1st Grade Charlotte Mason Plans, 2020-2021

Sylvia will turn 6 on September 1. If she were attending public school, she would have been too young to start kindergarten last year and unless I had pushed the issue (by homeschooling kindergarten and then advocating for her to enter directly into 1st grade) she would only be starting school (kindergarten) this year. Honestly, I would prefer that she would be 4-6 months older at the start of first grade, but it just isn't practical for me to adjust her school schedule like that especially considering that I will need to document 180 days of homeschool for her this year due to a change in PA law.

So while I think she is ready to begin our style of formal lessons, I recognize that she is a bit young and will be treating her very gently as she eases into our routine. It will help that she has seen her brothers following a similar routine over the last 2-3 years so she already has a good idea of what to expect.

I will be reading all of her lessons to her until she becomes fluent enough to read her own books. I have no idea how long that process will take. My biggest challenge in scheduling this year has definitely been that I will be educating two non-fluent readers.

Each year, I consider the subjects that Charlotte Mason included for her students as well as the time spent on each subject per week and information about the number of pages read each term. 

I do not aspire to do everything just as Charlotte Mason did. Like my children, I am a born person with strengths and limitations so I feel like it is my duty to do only what I am capable of doing right now in a respectable, patient way with the children and resources I have available to me.

When planning out my homeschool, I first decide what subject to include. Then I decide how long and how often I will plan to schedule those subjects. I also determine whether they will be included during our formal morning lesson time or whether they will be fit into another part of our day. In prior years, I realized that I was doing full morning lessons PLUS morning time PLUS read alouds PLUS extracurriculars and so I decided to make morning lessons even shorter. I consider MANY of things we do outside of our formal morning lesson time (piano, nature journaling, free time, chores, family movies, games, time with grandparents, field trips) to be very important parts of our homeschool and our culture of lifelong learning.

Next, I decide how I will schedule our 3 terms and our break weeks to fit into our calendar. By state law, I need to document 180 days of schooling between July 1 and early June to give me enough time to get an evaluation completed and into our school district by June 30. I choose to do this by scheduling two 12-week terms and one 10-week term. The last week of each term I do not schedule readings but use it to give exams and to finish up some (if any) of the readings we didn't get to yet. Usually, I schedule our two 12-week terms first but this year we are starting our year with a 10-week term to make it easier for us to adjust to life with a new baby.

This results in planning 34-weeks of homeschooling 5-days a week for a total of 170 days. I find it very easy to document another 10 days (but always more!) of unschooling--including field trips during break weeks, special educational programs that take place on Saturdays, or just educational days around the house or while camping. Last year was my first year planning only 34 weeks of homeschooling and I loved it because I really believe in the learning that takes place in the real world and I don't want to feel like all the other good things are just EXTRA to cram around all the amazing books and subjects we cover in our normal homeschool schedule.

Once I know how many times per year each child will be studying a given subject, I find books and create plans to fill those slots. I also have to think very, very hard about the attention I will be able to devote to carrying out each subject. I can only plan what I can faithfully support the child doing. If I ask too much or give too little, I am setting up a very frustrating situation for me and the child. This is easier said than done and I tend to err on the side of expecting or planning too much. Which is why I always tweak my schedule as the year goes on. A pleasant and peaceful homeschool is more important to me than doing all the things. 

This year, I have created a timetable to schedule the work for a 1st grader and 3rd grader, both of whom will require all of their lessons read to them. Sometimes the times do not line up 100% correctly and sometimes it might not be clear how I can be in 2 places at once (hahaha!) but my husband will be helping out with the first lesson of the day. Here is my initial attempt to make this work . . . it will likely be tweaked as we put it into action. Some our of the subjects do not appear on the timetable because we do them at morning time or another time, so be sure to read below to see how we fit those into our day.

I have tried to note in [ ] whether I'm using a free book or how much I paid for each of the resources we are using. I am committed to homeschooling with free or really cheap books as part of our journey to be debt-free while living on one income.

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We will read narrative portions of the bible during our morning time during breakfast using the lists available on Ambleside Online and using a New Revised Standard Translation. Using this translation worked better for us than using the King James Version, so we will continue to use this version next year. Unlike Ambleside Online's plans (which coincide with the way Charlotte Mason planned bible lessons) we choose to read only 1 book of the bible at a time instead of alternating between the old and new testaments. We will begin this year with Exodus and move on from there.

So far, I have one child who became a fluent reader at age 4 with less than 2 hours of total reading instruction. And I have another child who also grew up in that same language-rich environment without lots of screen time and who has had 100+ hours of reading instruction and cannot read fluently at the start of third grade.

Hopefully, my experience with my two older children will help me best plan and carry out Sylvia's reading lessons. My initial plans are to use 10 minutes each day for a Charlotte Mason style reading lesson (as described by Leah from My Little Robins in her helpful reading series). 

I have also scheduled time for her to drill on phonics and get a little more reading practice 4 days a week using Reading Eggs [Christmas gift from Grandpa]. I don't think Reading Eggs is ideal, but given that I will have 2 students this year that will require me to read all of their lessons plus a two-year-old and a newborn, I think that Reading Eggs will be an effective way to both tutor Sylvia on reading and drill her on phonics. Another selfish/practical reason I have scheduled Reading Eggs is that my 2-year-old is fascinated by watching her do it and I think it will distract him toward the end of lessons when he is often clamoring for my attention at the expense of getting our other lessons accomplished.

Sylvia will also listen to family read alouds at morning time, at lunchtime, and at bedtime.

Copywork/Handwriting (5x10min/week)
Sylvia will spend about 10 minutes on copywork that I've prepared for her using this website or taken from this Highlights Handwriting Word Practice book. Unlike her brothers, she has spent lots of free time in her early years drawing and writing letters and her name so I do not anticipate this will be a difficult subject for her.

Poetry (Listen to the same poem read aloud every day for a week at morning time) While I do not follow Ambleside Online's poetry rotation, I do choose the majority of our poets and poems from their collection. We will focus on a different poet each term:

• Term 1: Christina Rossetti
• Term 2: Carl Sandburg
• Term 3: Paul Laurence Dunbar

I am not including a conversational foreign language in our homeschool this year for Sylvia. We have used Talkbox.mom for the last few years, but I find it challenging to use with children who are learning to read.

Social Studies: History and Geography

• Elementary Geography by Charlotte Mason [Free ebook under its original name on Google Play]
• Term 1 and 2: Paddle to the Sea by Holling C. Holling [already owned book sale find]
• Term 3: Jenny Goes to the Sea by Ester Averill [already owned - $3.64 used on Abebooks.com]  

We'll be reading Charlotte Mason's Elementary Geography throughout the entire year, alternating with the other assigned books. We will use maps included in the books as well as our 2010 atlas [already owned - $25.20 used on Amazon]

Mathematics