For anyone who’s curious about what we’re learning over the late winter period, here’s some of the themes we’ve enjoyed learning about, and resources I can recommend.
Compassion, Ethics, and Justice
We always use the month’s Growing Towards Justice theme as the starting point for our themed work. This month it’s all about how bodies are different, but equally great. We’re reading about skin colour, and the science behind what makes skin look different. We’re also refreshing our knowledge of body systems and the senses as we learn about what it’s like to have a sensory impairment. We love the Usborne Look Inside Bodies book for all things body-related. The rest of the books we’re using are outlined in the curriculum guide. In January, the focus was on different kinds of families, and what all families have in common.
We dip in and out of Ethics for the Very Young as it relates to our other work, and in February we’re using it some to guide our discussions about what it means to have ‘enough’. We started these conversations in December, when we focused a good deal on what it meant to ‘have’ and to ‘give’, but moving the boys into the same room has animated some competitive feelings about space and shared toys. We’re also talking some about what it means to be a sibling, and reading The New Small Person by Lauren Child (I can’t recommend this book enough!) as a conversation-starter.
The Arts
In January, A chose to learn more about Claude Monet. We read books and tried to visit our favourite painting of his - only to find that it was on tour! Our artist focus for the month is Frida Kahlo. We’re reading these two books: Laurence Anholt’s Frida Kahlo and the Bravest Girl in the World and The Artist in the Blue House by Magdalena Holzhey, plus dipping into our art spine (Art: The Definitive Guide) to understand how her work fits into the timeline of other artists we know about. We’re making some Kahlo-inspired pictures, including thinking about “Los Dos Fridas” and how sometimes we feel in two ways about ourselves. We’ve linked this to discussions about feelings and mindfulness - how at times we feel angry and also worried, for instance, or frustrated and also like being calm. A is especially fond of “Me and My Parrots”.
Beethoven is a focus of ours all year (it’s Beethoven 2020!), so we’ve begun to talk about how his compositions changed as he became more hard of hearing. We’re also listening to Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty since A is studying this in his dance class this term. We use a range of books and resources for learning about music. In February, we’re mostly reading Beethoven Lives Upstairs, My First Classical Music Book, The Story of the Orchestra, and The Story Orchestra Sleeping Beauty. We’re picking a Beethoven composition to listen to deeply each month - January was Fur Elise and February is the Moonlight Sonata.
We read poetry every day but focus on it especially on Tuesday afternoons. We read whatever takes our fancy, alongside our three ‘special’ poems for the month or season. Right now, we’re memorising: ADD POEMS
Science
We use Exploring Nature With Children as our nature study guide, and choose one theme per month to focus on. In February we’re learning all about earthworms, and reading Yucky Worms, An Earthworm’s Life, and Wiggly Worms at Work. We’re also building our own vermicomposter! Each month we tend to pick a couple of flowers or trees to consider -right now, of course, it’s snowdrops, crocuses, and daffodils. We learn some poems and songs that relate to our nature themes. Dany Rosevear’s snowdrop song is one of our favourites right now! I love how we are able to make our learning interconnect and don’t feel like we have to keep science and art separate. It’s the Lunar Year of the Rat, and we’re incorporating this into all our work in some way - we’re slowly learning about the parts of the rat, and different rodent families for life science.
We do a hands-on science activity each Sunday and base a lot of our work on A’s ongoing interest in space, as well as the subjects in Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding. Books we’ve been reading over the past 2 months that I recommend especially are Usborne See inside Space, Usborne See Inside Energy, Full of Energy, Forms of Energy. So far our space study has been really haphazard, and I plan to outline something more focused for the rest of the year.
Maths
Most days, A completes a few pages from either one of his Usborne addition or subtraction practice pads, or from this French math workbook. We play maths games like Bus Stop, Pop to the Shops, and Snakes and Ladders whenever we can (board games are very challenging right now, with a nearly 2 year old who wants to get involved!), and do lots of practical, incidental maths through cooking, shopping, and general household tasks. Some children who have an extra-challenging time focusing on work and sitting still may respond better to hands-on, open-ended maths, but we’ve found the exact opposite with A. Montessori works provide too much distraction from the task at hand - the beautiful materials become the focus, rather than the mathematical concepts. Workbooks and hand-drawn number lines work much better for us. Follow the child!
English Language Arts: Copywork, Writing, and Reading
We don’t currently use a formal handwriting curriculum. We combine tracing Montessori sandpaper letters with copywork and dictation that I create. Each week I come up with 4-5 words that relate to something in our lives: seasonal changes, our names, or words from stories. In January all the copywork related to the Chinese New Year. I stage the introduction of new materials throughout the year so that there’s not too much new in our routine at once, and I have my eye on Handwriting Without Tears as something to try out in the late spring.
“Writing” is something that we do most days, but is completely separate from handwriting. I follow a Brave Learner approach to writing and record the stories that A tells throughout the day, either as an audio recording or by taking notes as he speaks. We read these or listen back to these, sharing them with other family members. He is in the habit now of telling me to get ready to record a story he’s about to tell. It is beautiful to see a young child really inhabit the role of storyteller, and feel unconstrained by his ability to physically write out the tales he tells.
We are still reading banded readers, usually one (or half of one if it’s very long) per day. I just check out whatever I can find from the library that’s the right band. There are plenty out there: Biff, Chip, and Kipper, Songbirds, and Read It Yourself Ladybirds are usually in the mix. None of them is especially great or compelling, but they increase fluency and confidence. I also make sure that there are exciting, nicely-illustrated, mostly decodable books lying around for A to read himself if he chooses. He’s been diving into Can I Build Another Me most day - the illustrations are great! I do think that A would benefit from a more organised reading curriculum because he is easily frustrated and is at the stage of reading where he tries to go quickly and guesses words, so I’m considering introducing All About Reading quite soon. I’d love feedback if you’ve used it, or have other reading curriculum recommendations! Most weeks I create a little reading booklet by hand that reinforces sounds like ‘ai’, ‘au’, or ‘ight’.
Culture, History and Geography
I follow a few different threads as we cover culture, history, and geography. We’re introducing a rotation of continent study over the summer, with each half term focusing on one continent - and learning about Antarctica during summertime. We’ll repeat this rotation each year, learning about different periods in history on that continent year on year, as well as about the languages, foods, and material cultures of the people who live on that continent. For the next 2 years, we’re broadly studying ancient people, so for the time being we’re reading books and telling stories about the stone age. I read some of The Story of the World from time to time as the boys play, but I am acutely aware that all of the books I’ve found on ancient people are biased in some way, and are usually very sexist and inaccurate, so I’ve held off a bit and will be doing some intensive digging (and writing!) to create some materials I’m happy to use.
Wherever possible, we learn about world celebrations like Lunar New Year. We loved reading The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac during January, and I imagine we’ll read it each year.
French
We are all learning French together! A loves language of any sort, and I’m desperate to re-learn all the French I studied in the past. We read French books every day - with an extra French teatime on Wednesdays - and use this Play and Learn French textbook as a jumping-off point for new vocabulary each week. We supplement with whatever book from the I can read French series that is most closely related, plus games that I create based on the French workbooks I’m using for my own revision and practice. As for storybooks, we read lots of things like T’choupi, the Maxime series, and whatever dual language books we can find in the library. We all usually watch a few episodes of Barbapapa or Petit Ours Brun throughout the week as well! One of the dual language books we loved in January was “Voici ma Maman”, about two mixed-race children who looked very different from their mothers, and how they handled it when people said their mum wasn’t their mum.
Stories, Read Alouds, Adventure, and Other Things
We do lots of reading and activities that don’t quite fit into tidy categories. There’s always lots of playing, of course, including with play dough and kinetic sand, and meeting up with friends to play indoors and out. We cycle, climb, jump and swing. We all participate in housework and gardening when it needs to get done. We do yoga and meditation together, listen to lots of music, pick out tunes on the piano, and cook together. We take trains into town, visit our local natural history museum, and follow short-lived interests all over the place. These things are harder to quantify or to share with you all, but are just as important as the pages of workbooks or French words we study. The playtime, reading aloud, and family togetherness is where most of the magic moments really happen.
A few of the picture books and chapter books we’ve been reading and loving this late winter:
Red Red Red by Polly Dunbar
The Story of the Snow Children by Sibylle von Olfers
Ollie’s Ski Trip by Elsa Beskow
The Mitten by Jan Brett
The Tomten and the Fox by Astrid Lindgren
They All Saw A Cat by Brendan Wenzel
Odysseus and the Wooden Horse by Allan Drummond (although I did some editing of the text!)
Robin Hood Young Reading Series
The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Matilda by Roald Dahl
Gobbolino and the Little Wooden Horse is our current bedtime read (along with Goodnight Tractor and Goodnight Moon for Birdie)