Our first elementary school year had a lot of successes and we covered a lot of material.  It also had its challenges.  I’m not gonna lie, homeschooling can be hard and Danny does his best to push the limits to the end.  But we know what he loves and we know what his struggles are.  So my goals are to give him as much time with his passions (science, history) while embedding just enough of what he “hates” (math, writing) into each week to give him confidence that he can do whatever he sets his mind to.

As a review, Danny will be 7 years old in November and so far, he has completed three years of Montessori preschool at home and one year of elementary.  In public school, he would be going into first grade, but working at his own pace, he is ahead of most first grade work.  That’s part of the beauty of the Montessori method in that the curriculum follows three year ranges, rather than year-by-year.  So Montessori students are expected to complete the Lower Elementary curriculum during the ages of 6-9, at their own pace.  We’re in Washington State, which means we don’t have to follow school rules until Danny is 8 years old.  But I’m choosing to use them as a guide for our curriculum, specifically the requirement to teach 11 subjects: Language Arts, including Reading, Writing & Spelling; Math; Science; Social Studies & History; Health; Occupational Education; Art and Music Appreciation.

Language Arts, including Reading, Writing & Spelling

Danny’s reading skills are basically incredible.  And being able to read anything and everything that interests him has really opened up a whole world of learning opportunities.  Writing, however, is an area he struggles.  He finds handwriting tedious and he’s too much of a perfectionist to free-write phonetically, so getting him to write takes a great deal of patience on my part

• Scholastic’s Cursive Writing Practice: Jokes & Riddles: Danny started this book last January and he does about a page a week.  So he’s only about half way through the book.  I’m hoping to encourage him to finish it at a quicker pace this year.  I’ll assess as we get started if he’ll need another alphabet writing refresher, but since most of his curriculum includes writing, this will just be supplemental.
• Words Their Way-Within Word Pattern Spellers: We also started this program last December to help Danny learn spelling through analyzing words grouped by pattern.  Each week, he receives a packet of word cards that he has to sort by like pattern and then he does a series of activities with that group of words for the remainder of the week.
• Waseca Grammar Box Cards: Montessori teaches grammar in a very hands on way which works really well for Danny.  We started this program last year and worked through most of the Noun & Article cards and began the Adjective and Verb sets.  We’ll do a quick review at the beginning of the year before getting into new sets.
• Montessori Sentence Analysis: Now that Danny understands the concept of Noun and Verb as parts of speech, he can begin simple sentence analysis.  This is similar to sentence diagramming, that I learned in 7th grade, but instead of decomposing a sentence into a confusing jumble, the child starts with a sentence cut up to be composed into a logical sentence based on a series of questions.
• Essentials in Writing: This is a new addition to our curriculum this year to help Danny learn the writing process for narrative/descriptive writing, sentences and paragraphs.  Although it’s not Montessori, this is one area that I felt I needed more help and this is also a new format for us.  Danny will receive a lesson from a teacher on DVD and then do some of his work in a workbook.

Math

This is one area that Danny thinks he hates, but that’s really because he’s stuck in the drill of fact memorization and repetitive, drill-work is just not his style.  I realized towards the end of last year that if we stuck with the Montessori way of learning facts, which relies on the child’s passion for learning, we’d be stuck in the most boring part of mathematics until we both hated it.  The other aspect of Math that has held Danny back is that my Montessori guides expect the child of his age to write out their problems on paper and then solve them with the manipulative materials.  I lost my way a bit with the Montessori philosophy and pressured Danny to write, which we already know is not his favorite thing.  Then one day, I was watching a youtube video on how to present a particular Montessori math material and the instructor actually paused and said, if you have a reluctant writer, these materials are great for showing the joy of math without getting caught up in paper and pencil, so be sure to encourage that.  It’s like he was speaking right out of the screen to me!  So my goal for this year is to revisit Montessori math, with a math journal to fill in.

• Reflex Math: First to address the need to memorize math facts despite Danny’s dislike of the drill, I introduced a web-based math fact fluency program back in April.  Danny has used the program every weekday since.  It’s the only work I had him continue through the summer.  He’s currently working on addition/subtraction and will then do multiplication/division.  If he focuses, this takes Danny about 15-20 minutes per day.
• Montessori Math Command Cards: I acquired these command cards last year, hoping Danny would take to them, but then made the mistake of expecting him to copy the problems onto paper and then solve them.  He was really upset when I would let him just write the answer onto the card.  So this year I’m going to reintroduce them and either let him write just the answer on the card, or if he refuses that, just solve the problem and tell me the answer.
• Montessori Checkerboard Multiplication: This is another set I acquired last year but haven’t used yet.  Danny’s grandmother gifted him a beautiful checkerboard quilt this year so after some numeration review and review of multiplication with the stamp game and bead frame, we’ll begin exploring the checkerboard.
• Montessori Geometry: I don’t have a link for this one, because it’s one of the few areas that I’m directly using the Montessori albums I have to guide the lessons.  We began just a little of this last year working with the constructive triangles, geometric cabinet and attribute blocks.  This year we have the Montessori Geometric Stick Material do begin the study of lines, angles and planes. (I guess I did have a link!)

Science

Danny loves, loves, loves science.  If I find him reading a book that I didn’t give him, it will be about science.  If he’s left to his own devices with the iPad, he’ll be either googling for “biggest, smallest, most interesting…” or exploring the Google Earth app.  If we’re in the car and he asks a question, it’s usually a “how? what? why?” does the world work.  He has a deep need to understand everything he can about the universe he finds himself in.  And I can imagine as he asks and finds answers to more and more questions, someday he’ll begin explaining to the world concepts we haven’t figure out yet.  “We don’t know” is NOT an answer he’s willing to accept.

• Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding Vol I K-2: We’ve worked with this book for a couple of years and it’s one of Danny’s favorite things to do.  I just wish I could prepare myself enough to do it more often and that is one of my goals for this year!  The book provides lessons in a weave of four learning progressions: A-Nature of Matter, B-Life Science, C-Physical Science, Engineering & Technology and D-Earth and Space Science.
• Waseca North America Portfolio and Elementary Biome Cards: When the BFSU lessons started getting deeper into Life Sciences (which are not my forte!) including biomes, animal adaptations, life cycles, etc., I looked for a resource to support me and found it in Waseca Biomes.  I purchased the North America portfolio because it is both familiar to us and one of the few continents with examples of all the biomes.  I also purchased the Waseca Introduction to Biomes curriculum and the North America Biome cards to go with it.
• Rad Science Homeschool Enrichment Program: To support Danny’s need for more science, he participates in a weekly homeschool class that covers various topics in 4- to 6-week sessions.

History, Social Studies & Geography

While the Washington State homeschool law lists History and Social Studies as separate subjects, I’m addressing them together in a combined program along with Geography (which isn’t explicitly named by the law).  This is another area that Danny absolutely loves and was really upset when I told him we wouldn’t be continuing it through the summer!  It takes a lot of time and effort on my part but it’s well worth it to see his joy, and I’m really enjoying learning and re-learning along with him.

• History Odyssey Ancients 1: We started this in the last months of last year and completed the first 10 lessons.  It’s a program that uses the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History as a spine and then adds additional resources, activities, crafts, timelines and maps to make it a really rich course.  We’ll finish Ancients before the end of the year and then continue right into Middle Ages.
• Brick Greek Myths:  Although HO Ancients is a complete program, Danny *really* loves for me to read to him.  He received a copy of Brick Greek Myths as a gift a few years ago and he’s finally ready for me to share it with him.  Despite the cute Lego, these are not watered down versions of the myths and I’m learning a lot about these somewhat-familiar figures along with him as I read.
• In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World: This is another book I am reading to Danny weekly.  I’ve matched the stories as best I could to the culture we’re reading about each week in HO Ancients.  Most of the stories seem very strange to us and there are some overlaps and some very unique versions, but the main learning, I think for both of us is to imagine what it must have been like for each culture to have so many questions and so few answers about the world they find themselves in.  It’s like seeing the awakening of scientific thought, philosophy, spirituality and cultural ritual all at the same time.
• Children Just Like Me: Finally, to ground us back into the here-and-now, I’ve matched each child from this book to the ancient culture lesson from HO.  This helps to show Danny that many of these cultures still exist and the people have much in common with us and aren’t still like the ancient peoples.  After reading about each child, I ask Danny to answer two questions, “What are 2 things you have in common with this child?” and “What are 2 things that are different about you?”
• Montessori Five Great Lessons: I struggle with whether to include this under history, science or a separate heading itself because it’s really the core of all Montessori elementary curriculum.  Last year, I was fortunate that our homeschool enrichment science class agreed to teach the Five Great Lessons so Danny experienced them in a group.  This year, I’ll teach them to him myself, which will allow us to focus more on follow-up work that interests him rather than just the group lessons.

Health

Last year I didn’t have much of a plan for Health education.  I have since learned that most Washington homeschoolers include Physical Education under this heading, so in that respect I suppose I did cover it, at least partially.  This year we’ll continue with Phys.Ed. and add a new discovery that I stumbled across.

• Advocates for Youth-Rights, Respect & Responsibility: This is a K-12 sexuality education curriculum that was posted on one of the Facebook forums I follow.  Aside from it being FREE (yay!), it appears to be a great resource to open up a sequenced discussion of interacting with humanity, boys, girls and otherwise in an age-appropriate way.
• YMCA Homeschool Swim & Gym: Our local Y offers a weekly 2-hour program that includes an hour of PE in the gymnasium, a half-hour of 1-to-1 swim instruction and a half-hour of free-play swimming.  Danny *loves* the swimming part but chaffs at following the rules in the gym.  I waffle between requiring him to stay in the gym session because it’s good for him to accept authority and letting him switch to a swim-only homeschool program at a local aquatic center.  The main thing holding me back to far is that he has to be 7 years old to participate in the aquatic center program, so once his birthday comes, I’ll need to finally decide on the answer.
• Coach Pitch Baseball – Over the summer, Danny participated in a coach pitch baseball session for the first time.  It’s a program for 5-6 year old children where the coach pitches a few balls for the child to hit, and failing that, the child gets to hit the ball from a tee.  That means that every kid gets to hit and every kid gets to run, while continually stretching their skill level.  Now, despite the rules and regulated nature of team sports, Danny *really* took to baseball!  He enjoyed it so much, I signed him up for another coach pitch program for the fall, so he can get more experience with it and decide if it’s something he wants to continue to pursue.

Art and Music Appreciation

This is another area of the required curriculum that Danny enjoys a great deal. While he will continue his piano lessons, any plans for art is up in the air right now.  He has been taking a weekly ceramics class, even through the summer, but it is not expected to be offered again this fall.  I’m hopeful our homeschool enrichment program will find another artistic offering to fill that gap but if not, I’ll need to source an art program myself.

• Piano Adventures, Primer Level: Danny has finished two years of piano practice and graduated from the preschool book to the primer level mid-way last year.  He has a natural talent and really enjoys the lessons and playing.  But true to his own personality, he does not like the daily practice!  I suppose no kid really does, but Danny can become an immovable force when pressured, so it takes some skill on my part and his teacher’s to get him to do some practice.

Conclusion

And that completes our curriculum plan for the 2018-19 school year.  I still don’t have any specific plans for Occupational Education, but maybe taking him with me on all my errands to the post office, bank, grocery store, doctor appointments, etc is enough for this young age.  As it is, the plan we have is full and diverse.  I’m excited for a new year and I’m excited to continue to learn how to customize Danny’s learning plan to his own personality so it works best for him and allows him to continue to love learning.