally love to learn and our job is to nurture and guide their God-given curiosity and thirst for knowledge. So we don’t push the structured school time for very little ones because “school” is woven into the rest of our lives. I wouldn’t be doing any formal schoolwork at all with our preschooler if she weren’t bound and determined to keep up with her siblings.

With each passing year, we have to add a little bit more structured school time as the kids get older, but we really do this gradually. Before first grade all we do is read alouds. In first grade we add math (and handwriting if there seems to be readiness). In second grade we add geography and history. The 3rd grader is adding science and Latin this year. And everybody will participate in art and poetry.

Ok, here we go!

Math:

This post contains Amazon affiliate links.

We actually have three things going for math right now. I like starting out with Singapore Math (1A and 1B) in 1st grade so that’s what we’re doing with (almost) six-year-old Lucy.

Our oldest was not a fan of Singapore and due to his strong choleric temperament, getting him to sit down with a workbook was like pulling teeth so we switched to Life of Fred which he loves.

Life of Fred

It’s written as a narrative and Benjamin really enjoys reading each chapter. Then we do the short practice section together so I know he understood the content. We supplement with Khan Academy math. (A great free online resource!) Khan Academy is great for drilling the concepts until the student achieves mastery. But since Benjamin raced through a ton of Life of Fred books last year, I can tell he needs a little more practice than LoF offers to really nail division, so we’re going to grab the 3rd grade Singapore workbook, too.

I also bought these multiplication table flash cards and this DVD to help with the memorization.

So to sum up:

3rd grader: Life of Fred (supplementing with Singapore and Khan Academy)

1st grader: Singapore

Preschooler: not starting math yet!

Reading:

Because my 3rd grader is super internally motivated and already loves to read for pleasure, I don’t make reading part of our “schooling.” It it ain’t broken, don’t fix it! I do enjoy reading aloud to all three kids so we make that part of our days. I usually do our read alouds first thing during or just after breakfast. The kids are allowed to color or play with LEGO while I read.

For preschoolers, I really love the Catholic preschool curriculum Twenty-Six Letters to Heaven by Sarah Park because the picture book lists in it are worth the price of purchase. I go to this book first when I’m ordering books from the library.

I don’t think anyone’s ever too old for GOOD picture books, but a couple of years ago we added chapter books to the mix, particularly for bedtime reads.

We’re currently reading Redwall by Brian Jacques and the Molly books with the girls at bedtime and The Green Ember by S.D. Smith and Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl with Benjamin. These are a few of the titles we’d like to read to them this year:

Last Year’s Read Alouds/audiobooks

Read alouds from other years:

The 3rd grader also did a lot of reading on his own this year with library books. It’s a fun era!

If you’re interested, you can read about our favorite authors and favorite picture books. We’re also very into audiobooks. I came up with a big list of audiobooks we especially love and where to find good audiobooks (and free ones!)

We used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann to teach our oldest to read and now we’re almost done with our first grader and a third of the way through with the preschooler (I told you she insists on keeping up with the pack!). Highly, highly recommend.

Now that the first grader is able to read some on her own, we got some Bob books for her to practice with and she loves them. She’s not as confident a reader as Benjamin was so we’re easing into reading more with her.

So to sum up:

3rd grader: Read alouds, reading chapter books on his own

1st grader: Read alouds, 100 Easy Lessons, Bob books

Preschooler: Read alouds, 100 Easy Lessons

Handwriting:


Last year was the first year we added handwriting to our curriculum. Benjamin had been resistant to practicing handwriting to we put it off for an extra year and I’m glad we did. We started out with Handwriting Without Tears, the first grade level even though he was in second grade. He whizzed through it and we did second grade, too and started on third grade (cursive) this summer. It was definitely worth it to wait an extra year until he seemed ready and he caught up just fine. We might add some dictation and copywork when he finishes learning cursive but I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.

3rd grader: Handwriting Without Tears (cursive)

1st grader: Handwriting Without Tears (printing)

Preschooler: Handwriting Without Tears (preschool)

History:

Story of the World audiobooks — We loved Ancient World and we started Medieval last year but haven’t finished it completely. We’ll probably finish us over the next couple of weeks. Not sure if we’ll grab the next in this series or hold off a little bit since we’re adding some new subjects in and I don’t want to over do things. You can also get Story of the World as a print book.  

For American history we’re just watching Liberty’s Kids. The kids enjoyed watching them last year and we’ll probably finish the series this year.

To sum up:

–All three kids: Story of the World and Liberty’s Kids

Science:

This will be the first year that we’re doing any formal science. But we’re adding Astronomy (from Memoria Press) and plan on doing plenty of stargazing and are supplementing with D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths.

3rd grader: Astronomy, Greek Myths, Stargazing

1st grader: Greek Myths read alouds, Stargazing

Preschooler: Greek Myths read alouds, Stargazing

Co-op:

We participate in a Catholic homeschool co-op that offers Catechesis of the Good Shepherd for the girls and some enrichment classes for Benjamin’s grade. Last year he did music, sacred art, and P.E., the previous year he did science and history. This year it looks like he’ll do P.E., geography, and nature drawing.

To sum up:

3rd grader: P.E., Nature Drawing, Geography, Catechesis of the Good Shepherd II (for ages 6-9)

1st grader: Catechesis of the Good Shepherd

Preschooler: Catechesis of the Good Shepherd

Religion:

The kids will all be doing some faith formation with Catechesis of the Good Shepard but I think we will supplement that this year with Sophia Institute Press’s Family of Faith.

Composition:

I don’t think we’ll push this too much this year since it’s Benjamin’s least favorite thing to do. But now that he’s tackled a lot of handwriting skills, it should be a bit easier than in the past. He does like emailing grandparents so we’ll do more of that (and his spelling really isn’t bad at all, so I’m not interested in adding that on as a separate subject at this point). I’m interested in any curriculum suggestions for composition that you love, though! Nothing super time consuming.

To sum up:

3rd grader: some composition, emailing grandparents

1st grader: none

preschooler: none

Poetry:

All the kids love learning poetry! Last year we memorized some Robert Louis Stevenson and Hillaire Belloc poems.

Our Homeschooling Curriculum with a 2nd Grader, a Preschooler, and a Toddler (2016-2017)

This year trusted friends recommended The Harp and Laurel Wreath by Laura Berquist which is a collection of TONS of poems for the early years through high school. It will last us forever! Really looking forward to memorizing some poems.

All three kids: Harp and Laurel Wreath

Art:

This year I’m adding Simply Charlotte Mason picture portfolios and I’m so excited about it. I got three of these beauties (Fra Angelico, Giotto, and Botticelli). We’ll do these together with all three kids.

Latin:

We’re also adding some Latin to our curriculum (also from Memoria Press) for our 3rd grader.

When I write it all out, it looks like a lot, but we RARELY do more than an hour or two of structured school time/day. And we don’t even school every single day. We will take our time, make adjustments when needed, and not stress about finishing everything by next June. Homeschooling is about so much more than checking off boxes. I am not all about weighing young kids down with workbooks and I am all about them mostly climbing trees and digging in the dirt while being surrounded by good and beautiful ideas.

Happy curriculum hunting to my fellow homeschoolers!

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. If you purchase a title linked in this post from Amazon, at no additional cost to you, a portion of the sale will keep Carrots up and running. Thank you!

Comments

  2. Great picks!

    My oldest hit a snag with division too and we got him the Montessori Stamp set. I looked up youtube videos of how to present division and such with it and it helped so much in conjunction with Singapore 3. I’ve used it with the other kids too when they struggled to grasp a new concept or visualize a word problem.

    Reply

  4. Pre read Story of the World 2. The stuff on Elizabeth (many years ago, might be corrected now) said something about how she let everyone practice whatever faith they wanted and she didn’t persecute Catholics. *rolling eyes)

    Reply

  5. My second graders is a pen pal with her Out of state
    Godmother. That’s all we really do for composition at this point. She loves getting a letter in the mail.

    Reply

  6. We too are trying out Sophia Institute’s Family of Faith Series (we have a 1st grader, preschooler, crazy 2 yr old and equally crazy baby!) I’ll have to touch base with you later down the road to see what you guys think of it–we’re excited, it seems solid yet beautiful!

    Reply

  7. We also have a 3rd grade boy and 1st grade girl….

    For our 3rd grader (who hates busy work) we are using Memoria Press Intro to Composition: https://www.memoriapress.com/curriculum/writing-and-english-grammar/3rd-grade-english-grammar-intro-composition/

    I like (and I think he does also) the no nonsense, no distraction, nothing fancy to the pages.

    For math facts and drills, we enjoy xtramath.org for both our 3rd and 1st grader. Mr. C only drills the facts that the kids are having trouble with, so it’s only 10-15 minutes per day, very engaging, and I’m not having to flip flash cards just to drill math facts.

    Have a great year!

    Reply

  9. I’m not a mom and I’m a product of traditional schooling, but I think it’s so interesting to see how other kiddos learn and how parents decide how to corral all the knowledge they want to impart to their kids and teach it to them. I thought it was interesting that you listed Greek myths under the science section of your curriculum. I’m having trouble figuring out how that fits into science! I’d be interested to hear about your thought process regarding that. Thanks and keep up the great blogging work!

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    • Thanks! Since we’re doing Astronomy this year and learning constellations, we’re going to supplement with Greek myths so that the kids will understand why different constellations are named after them. 🙂

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  10. Hi Haley! I have a 2nd grader, a pre-K, and a toddler (with baby due in Nov). This year my big girl wanted to start Latin too, so we got the Catholic Heritage Press readers without the workbooks. If you like Life of Fred’s narrative but want more practice, I also wanted to suggest looking into Living Math (I don’t remember the publisher, the 1st grade book has a piglet on the cover). 🙂

    Reply

  11. Fun! We have some similar things in our pile, though we’ve ended up doing more a montessori approach to reading because 100EasyLes isn’t a good fit for us.

    Have you seen the Little Maid of Old… series? Great books, historical fiction and my 3rd grader loves them. We plan to get the rest of the series.

    I’m planning to keep composition separate from handwriting at this point, even though my DD loves handwriting, so I’ll write and she’ll dictate. Though she writes letters and other things often and I did get a couple books for copying cursive since she’s ready for that now.

    Blessings to a “new” school year! We also do stuff year round, and my kids can’t wait to start new books when I bring them home!

    Reply

  12. I’m looking at the Family of Faith resource and trying to figure out how it works. It looks designed for a group setting with a leader? What pieces do you need to use it at home and what does that look like?

    Reply

    • I contacted Sophia Institute to get some clarification on that exact question myself earlier this year and what Haley said is right—you just need the activity book and parent guide to make this program suitable for at-home use! 🙂

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  13. I’ve been homeschooling for 8 years (7 kids in various grades) and you basically are doing the same I do with my 3rd graders. 🙂 We take wonderful homeschool enrichments classes at Our Lady of Walsingham (I think you’ve been there before. At least I’ve seen someone who looks just like you at a Mass once. ha) where the kids take Latin (starting with Prima Latina). I’m always so impressed with how Latin also enriches my kids’ grasp of spelling and grammar.

    A composition suggestion-we switched to IEW last year and love it. It’s not super time consuming either. The first book we did was a theme based writing one based on the first 3 Narnia chronicles. The kids had so much fun with it and now absolutely love writing.

    Also, RC History is a fantastic history program! It’s Catholic and teaches history while simultaneously teaching church history. At one point last year, my 10 year old said “Hey, I think the tower of babel was probably a ziggurat!” i just love that he read two separate texts and put that together on his own.

    I could go on and on about homeschooling. 🙂 It’s just such a blessing for our family!

    Reply

    • Elaine — I’m interested in learning more about how you incorporated IEW with your 3rd grader. I’ve started our then 5th grader with SWI-A once our son was comfortable writing a bit (he has dysgraphia so writing is physically difficult) and he was able to type up his drafts and final papers. He is now going into 7th grade, and we are using US History themed writing. It’s definitely a solid program that allows for advancing through the grade levels. So, being a little familiar with IEW, how did you implement the theme based writing with your 3rd grader? Did you use any of the Fix-It grammar products?

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      • Kelli,
        With my 3rd graders, I use the Fables, Myths, and Fairytales theme based book then I use the Narnia books for 4th and 5th. The Fables book has short, easy source material for first time writers so it’s not overwhelming for them. I don’t know if you did the Teaching with Structure and Style seminar, but it helped me immensely! And yes, we now use Fix-it Grammar. It takes maybe 10 minutes a day and the kids love reading the story as they go along. Hope this helps!

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  14. Great selection! We love the SCM artist studies and the Harp &Laurel as well. The Sophia institute religion looks great. I might look into that for our next school year. We are using Primary Language lessons this year but I have heard great things about Classical Academic Press’s composition course.

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  15. We have also enjoyed TAN’s “The Story of Civilization” this year. It is an audio series similar to SOTW but fully Catholic.

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  16. We loved Winnie the Pooh, but we loved House on Pooh Corner even better (so if you were going to read just one, I would recommend that one).

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  17. Haley, thank you so much for all of this! Our home ed days are long past (our girls are 30 and 27 now!), but I pass on your recommendations to those who are following on. Re composition, we had great success with that kind of age doing co-operative composition, maybe with a story-starter from you. The child TELLS you the story, as you type it, then you pause and look over it together, and talk about whatever you’re focussing on: maybe plot structure, using “strong” verbs to replace commonplace ones, using adjectives and adverbs, avoiding repetition, etc. etc. So much learning in a friendly atmosphere without the stress of having to slog through the physical writing at this stage.

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  18. Out of curiosity, where will you do your star-gazing? I’m in Dallas and I have no idea where a good place to go is!

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  20. I wasn’t homeschooled and I’m not a homeschooling mom (nor am I sure I’ll be one – my daughter is still only 2), but I love reading about ideas, just in case!

    I’m not sure if this falls under “composition” or not, but I read recently about a mom who shares a notebook with her daughter in which they exchange letters about once a week. I plan to do it with my children when they can write, even if it isn’t school-related!

    Reply

  22. I chose do many of the same books for the early years — and I haven’t even started, just planning ahead. So I’m very interested in your 3rd grade picks! I think our philosophy is very similar. 🙂

    Reply

  23. Another math curriculum you might want to look at is Beast Academy. It is problem solving based and each level has a Guide book (which is essentially a graphic novel about math) and a practice book. We had been doing Life of Fred but found that over time it wasn’t enough practice. The Beast Academy does have plenty of practice but doesn’t seem tedious at all.

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  24. I tried Latina Christiana but found it so dull. Straightforward, sure, but the monotone voice put us all to sleep. We’ve had a lot of success switching to Song School Latin and Latin Alive! from Classical Academic Press.

    My daughter finished 3rd grade last year and her favorite book was The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic by Jennifer Trafton.

    And now, I’m going to go learn about Cornwall by watching Poldark…. wink wink.

    Reply

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