Ok, so this is our third year to homeschool and my third year to post what our day looks like in The Schoolroom. I do this every year because it helps me organize my thoughts for the year AND gives me the opportunity to help any new homeschool Momma's out there that might not be sure what a typical day looks like--especially with kiddos in different grades. The Charlotte Mason method makes it simple to do school with multiple ages--with the exception of math in most cases.
Hope this helps. Here we go...
"The winner of numerous awards, this series is renowned for Elizabeth Mann's ability to convey adventure and excitement while revealing technical information in engaging and easily understood language. The illustrations are lavishly realistic and accurate in detail but do not ignore the human element. Outstanding in the genre, these books are sure to bring even the most indifferent young reader into the worlds of history, geography, and architecture." {Description from Amazon.com}
The last of the Enrichment Studies is our Music Study. We'll listen to three different composers this year--one new composer every twelve weeks just like with our artist and poet studies. You can purchase the packet with CD's on the Simply Charlotte Mason website or just choose the option to download and print the material on your own without the CD's....that's what we do. We save $20 and use Spotify for free. With the music study, we talk about the composer once a week and listen to his music for 15-20 minutes a couple times a week. That's it!
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A Day in the Schoolroom
{Elijah 2nd grade - Isaiah 4th grade}
8:30 - 9:00 Isaiah: Math-U-See Delta
Elijah: Copywork {Mon-Thurs}
Reading Practice {everyday}
Reading Practice {everyday}
9:00 - 9:30 Isaiah: Copywork {Mon/Wed} Grammar & Spelling {Tues/Thurs}
Silent Reading {everyday}
Elijah: Math-U-See Beta
Silent Reading {everyday}
Elijah: Math-U-See Beta
9:30 - 10:00 Bible/History/Geography {both boys}
10:00 - 10:30 Enrichment Studies {both boys}
{Mon: artist study, Wed: composer study, Thurs: poetry}
10:30 - 11:00 Read Aloud {both boys}
{This year we'll be reading The Railway Children, Trumpet of the Swan, The Call of the Wild, Charlotte's Web and Treasure Island}
Science {both boys} is done on Tuesday's & Thursdays at 11:00. Tuesday's we'll be reading out of The Burgess Bird Book for Children and complete lessons in the Learning about Birds living science handbook. Thursdays we'll do our Nature Study/Journaling. This gives the boys and I an opportunity to spend some time outdoors writing about and drawing things we observe. There's not a whole lot to Nature Study and it's not as difficult as I thought it was our first year of homeschooling :o) The main thing with Nature Study is to observe things in nature, sketch them, write about them and "get to know" them. For example: along with learning about birds this year {the ones that are always in our backyard}, we'll be looking at a certain tree in our backyard through all the seasons of the year {which is basically two in Texas--summer and winter!} We'll draw the tree as we see it changing and observe things about the tree. When do it's leaves fall off? When do they grow back? What type of tree is it? How tall is it, etc...
So here are some of my favorite resources we'll be using this year for each subject:
Bible/History/Geography
Matthew thru Acts & Ancient Rome along with the Visits to Europe notebook by Simply Charlotte Mason. Along with these resources, we're using additional books recommended. A couple of them I listed below..
The Roman Colosseum by Elizabeth Mann
"One of the ten best non-fiction series for young readers."
I'm such a fan of this next resource. As we're learning and reading about Rome, different history lessons will ask us to take out The Stuff They Left Behind, find the picture of what we're reading about and display it and discuss. It includes things like the Colosseum, Roman coins, the Augustus statue, the Pantheon, the forum and a gladiators helmet {and many more}.
Enrichment Resources
We study one artist every twelve weeks. The artists we'll be studying this year are Millet, Boticelli and da Vinci. You choose one picture to study every two weeks. You briefly talk about the picture then display it in the house for the children to look at at their pleasure. This portfolio also contains a biography of each artist and insight on each painting.
We'll be reading and memorizing poems by Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost this year for our Poetry Study. This resource provides a biography as well as well as lots of poems to read and suggestions for memorization. Along with this resource from Simply Charlotte Mason, I've found some amazing books on artists for children by Gary D. Schmidt.
The last of the Enrichment Studies is our Music Study. We'll listen to three different composers this year--one new composer every twelve weeks just like with our artist and poet studies. You can purchase the packet with CD's on the Simply Charlotte Mason website or just choose the option to download and print the material on your own without the CD's....that's what we do. We save $20 and use Spotify for free. With the music study, we talk about the composer once a week and listen to his music for 15-20 minutes a couple times a week. That's it!
Language Arts Resources
This next resource is for Elijah {our 2nd grader} to practice handwriting using poetry and other quality literature. Along with handwriting practice this copybook gently reinforces reading, spelling and grammar.
This will be our second year to use Spelling Wisdom. No spelling lists here! I read small excerpts from quality poetry and literature and Isaiah writes the sentence word for word as I read it. Any words he gets wrong he copies and studies several times until he's able to spell the word correctly. We'll be introducing formal grammar to Isaiah this year using the Using Language Well book. Spelling Wisdom accompanies Using Language Well.
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Isaiah's copywork this year will be from the Print to Cursive Proverbs book. He'll do copywork twice a week. With the Charlotte Mason approach, we concentrate on best work for 15-2o minutes versus copying for an extended amount of time.
Science
The Burgess Bird Book for Children and the Learning about Birds handbook will be our main resources for science this year. Each lesson in the handbook has us reading from the Burgess Bird Book along with using a Bird Field Guide and the Fifty Favorite Birds coloring/sketchbook. I chose the Burgess Bird Book and handbook this year because we have tons of beautiful birds that frequent our backyard. Nothing like using what you have!We'll also be reading Blacky the Crow through-out the year by Burgess.
In addition to our bird study, we'll be listening to the audio book of Outdoor Secrets by Margaret P. Boyle. Love this little book!
That's it, friends! That's our school day in a nut shell. I hope my ramblings have helped!
Here's to another blessed and fruitful homeschool year in just three short weeks.
Blessings!
