Plans for 2017-2018

Our educational philosophy is to expose the kids to good literature and educational experiences, with a large slice of nature on the side. I would love to be out in nature everyday myself but alas it is not possible with my illnesses so I do require the children to go outside almost every day except when they are ill. When my health permits we head out to the hills or the woods.

For a long time we oscillated between Waldorf and Charlotte Mason doing a year of each as our main backbone. By that I mean that when we used CM as our spine we followed the curriculum subjects for that year and added in Waldorf art and form drawing. This swapped round when we did Waldorf. We also had a year where we mixed them a bit and moved back and forth between the two. Finally I realised that I could mix them up more and add in specific things that my eldest asked for. So in year 4 I decided to totally do our own thing.

For English language we chose English Lessons through Literature level 3, we do not stick to it religiously for instance we are reading Treasure Island instead of Dr. Dolittle. I also plan to skip some lessons as my kiddo learns fast. When we reach the Wonderful wizard of Oz in the curriculum I will start level 2 with my youngest as this is the book selection for that level also. I was not going to teach her grammar or anything until grade 3 but I literally cannot stop her!! She knows about nouns, types of sentences and plurals all through listening to me teach Noah, so I need to give her, her own stuff!  I would teach them together but this makes my eldest mad, so it’s not worth the hassle, especially as we combine so many other subjects.

We make either a notebook page based on the narration of the story/fable or grammar rule which goes in his language folder. The folder is spilt into 3 sections: note booking, grammar and spelling. So far we have done no spelling as he seems fine with this.

Zany’s folder is divided into note booking/ handwriting /spelling

For maths we use Math Mammoth, we have used this for a few years and it is very good. It’s a mastery program so it teaches the same concept over and over until mastery is achieved. This makes sense to me. It is also how Montessori maths works so we supplement it with Montessori presentations and activities. We invested in the Montessori maths materials the year before we started home educating.  Currently Noah is reviewing knowledge already gained and zany has started grade 1.  We also use waldorf materials and notebook any interesting rules or information, but we have not note booked one thing yet!

History – for history we use a variety of stuff. We use the Story of the World, plus lots of other books. Noah specifically asked to study the Romans this year so we started there. I combine history for them both so they study it together. I also plan on doing lots of field visits in order to bring history to life.

Geography -  in order introduce mapping to the children I covered the lessons from the Waldorf grade 4 curriculum and used plenty of Montessori activities. We have the Montessori continent globe and map, plus I made lots of 3 part cards and activities to go with this.  Noah has a good knowledge of the continents and some other basic mapping skills but Zany’s knowledge is sketchy so I plan to work on that. We will then move onto Jodi Mockabee’s Biomes and Ecosystems which the kids will enjoy as well as locate the area we are studying in history on the map.

Nature study/science: We started the yr reading Pagoo and focused our nature study on rock pools. this worked well as we went to Devon at the end of September and spent a week rock pooling. After the Christmas holidays we will move onto Beautiful feet's History of Science curriculum.

We will also read lots of additional books and resources such as:

Roman books:

Who was Julius Caesar

The Thieves of Ostia

Usborne History: The Romans

You wouldn't want to be a Roman Gladiator

Usborne Roman Jigsaw book, whilst the puzzles are very simple the information on each page is useful- this is mainly for Zany.

CBBC Horrible History Series ( TVshow)

Medieval Books:

Robin Hood
Norse Mythology
Wiking Raiders
Leif the Lucky
Leonardo da vinci
Leonardo Beautiful Dreamer
CBBC Horrible Histories

All the books are available from Amazon:)