It’s a bit strange to think of a ‘first day of school’ when you have, in a sense, always already been home educating. I am definitely not of the perspective that home education starts when a child is of compulsory school age – that arbitrary age is less about a child’s development and more about governmental agendas, systems, and economics. Plus, as a Montessori-inspired family, we know that education starts from birth, and progresses as a child enters the first plane of development around age 3. We have always had an environment in our home that is intentionally rich in learning opportunities, so much of what we’re doing this year is building on what we’re already doing.
Still, it does feel a bit different, having a child who would be going off to school if we weren’t making the conscious choice to provide an education otherwise. T and I have talked a lot over the last several years (even before we had children) about the kind of people we want to raise, and how our children’s education plays into that. We have values that we want to transmit: compassion, feminism and race consciousness, respect for all living things, a sense of can-do and adventure, a love of reading. We want to cultivate a sense of community and belonging for our children within their family and in the wider world, and to give them an understanding of the power people have to bring about social change when we band together. Musical literacy is very important to us as a family, as is physical activity.
The hardest thing in all of this planning, for me, has been to relax my attachment to Montessori. Although home education has always been in my heart, I love the transformative power of a Montessori environment, where independent children work together to learn and follow their own paths. There are some people who manage to replicate the look of a Montessori classroom at home, but I believe that the ‘magic’ of Montessori lies not really in the materials, but in the overall environment – especially the prepared adults and the community of children. So I am trying my hardest to repress my urges to buy all the standard classroom materials and pack my shelves with things that were never intended for a home environment. Instead I am thinking about the core of Montessori’s philosophy – observation of the child’s needs and tendencies, a progressive, hands-on education, and a deep respect for the child.
I’d describe our approach (which will change throughout the year, and over time) as Montessori-inspired, rather than as strictly Montessori. I draw inspiration from a range of ideas and philosophies: Charlotte Mason’s emphasis on the outdoors, beauty, language, and habits; Steiner’s daily and seasonal rhythms, handwork, and storytelling; Project Based Learning and Julie Bogart’s Brave Learner approach, which feels exactly in line with the way I parent and learn as an adult – immersive, interconnected, and rooted in joy.
In structuring our year, I’ve tried to build in a few different levels of planning. Some of the curricula I’m drawing from have monthly themes (including my own!), so there’s a basic framework for activities each month related to these guides. On top of this are looser seasonal plans: holidays and celebrations, changes in nature, and more focused academic work I’d like to present during this period. This is scaffolded by a framework of ideas or learning points that I’d like A to be introduced to this year, although how much he integrates these will be up to him.
Our daily and weekly rhythms are always in flux, depending on the season and fitting in two children’s needs. This is already very long so I will do a separate post on what we call ‘Special Morning Time’ on Sundays, how we adapt our daily rhythm to meet the needs of more than one child, and on the plans I have for Birdie’s learning over the next 6 months.
Although most of the way we learn in our family is interlinked and cross-genre, I’ve broken down the main curricula and activities into learning categories to make sure we’re hitting all the points I hope to cover. I do plan to do more focused learning with A than in the past, but only in short bursts throughout the day, so most of the time he won’t notice too much of a difference from how we’ve spent our days so far. He is not a child who spends long hours playing by himself – he is always asking to be read to, making things out of bits of paper and tape, or doing physical activity outdoors.
Our framework for the first year of home education
Language and Communication
This is what A’s strongest at – he loves language, storytelling, word games, anything to do with language – but he is still learning to write all his letters.
We’ll be making an illustrated letters book, learning to accurately write 2-3 letters each week, so that he feels real progress without being overwhelmed, and doing some basic copywork throughout the week based on stories we are reading. We are doing lots of handwork to strengthen those important writing muscles – that’s in the ‘handwork’ section below.
We will continue to use our sight words and phonemes cards, and the Montessori Blue and Green series word lists to build reading capability. I am still looking for a set of progressive readers that are fun and not ‘twaddle’. A has heard from other children about reading a set of books with increasing difficulty and getting a ‘prize’ at the end, and is very attached to this idea, so I’d like to make it happen for him. I’m taking suggestions, so please let me know if you have a good recommendation!
I am reintroducing Poetry Teatime (one of the things that fell by the wayside with a pre-schooler and a baby!) and Waldorf-style storytelling, with the aim of helping A to memorise one poem and one simple story each month. We are beginning to introduce some traditional fairy tales very gently, and using these as a cross-cutting theme to talk about ethics and values, geography, French, all sorts! We are starting off with the Three Little Bears.
I’ll be dipping into the Brave Writer ‘Jot it Down’ writing program – although probably not doing all the activities this year, or even covering a story a month, and The Wand reading and grammar program whenever A’s reading ability is strong enough.
We will make and use Montessori 3 part cards to support our learning across all subject areas. Parts of the bicycle is at the top of the list!
Maths and Spatial Reasoning
This is an emerging area for A. We are working on basic numeracy and understanding quantities. I’m trying out a range of approaches with maths to see what piques his interest.
We will use our basic Montessori maths materials (number cards, beads, and counters) in conjunction with games and storytelling. I have a functional toy cash register so we’ll be setting up a play shop a few times a month.
We are trying out the Singapore Maths books and workbooks to see if we enjoy these - although A isn’t drawn to maths activities, he does enjoy doing a page or two of workbooks. I have no idea if he will take to these or not!
Depending on how we are progressing with Singapore Maths and with Montessori-based math games, we may try out Wild Math curriculum and the Messy Maths book.
We will continue to do inset drawing, activities with our geometric solids, and A will reinforce his understanding of shapes as he helps me to teach Birdie basic shapes. He and I are planning to collaborate on making a felt shape book for Birdie.
Our big numbers/practical maths activity for the year is weather journaling. A has a real interest in weather so each morning he’ll be recording the temperature, moon phase, and barometric pressure in a notebook. On Sundays we will help him to plot this on a graph.
We will encourage A to try out jigsaw puzzles of increasing complexity to strengthen his spatial reasoning skills.
Science/Nature
Rather than focus on adding a lot of new information about the natural world at this age, I prefer to follow A’s curiosity based on a lot of time spent out of doors. I hope to find a forest school we can attend regularly, but in lieu of that we will continue to spend time throughout the week in our local wild cemetery. The seasonal overtones to our life tie in with science and nature education, but aren’t always specifically about understanding the natural world.
We will use the Exploring Nature With Children as a guide for our science and nature activities. Instead of following each week’s theme, we are choosing one or two of the themes each month and focusing on this in a light way all month long.
We will continue to add to our knowledge of the names of flowers and trees. Our big nature observation project for the year is photographing the same tree each week, then printing out and comparing the photos to see how the tree changes throughout the year.
We will make a book or series of nature cards about the small mammals of Europe, A’s only animal-related interest at the moment.
As mentioned in the previous section, we will focus on learning about weather and the water cycle, recording the weather, and observing cloud patterns.
We will draw on the Mud and Bloom box for supplementary/fun activities
We will continue to explore A’s interest in the moon, the International Space Station, and building materials through making models, visiting exhibitions, and reading.
Kindness, Inclusivity, and Self Knowledge
This is a big focus for our family. It’s just as important for us to grow kind, socially aware, responsible citizens as it is to grow people who can read and do sums. Although a lot of our values are communicated by our overall family culture, we are using some specific tools this year, and building in some intentional activities.
We’re using my Growing Towards Justice curriculum each month as the basis for a lot of our learning. Because it’s a project-based curriculum, we’ll explore ideas of diversity, justice, equality, and bravery through reading, art, physical activity, and storytelling.
We will have a family kindness project or activity each month based on the theme in Growing Towards Justice, that helps our children feel connected to others and shows the power of collective action. These will be simple, gentle activities like raising money for nature or health related charities, collecting donations for food banks, dictating letters to MPs about issues that A is concerned about, or volunteering as a family.
We are being more structured about incorporating daily meditation and mindfulness in our days. Some of this is stillness-based meditation, and others is movement meditation like walking on the line, walking a spiral, or practicing mindful movement.
I have mixed feelings about how Charlotte Mason talks about habits and obedience, but I do believe in the idea of cultivating good habits with children. Montessorians might see it as part of peace education – having a peaceful and harmonious home and society. We are focusing on a few habits with A in the next few months, including getting back into the habit of ‘learning time’, controlling his body and voice indoors, and helping his brother with tasks like putting on shoes and wiping his face.
Vegetarianism is very important to our family, and we are beginning to explain our family’s beliefs in a more organised way to A. Our emphasis at this age is completely on kindness and respect for all living beings (no scary information about factory farming, for instance), and a matter of fact explanation about what meat is. One of the resources we’re using is a neo-humanist curriculum about ecology and vegetarianism that T learned from as a child.
French
A has expressed an interest in learning French (a few of his friends speak French at home, and he has a desire to visit Paris and speak to other children in French), and it’s something I’m working on this year as part of my ‘parent culture’. We’ll be taking a playful approach that maximises his absorbent mind.
We’ll be listening to a lot of French stories and tapes, including this one by Beth Manners and stories on The French Experiment. I’m happy to hear recommendations of others!
A local home ed parent is a French teacher and has offered to hold a weekly club, so we will give this a try as well.
We’ll learn a few new words each week based on the other things we have going on: words relating to stories we’re reading, holidays that are coming up, or other plans we have. We’re using the Usborne First Words in French and this set of flashcards as a starting point, plus some vintage books I’ve found.
I hope to find a simple French set of videos – I’ve not settled on one yet – or a TV show that I don’t mind A watching occasionally that’s in French.
As I strengthen my French, we’ll incorporate more French into Sunday ‘Special Morning Time’
Geography
We’re keeping our conversations about geography focused on where we live, while still providing opportunities for curiosity. Geography is the learning area that fits in most with other learning areas to me, so it’s hard to separate out discrete geography activities.
We will continue to read books about children who live in other parts of the world, and identify where they live on maps and the globe. A has an interest currently in buildings and houses, so we will learn about types of houses in different parts of the world.
We will learn about different parts of the UK and Europe, and practice tracing and drawing maps of countries.
We will talk about maps in general, how to read a map, and make basic maps of our house and our neighbourhood.
Handwork and Practical Life
We do handwork to build muscles and concentration, and for the satisfaction of seeing something you have made yourself. As ever, practical life is an important part of our home. At 4, A is ready to take on some new responsibilities and practical life challenges.
I’ve ordered a knitting fork and will put out a new sewing activity once a month - things like sewing beads onto fabric, sewing two pieces of fabric together, large needlepoint, and possibly very basic hand quilting.
I’m looking for a hand-crank grain grinder or coffee grinder so that A can grind wheat and oat groats for bread-baking. This is an activity I have fond memories of doing with the children I cared for when I was a nanny!
We have a rhythm now of bread baking twice a week, which will probably increase during the colder months.
Once a month we make new play dough and this gets used almost daily for calming, muscle-building play.
In the next 6 months I will present A with a range of new practical life activities, including using a new, sharper knife, simple cooking on the stove, and making a few baked goods recipes from start to finish by himself using picture cards. We have also not given him enough opportunity over the past 6 months to be involved in family tasks like laundry and cleaning, so we will resume this.
The Arts
We aim to have a mix of an arts-rich environment and dedicated lessons in dance and music. If either child was very opposed to dance lessons, we’d consider stopping them, but I believe that the discipline of learning how to follow instructions with your body builds important links between body and mind. Our approach to music education is to focus on ear training and absorbing the patterns of music before starting on any formal instrumental learning.
A has taken a Kodaly Colourstrings music class for two years now, which has given him a brilliant introduction into the building blocks of music. He is continuing the class this year, and to build on this we will sing and practice the songs outside of class on the piano and glockenspiel, using colour coded dots – especially exploring playing the same tune in different keys. The Colourstrings method relies on the ‘internalisation of music’ and ear training rather than memorisation or repetition - it’s been amazing to see it in action, and I really recommend it if you have a local class.
Seasonal songs and family music time are a usual part of our days. I will lead A in some more focused collaborative music sessions where we talk about chords and rhythms on the piano, but only if he is interested. It’s most important to us right now to protect his developing sense of musicality, rather than push any particular expression on an instrument!
We will hear more live music and reinforce A’s knowledge of different instruments through careful listening to different kinds of music.
For visual art, will use the Laurence Anholt art books as a loose art curriculum/inspiration, and each month or so we’ll be exploring the art from one of the books. Where possible we’ll visit the art discussed in the books or something from that genre. We’ll extend this learning by doing themed process art projects. I aim for A to know the name, artist, location, and rough time period for at least one new work of art per month.
We will take regular expeditions to the National Gallery and the Tate Modern to practice how we act in an art gallery, and to talk about art more generally.
We have an art shelf with a rotation of supplies that we will refresh regularly, and I will invite A to join me in a new art project each month like printmaking, fabric dyeing, or collage.
A takes a ballet/tap/modern dance class each Saturday and will be slowly working towards his first graded exam. We will continue to talk about basic dance elements outside of his class, and will watch live and recorded dance performances throughout the year. I am very excited to take him to his very first Nutcracker this winter!
Physical activity
In addition to lots of physical playtime out of doors, we will be continuing to take A to children’s cycling group sessions at the local velodrome once a week, and are hoping to find a swimming class he can attend. He has quite good walking stamina, but this year we hope to build this more so that he is able to go on more adventurous nature hikes. We will also introduce him to some other physical activities like rock climbing and tennis to see if he is interested.
My own learning
Learning alongside our children is one of the best ways to create a culture of learning. I haven’t had the time to devote to my own development over the past year and a half, but I’m going to try to prioritise some of my own education this year in areas that don’t directly relate to motherhood, home education, or my work.
This year, I will make time to play the piano throughout the week, and have set myself a goal of re-learning all the French I studied (and promptly forgot!) in the year before A was born. Once we get the rhythm of our year underway, I hope to start online lessons through the Institute Francais. I have a dream of taking up piano lessons again, but balancing two part time jobs, motherhood, and home education may not leave enough time for both piano and French lessons this year. I’m trying to remember that the boys won’t always be this small, and my work pattern won’t always look the way it does now.
I will also be practicing modern calligraphy while A works on his letter book and copywork. I practiced old-fashioned calligraphy as a child and teenager, and I’d love to modernise! I’ll also be picking up a few abandoned knitting projects, including finishing off the last of our matching Christmas stockings, and knitting cardigans for the boys this winter.