In mid July, our 2024-2025 homeschool year began and, as requested, I am sharing a recap of our first week back!
This year I have a forth grader and a first grader. If you would like to read about our curriculum and resources I chose for our homeschool year, you can find all those details in this blog article!
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Lesson Planning
For the first couple weeks, I don’t write out our lessons for the entire week in my Mother’s Lesson Planner. Rather, I take it a day at a time, making sure to adjust (if any) each day until we get a good flow for our homeschool days. I use my customized term schedule (mixed with some of AO’s free schedule and my own curriculum schedule) to know what I need to plan for that day, essentially using it like a check-box system.
I have found this to be beneficial because although I have planned out our term overview already for each subject, and I have created a timetable we attempt to follow each week, if something needs minor adjustments (because as we know, life happens off paper 😉), I am able to pivot for the next day and so on without having to rework my entire planner for the week. This is just what works well for me as a type-A planner and organizer, and keeps me more at peace as we dive into a new homeschool year. Some would skip writing out a weekly plan altogether and just cross off things from the term schedule. However, with my weekly planner, I am able to have the subjects listed out in the order we plan to go through the day, and I have additional space to add any notes or reflections.
Recap Of Each Subject Of Our First Week
Family Studies + Morning Collective
We begin each day of our week doing family study subjects like Bible, poetry, artist and composer study, recitation, history, literature and tales, natural history, geography and science topics. These subjects are on a loop schedule throughout the week.
Bible: Exploring the Bible by David Murray– We are using this study a little differently than it’s laid out since we are using it as a family and in two days rather than a full week schedule. I love that it’s going through the entire Bible in a “big picture” way, and this week we began in Genesis discussing creation for the first week. We took two days to complete the Monday-Friday readings and questions/discussions in the book.
We then spent the last two days of our week in the book of Matthew as we followed along with @lithoskids Parables of Jesus book for our New Testament studies. At the beginning of Parables of Jesus, the scripture verses are listed so we read those first, then discuss the story together (narrations from each child are asked), and then I used the end of chapter questions as a guide for further discussion.
Narrations- A Side Note:
Since my youngest hasn’t been required to narrate until this year, I allow him to narrate to me first, and then my oldest narrates. This gives my youngest a chance to practice the art of narration on his own (without using ideas from his older sister), and then it gives my oldest the ability to stretch her narrations further than her younger brother. I really love hearing their narrations based on their age and ability. In our homeschool, narrations are required for all read alouds we do except those books read for reading practice or free reading.
Poetry: We are using Ambleside Online’s Year 1 and Year 4 poets this year. I read a poem or two from the Year 1 selections and then had my oldest read a poem out loud from the Year 4 selections. We will use AO’s recitation selections for poetry this year as well and are currently learning to recite one poem from Year 1 and one from Year 4 for the term together in our morning collective.
Composer Study: We are following Ambleside Online’s composer study rotation which you can find on their website. My children are already familiar with Beethoven’s popular pieces so I thought I would give them a little introduction to the life of Beethoven. We listened to Classics for Kids and then I continued playing his music from Spotify playlists throughout our week. That’s really the extent of our composer studies. Listen, and sometimes a little intro to the life of the composer.
Hymn and Folk Songs: We are continuing to use Ambleside Online’s song rotations for our homeschool. I decided to go with May’s Folk Song called “Simple Gifts” for July and then use “This Land is Your Land” for August, and then continue the rotation as-is. I love printing out the coloring pages for hymns and folk songs from Jason-Rachel Todd in the Ambleside Online FB group for my kids to color as we listen to and learn the songs for the first time. I also have the lyrics printed out for me so I can sing along. We enjoy the music from Folksandhymns on YouTube to follow along with.
Artist Study: This week we spent some time observing the work of Albrecht Dürer in his masterful “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” wood cutout. I asked my children to take a look at the artwork for a couple of minutes and then we discussed together all that we took notice of, starting with my youngest. We will observe this artwork for two weeks and then move on to another one of his art pieces, observing six in our first term.
Literature/Vocabulary/Shakespeare: We read 2 Aesop selections this week followed by learning a couple new vocabulary words from 365 Words for Clever Kids. My oldest wrote the new vocabulary words and definitions in her notebook and we had a 2 minute conversation about ways to use the new vocabulary words in everday sentences. We would also have a Shakespeare reading at this time, but our first Shakespeare reading isn’t until week 3 so in the meantime we are finishing some family read alouds from our Summer.
History Stream 1 (Ancient Egypt): This has taken the place of AO’s year 1 history in our homeschool. If you’d like to see a more detailed break down of how we are doing history in our Charlotte Mason Homeschool this year, visit this blog article. This week we began reading from Story of The World, Volume 1 along with a video discussing the Nile River. We also read the Ch 1 of Tales of Ancient Egypt. I simply read aloud, and my children took turns narrating as we went along. I printed off free coloring pages of the Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses and my children colored them while I read, and we added them to their narration notebooks.
Special Studies (Science/Nature Study): We kicked off our year-long Anatomy special study using Delightfully Feasting’s Anatomy guide. We began discussing cells from the book The Human Body by Simon Seymour and watched one of the videos on cells from the DF Anatomy Guide. We concluded our cell study drawing a diagram and adding to their science journals. The kids really enjoyed this lesson!
The second day of our Special Studies loop we began our discussion on Dinosaurs. We are reading from Ken Ham’s book along with Legends and Lore of Dinosaurs. This has been a fun interest for my kids and they were happy to narrate from our books! My kids are a bit of dinosaur fanatics and know many names and facts, so this special study will focus more on their life cycle according to the idea of a young Earth.
Geography: We will dive into the topics of earth science this year, but didn’t have a formal geography lesson in our first week. I’ll be happy to share more abour our family study of Geography in a later blog article! This is another subject I have decided to venture away from Ambleside Online’s schedule and do our own thing with to fit our family best.
Natural History: Our Natural History books follow along with Ambleside Online’s schedule for Paddle to-the-sea (Year 1) and Minn of the Mississippi (Year 4). I have “natural history” in our timetable during the morning block 2x a week for each of these readings, however, according to the AO’s schedule, we may not read each book every week. When we do read, I will excuse the other child if they want to take a break away, but this week they both chose to stay for the read aloud. My youngest was so excited that he finally got to hold our Paddle figure while we read Ch 1!
Timeline Of Our Mornings
Our mornings around the homeschool table started between 8:50 and 9:00 AM and we were finished with our family studies loop and morning collective subjects (those listed above) by around 10:30, and sometimes earlier. I do not have hard-set times for our morning, but we were consistently done with our family studies within an hour and a half or less. It defintely didn’t feel like it was that long, but possibly because we would get up in between lessons for restroom breaks, or grab a quick second breakfast (usually fruit or another piece of toast or yogurt) while I get organized for the next lesson.
Individual Studies
Math: For indidual studies, I have my oldest begin with her math online (we use CTC Math this year for her) and set a timer for 20 minutes. I am not typically needed for her math lessons so I was able to assist my youngest in his math lesson for the day during that 20 minutes. Right now, having them begin their individual studies with math has been a good fit, though, if one of my children need more of my full attention, I may have the other one work on copywork while they wait their turn.
Copywork/Handwriting: This was pretty straight forward, each spending 5-10 minutes on their copywork each day. My oldest will choose her own copywork at this point from any of our Bible, poetry, songs, and literature we’ve read so far and write in her Truth,Beauty, Goodness notebook. My youngest is using free copywork sheets from the Facebook Ambleside Online group for Year 1 that I printed out.
Reading: My Year 4 is reading Pollyanna, following along with an audio version. She has been doing 1 chapter a day and has really enjoyed the story so far! My Year 1 is still learning to read, so I spend about 5-10 minutes a day working with him to read a little reader from TGTB book boxes I had from when I did TGTB with my oldest in her Kinder years.
Grammar and Dictation/Spelling: My Year 4 started grammar lessons for the first time this year and so far she’s picking up on the lessons rather quickly (she’s an excellent reader so this didn’t surprise me)! Fix It Grammar has been a good fit so far. We are continuing to use Spelling Wisdom as we did in Year 3. These lessons take no more than 5-7 minutes and I have her doing each 2x a week. She has also added Word Ladders on the days she gets through one of her dictation or grammar lessons quickly and really likes the challenge of learning new words and their spelling from them. She completed 2 Word Ladder pages in her first week.
Typing: My oldest is continuing to use Typing.com and alternates her typing practice with copywork practice twice a week. She spends 10-15 minutes doing as much of a lesson as she can. We have been using this free program for a couple years now and it’s been a great way to introduce typing.
Lunch Break
By this point, it is around noon in our day. We take a good break for lunch and the kids often play for a good hour before my oldest and I are ready to finish the remainder of our lesson time. We have also used this time to run errands, and get home chores done, depending on the day, this looks different every day. My youngest will continue to play while I call my oldest back for a couple more readings.
Having some lessons post-lunch was something I allowed my oldest to weigh in on about our schedule, and it’s worked wonderfully the last week and a half so far. This gives us our mornings to enjoy together as a family (usually with dad home during this time), or mornings with friends.
Afternoon Lessons
History Stream 2 (Year 4 Early American History): At this point, I am still reading the history books aloud to my oldest while she narrates to me in between ideas and paragraphs. She really enjoyed Abigail Adams this week and A Free Woman on God’s Earth (not scheduled in AO, but our own addition to our history topic. See this IG post for more about our Early American History books for Year 4). Poor Richard and This Country Of Ours (Volume 2) were also enjoyable read alouds this week. I have our history stream 2 placed 4x in our week and I realized that this was a good scheduling move on my end to ensure we have time to read and allow thoughtful narrations and discussions.
Latin: We sat down and did our first latin lesson together for the week and discovered how fun it was! We are using Prima Latina and the lessons are really simple to follow. I had scheduled us to do a lesson a week, with practice to recite the words together throughout the week in our recitation block during morning collective.
Citizenship/Plutarch: I am going to be honest here. We were not ready for Plutarch! Or maybe we are but it’ll definetly take time to get used to. I’m not giving up, but don’t continue to read if you’re looking for Plutarch lesson advice because you won’t find it here at the moment! 😅 We are using Anne White’s Plutarch Primer to read about Publicola. I have read a few blogs on how to tackle Plutarch, and I even skimmed the first few lessons myself, but somehow implementing it into a real lesson was a lot more challenging than I thought. It was really awakward and clunky our first week and both of us were confused at the end. Thats what I have to say about this subject for our first time in Plutarch. I know I’m not alone, and if you have any advice, send it my way in the comments!
Age of Fable: We are following along to a free librivox audio version with our physical copy of Age of Fable. I realize my daughter does much better in her comprehension when she is able to hear the words and follow along with the book. We paused the audio when it felt right to stop and narrate and discuss. We are following Ambleside Online’s Year 4 reading schedule for this book.
Logic: We did a lesson from Critical Thinking Detective this week and it was a huge hit! I had originally planned to have Logic on our timetable for 2x a week but I may only do 1x a week.
Coding: This lesson felt more like a game-time for my oldest so that’s why I am happy to have it at the end of our day 1x a week. We’re using the free Code.org to start and so far it’s simple enough to my oldest to follow along without my full attention needed.
Final Thoughts
Our first week went just as I needed it to go. I was able to identify right away some subjects that could be combined (grammar and cursive), and get a feel for our new loop schedules throughout the week. Everyday was different and we really appreciate the variety. Having lessons begin closer to 9am rather than right away makes our mornings much more relaxed, but also gives us the freedom to carry on lessons post-lunch without rushing through our various topics and subjects.
I look forward to working through our Plutarch dilemma, and am glad we have it scheduled towards the end of the day so we can dedicate a little more time to discussion and working out the cinks of it.
Term 1, week 1 for Year 4 and Year 1 set us up for a great start and I’ll be sure to continue sharing snippets of our weeks over on Instagram!
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