Overall Approach and Focused Lessons

We recently looked at our state legal requirements as M will be in first grade next year. This upcoming school year will be our first "formal" homeschooling experience. It is not that this year was not real homeschooling; it is that I determined that kindergarten would be a trial period. If I could not do it and work too, then we could just say that we held her back a year.

So looking at the state requirements, I began to think ahead to what we would cover over the next year. With this in mind, I write today on our overall homeschooling (unschooling) approach.


READING, WRITING, AND LANGUAGE
I do not cover every subject in the course of a day, or even in the course of a week. Instead, I focus on skills I want them to learn to prepare for the future. I once heard someone complain about their kid's school: they spend one week on a math concept, and before the kid has mastered it, they are on to the next skill.

It is not that we do not do other lessons other than the skill that we currently learn, but the other stuff is "life." Art, music, and reading are things we do to enjoy life, very much like playing. It is what kids do.

Right now, M's focus is on writing now that reading is doing so well. She still reads, of course, but I no longer have to sit with her and help her through it. So, to cover writing, I write the story, and she copies it. My purpose in this to guide her towards writing on the lines (this was a major problem) and towards learning to spell, and now I am using it for vocabulary words too. She loves to write so much that, to her, this is a fun activity.

R's focus is language. To prepare her to read, I encourage her to talk. Several times a week, I sequester myself in her room with her at bedtime, and the two of us read books together. Sometimes, I read, and we talk about the book. Other times, I encourage her to make up the story for me. We also have a game that we call "The Floor," which teaches them not to interrupt and to take turns talking. We play this game at dinner, and whoever has "the floor" gets to tell a story. Normally, she let's M do the talking for her, and this gives her the opportunity to talk and not be interrupted.

ART
So, we focus on one subject that seems to need work, and then we have lots of fun in other areas, like art and music and math games. Art is something that we do everyday. The girls have access to art supplies (markers, crayons, paint, chalk, paper), and they often make up their own projects. We got some craft books, so every few days, we do a more formal craft.

For Christmas, we got for the girls a lot of sewing kits and some wooden models in order to explore new areas of art, other than paper-oriented crafts.

MUSIC
Music appreciation is also a constant part of our day. Little Einstein's opens their eyes to great composers, and then they just about go haywire over that piece of music. Stravinsky's Firebird is one of their favorites. We also have children's music for them and they each have their own CD player that they are always listening to.

In the upcoming year, we have some plans to increase their music education by giving them access to some music programs on the computer and then to enroll them in some piano lessons.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Physical education is also part of being a kid. As long as they are not put in front of the TV, they will exercise, and we often take nature walks and ride bikes--when the weather is not so cold.

We intend to increase this by enrolling the girls into some YMCA classes: swimming, dance, and gymnastics.

MATH
Unfortunately, math fell by the wayside for a little bit of time as we focused more on language, but truthfully, I think that is only because I am still used to the typical school math curriculum, which is all paper oriented. What we do with math is focused on R, and so I use a lot of games and activities that I found in the Count On Math book. We justed started chapter five, which is about one-to-one correspondance, and I doubt we will be on the topic long because M & R seem to both have already mastered the concept.

At the same time, we have worked with M on adding. She did it on paper using a number bar, but I wanted to take her away from the paper and see it more visually. So I took eleven blocks and three pieces of paper. On one paper, I placed 1 block, and on another paper, I put zero blocks. Finally, on the third paper, I wrote "1 + 0 =" in one column and "0 + 1 =" in another column. We did that ten times, adding one more block each time, to help her understand adding by ones. The next day, we added by twos.

We also started using paper and objects to practice counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's. I would set blocks in groups of twos and have her count them, and then I would reinforce the lesson by writing all the numbers 1-20 and putting circles around the even numbers. I'd have her read the circled numbers, and then we would go back to counting the blocks.

We also have some math workbooks that we have not used in a while. Very shortly, M will focus on her workbooks instead of writing.

SCIENCE
Last summer, we spent a lot of time on science. It was a natural part of our exploration and part of our reading. We actually have a first grade science curriculum that we have worked more than halfway through. We have covered plants, animals, insects, and weather. I treat the book as more of an idea book. I get a few worksheets that the girls enjoy, which I use to introduce a subject, and it has some good book suggestions. But for each chapter that they offer a week's worth of lessons, we plunge into the topic for at least a month.

Right now, we are learning about birds because the girls expressed some interest in the topic. M was birdwatching and making up names for the birds she saw (she called one a "sweet bird" because it likes to eat sweet stuff, according to her), so we got out our old field guide and also ordered some books from the library.

SOCIAL STUDIES
Social studies includes history and geography as well as building an understanding of our world. We just went through the Little House in the Big Woods, which is great for learning about history and for seeing the world from a very different perspective.

Now we are about to embark on a new road: a study of the different cultures of the world. M has a Dora World Adventure CD that has music from many different cultures, so I will use that as a means to branch into this new area. We will post a world map on our living room wall, and then we will focus on each of the major countries. The map will be a reference point as we move from culture to culture.

We will start with Russia because that is where Stravinsky's Firebird takes place, and so the girls have heard of Russia before. I have ordered from the library books that cover art, music, stories, food, and even a little of the language too.