Our Homeschool 6 Week Recap: Year 3 And Kindergarten

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Year 3 and Kindergarten (take 2) is turning out to be one of our favorite years! This is our third year applying Charlotte Mason’s methods of short lessons, reading living books, and narrating, and I have noticed a leap of improvement compared to our first and second years. With some bumps along the way, overall, the last 6 weeks have been a delight and we’re off to a good start, and with good momentum! It will be so good to have an entire term under our belt before heading into the next few months of the holiday season!

You can find our Year 3 curriculum picks here, and our timetable we attempt to follow here.

Morning Collective and subjects we do together

This year I took our well-loved morning collective subjects (Bible/Theology, Hymn, Memorization/Recitation, Poetry, Artist Study, Composer Study, Folksong) and scheduled them in the mornings spread out in our 4-day week rather than completing them all every day.

We begin our time around the homeschool table with our morning liturgies. Our morning liturgies are simple, starting with prayer, virtue/Godly character traits, and our monthly hymn. It’s been a consistent way that I to call to order the beginning of our time together.

After morning liturgies, we enjoy either our monthly folksong and poetry reading or composer study and artist study. We conclude our morning collective time with recitation which we alternate between Bible scripture or poetry from our term’s poet. We’ve typically had all of these subjects in our morning collective 4 days a week, but this way has given us a little more variety to our week which allows me to add in other read alouds or other communal activities.

Spanish was another subject we’ve switched up on the timetable. I found a couple of YouTube videos where we can listen to Spanish phrases, songs, and words during breakfast before lessons even begin. It’s a fun, interactive, and engaging way for kids to learn new words in Spanish without having to pull out the curriculum every day. We still work through our TalkBox.Mom Curriculum once a week (typically Thursdays or Fridays), but utilizing YouTube has been a fun resource we’re taking advantage of this year! We currently listen to Homeschool Pop‘s Spanish videos as well as this one on telling time, and common phrases.

Kindergarten

My youngest is nearly 5 years old so though we haven’t officially started formal lessons, we have been enjoying some structure to topics like numbers and letters. Feel free to visit this blog article where I share all our curriculum picks for Kindergarten.

Kindergarten has been a really fun 6 weeks thus far, and it’s SO different compared to when my oldest was this age. Though my son didn’t show signs of eagerness and readiness as early as my oldest did, this year he’s enjoying being more a part of our homeschool day, and with a little more structure to his time with me. He loves numbers, and I’ve found that he knows more than he lets on. I am using a combination of Math With Confidence and The Charlotte Mason Elementary Arithmetic Book 1 has been an excellent pair for his progress and incorporating some variety to his sit-down time with me. We’ve consistently spent 5-8 minutes a day, 4x a week working with his numbers, and he’s always asking for more by the time we’re done!

During week 5, my son read a set of words for the first time, and I was so proud of him! When we sit for letter sounds/pre-reading practice, we’ve simply worked on letter sounds and letter identification up until week 4 and then concluded with a read aloud from our home library of reader books. During week 5 I decided to try a “reading by sight” method during our read aloud, where I pointed to a common word in our book, told him what the word was, and asked him to read it out loud anytime he saw it as I read. He really likes this activity!

I also introduced word building to him from the books we’ve been reading and for 5+ minutes, we enjoy building words together and sounding out each of the letters faster and faster to form and eventually read the words. Word building will continue to be in our timetable 2x a week, but reading together is daily. I am encouraged by his progress thus far, but we’ll take our time with the process where needed and just have fun this year!

Year 3

For us, Ambleside Online year 3 hasn’t been much different than year 2 in terms of difficulty. Because this is our 3rd year using CM methods of short lessons, living books, and narration, my daughter already knew what was expected of her. I’ve been able to read a little longer (more than a paragraph) before she narrates to me and I am noticing that she is making connections to previous readings more quickly.

One slight change to our year 3 methods is the use of more audiobooks. My daughter will listen to some readings from the literature/tales section on the Ambleside Online year 3 schedule and follow along with her physical book. I still require a narration back to me when she is finished, but this has allowed her to sort of take responsibility for her readings. She can pause the audio when she is ready to narrate, and she can go at her own pace. I require her to still have the physical book and follow along so that she can see the words being read aloud to continue her reading by sight practice and grow her mental storehouse of words being read so she can read them on her own whenever she comes across them again.

I think this is going to be a fruitful method for transitioning her to one day reading her books on her own, though I’m not prepared just yet to give up this precious time of reading aloud the majority of her books with her. However, with my second needing a little more time with me each year, this is also a good time for me to sit and read with my youngest. It’s bittersweet watching my first child grow and take on her education in a way, and all the more reason why I’m savoring these younger years while they’re here.

This year as part of her copywork practice she has started a Truth, Beauty, and Goodness notebook where she copies down a couple of passages from either our Bible readings, poetry, hymn, or folks songs. She gets to pick which she will copy down and it’s been a simple way to introduce and begin her first commonplace notebook. My hope is that she’ll grow in her habit and love for commonplacing all that she is reading and hearing even outside of our school time.

Book Changes

You may have seen me share in Instagram stories that we’re reading through Greek Myths by D’Aulaires. This is our substitute for The Heroes book on the schedule, only because we already owned this book. I wasn’t sure how my children would respond to reading myths but this is probably one of our favorite read alouds on the schedule! Even my 5 year old is enjoying this read aloud! I read a few pages a week, and my oldest will narrate to me.

We enjoyed watching this book flip-through and read aloud for our American Tales about Pecos Bill and now I am on the hunt for these illustrated books by Steven Kellogg whenever I thrift!

After a few years of attempting to read and use the geography readers by Charlotte Mason and C.C. Long, I’ve officially removed them from our schedule. With so many other living books available on the topic, especially in our day and age, these books are not the best fit for us.

In removing these two books, I’ve found it fairly easy to find other living books on geographical topics that we’re studying from places like our local library or through Beautiful Feet Books. We are currently reading The Silk Route by John S. Major which has been a delectable addition to our living feast of ideas alongside Marco Polo’s adventures through Asia. We also get to have many discussions on certain geographical elements that we come across, as well as utilizing our map drawing skills with this book and map drills from the Seterra app for furthering our geographical context.

Looking Ahead

Our timetable might be getting a little update in the coming weeks, especially in term 2 as we head into the holiday season. This is one of the blessings, for us, of homeschooling and I am very grateful we get to pivot our lesson time in a way that allows us to slow our pace in the hustle and bustle of holidays. For the next 6 weeks left of term 1, we won’t steer too far off the timetable (other than what I’ve shared in this article), but I am looking forward to taking our lessons outside once the weather cools down here in the next month, and possibly incorporate some seasonal resources to our homeschool time.

Closing Thoughts

I used to get worried about noticing a need for a shift in our book selection or homeschool schedule. If I wasn’t following our curriculum exactly, then that somehow meant I was failing my children in giving them a living education. But that’s just the opposite. The more time and experience I gain each year, the more I realize that our curriculum, regardless of how wonderful it’s been, some things just don’t work or there is something better of a fit for my children. Therefore, I’ve come to realize that any curriculum really should be viewed as a framework, and not the ruling say-all and certainly not the foundation on which we plant our entire home education.

Once I let go of my fear of failure, and as I continue to seek, to grow, and to gain wisdom and understanding about what it means to be a mother-teacher, to understand my educational philosophy, and principles, and what that looks like for my children, I’m beginning to have confidence in my ability to home educate more freely and well and to give my children a rich and wide living education, rooted in Truth, beauty, and goodness.

This certainly wouldn’t have happened without consistent prayer, and time in my Bible as I leaned into relying on God more rather than focusing on my failures, my poor education, and my shortcomings. With Him, I am truly living out and seeing the impossible become possible.

I’m always happy to answer any additional questions about our homeschool lessons, timetable, and methods so please don’t hesitate to leave a comment!