August is a time where so many of us reflect on what worked over the last year and make our plans for the year ahead. There’s still a lot about the next year that’s unknowable, like whether or not meeting in groups will feel sensible, so I am making plans for the first term only. This also gives lots of room to follow children’s changing interests and continually observe what’s successful and what needs revising.
A is now 6 and will be officially in Year 2 - although as a summer born child, he could as easily be starting Year 1 this year, so it’s all somewhat arbitrary. We do not follow the national curriculum and I don’t keep tabs on what children his age would be learning in state school. I aim to provide a rich, varied, and interesting education - Charlotte Mason’s ‘feast’ - that inspires my children to develop values like compassion, self-reflection, patience, a love of beauty, and bravery. Protecting their creativity and innate love of learning is my most important job as an educator, but I also want to make sure that their horizons are as wide as possible and that they are exposed to an inspiring range of ideas.
We draw from different curricula, but we don’t follow any of them to the letter. I use them as inspiration and a jumping-off point. Some things strike A’s interest more strongly and we spend longer learning about those topics; others aren’t interesting at all, and we pass those by.
Every family is different, and every child will reach different academic milestones in their own time. Your 6 year old will be working on different things! That’s great. I hope that sharing the resources I’ve selected for this year - or at least the first term - will be helpful anyways.
Here’s what’s on our shelves so far:
English and Language Arts
A is a fluent reader and he spends some time each day reading his own books. I have a pile to suggest but ultimately he chooses his own reading material. Recently he’s enjoyed reading the Zoey and Sassafras books and this book about a funfair in space.
We are trying a dedicated spelling curriculum for the first time - All About Spelling. I don’t have this in hand yet so I can’t show you any pages from it, but it looks pretty fun. A enjoys things having to do with language so I think he will find spelling work fun.
For grammar, we are continuing to make our way through First Language Lessons and supplementing this with language games. We like Mad Libs Junior as a way to practice parts of speech in a silly way! This year we are also beginning English from the Roots Up since A is forever asking me what the parts of words mean. We’ll choose one root word every week or so to discuss. I am considering also adding in The Wand to tie our language arts studies together but I haven’t completely decided yet, because I don’t want to overload our days. There’s no need to start everything at once- it is fine to add in (or drop!) plans along the way.
I am beginning Wild Reading with Birdie, and A will be reading the stories alongside us and illustrating a letter book for his brother. We’ll use some of the advanced words in the stories for vocabulary each week - again because A is such a word lover.
We read lots and lots of poetry together, and each month A chooses one or two poems to commit to memory. I am also helping him to work on a narration practice, where he tells me back some of what we have read in his own words. I am convinced about the value of narration for helping children learn to write beautifully, and can recommend Know and Tell if you’re curious about narration.
Science
A has asked to do engineering and experiments this year for science, so this term we are using some practical, fun science books as spines alongside Real Science Odyssey’s Physics book. I have Mr. Shaha’s Marvellous Machines and Mr. Shaha’s Recipes for Wonder, Junk Drawer Physics and Usborne 100 Science Experiments to get us started. Each week, we’ll do one project and read about the why and how behind it. I plan to present experiments loosely grouped by theme: sound, motion, electricity, etc. I’m sure we’ll be drawing on Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding and books from the Let’s Read and Find Out series to enhance our understanding, starting with Simple Machines.
A is really into robots and circuitry, so I’ll also be helping him make soft circuit projects (sewn circuitry), and T will help him continue to learn to program his micro:bit using a kid-friendly platform.
Maths
This year I want to help A consolidate his mathematical understanding and fill in any gaps. Over the past 2 years we’ve been using a combination of resources, including Maths No Problem, Usborne books and practice pads, and Montessori tools. We play a lot of maths games as well.
This term - and likely the whole year - we will continue to use Maths No Problem as a main maths spine (finishing 2b and moving on to 3A), alongside Kate Snow’s ‘Math Facts that Stick’ series. As much as I love Montessori manipulatives, A finds them distracting so our main manipulatives continue to be math links, 100-square pegboards, and lego. A enjoys the Math Seeds computer program so he’ll continue to do it when he feels like it.
Something new we’re trying this year is the Beast Academy puzzle book and starting Beast Academy 2A online, although at a slow pace.
With our mini home ed co-op, we’ll be using Wild Maths once a week to consolidate learning and have a bit of fun outside. We also have a weekly games session planned where we’ll all play maths games like Sleeping Queens, Zeus on the Loose, and Crew in a Stew.
History
We are still very slowly making our way through Ancient History, starting the year off with Ancient Greece. I hope to cover Greece and Rome this year, and potentially move into Saxons and Vikings if we get that far. Curiosity Chronicles and History Quest are our main history spines still, but we will be supplementing with lots and lots of reading. My pile for Ancient Greece is growing (!) but so far includes:
So you think you’ve got it bad: A Kid’s life in Ancient Greece
A Visitor’s Guide to Ancient Greece
Greek Myths for Young Children
Trojan Horse: How the Greeks Won the War
Usborne Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece
There are so many beautiful books about Greek myth, but a lot of the content is too graphic for a 6 year old. I have D’Aulaire’s on the shelf but I think I will keep it back for the next time we cover Ancient Greece in a few years’ time.
I’m not sure yet what direction A will want to go with history: investigating the life of children in Ancient Greece, making clothes and artifacts, or immersing ourselves in the mythology. Time will tell! To inspire our play, I’ve ordered a few Playmobil Greek History figures. I love them all - the tiny Polyphemus!!
Our standard history spines or texts that we always keep on the shelf are A Child Through Time, A Street Through Time, What Happened When in the World, and Usborne Encyclopedia of World History.
Languages
I’ll admit that I’ve struggled to find a French program that I really like. We are starting French lessons with our mini co-op this autumn, and both boys and I will continue to read lots of French books, chat about stuff in French, and use Les Puces videos and stories. We all need more opportunities to practice with native speakers. I feel the best thing I can do right now is make a concerted effort to improve my French, especially grammar, so that I can lead by example. I’ll be diving back into materials from my classes at Institut Francais a few years back - if you have time to add something into your own schedule, I really recommend them. I’ll be taking online classes again with them at some point in the future!
We are also starting Latin this year with Song School Latin - both boys will watch the videos and I am looking forward to us all learning together. A is pretty excited about this because he likes knowing what words mean and how words fit together.
For Welsh language and culture, this year we will be listening to Welsh stories and myths, and watching some children’s TV programmes in Welsh. Despite living in Wales it’s strangely hard to find good resources for learning Welsh as a family!
The Arts
We’re starting off our art studies this year with a look at the elements of visual art: colour, line, texture, space/mass, form, and value. This will give us a chance to review the artists that we’ve studied over the past two years and look at different elements of their work side by side. I expect us to go through this pretty slowly, taking time to do different open-ended projects on each theme as we explore different ways of using that artistic element.
I plan for us to study a history of women artists after the holidays, but more on that in the future! If you are interested in studying women artists, We Are Artists is good - we’ll be using it as a spine in the spring.
A has recently started to take recorder lessons (he has this one, and is using this book)and he is loving it. I am impressed that he has learned to read music completely effortlessly in a few short sessions and the effect of concentrating while blowing is great for sensory input. We will continue our music appreciation based on Playful Piano and Year of Wonder, but I don’t have any specific composer studies planned for the autumn term. We dive deep into Tchaikovsky every December for our month of Christmas school, but I will write those plans up separately later in the season.
Ethics and Philosophy
A is a talker and a thinker, and we enjoy the time we spend each week reading about big ideas and talking through what we’d do in that situation. We have been reading Big Ideas for Curious Minds this past year and we will read through it again, because there’s a lot of mileage in it. A few new books I’ll be introducing are Stories for Thinking and The If Machine. I really, really hope to start a home ed philosophy club locally this year, but it will depend on interest from others and a good, Covid safe location to meet up.
Of course we have lots of resources on hand for talking about consent, bodies, fairness, and inclusion, but I don’t make a plan for us to read or discuss these topics specifically. They are part of our everyday lives and we talk about them constantly alongside the other things we are reading or discussing.
Everything Else
There’s so much of our days that doesn’t fit into a list of resources or curricula: playing outside, cycling club, gardening and nature walks, cooking together, sewing and making crafts, building with lego and magnetic tiles, pretend play, painting and drawing, and listening to audiobooks and reading fiction together. These things take up the bulk of A’s day and are the parts of our day together that are the richest. Learning flows into life and life into learning, which is what I love most about home education.
This year I hope to do more handwork side by side with A: using the sewing machine to make a picnic blanket or throw quilt, sewing clothes for soft toys, and working more on knitting and weaving. He is always cobbling together inventions out of paper, tape, staples and string so our art cart is well-stocked with the kinds of materials that he likes to tinker with.
Keeping Organised
With two boys learning, work, and a generally busy household, I do a lot of planning to feel organised and like I can meet each day with a fresh mind. I have scoured for the perfect home ed planner and in the end I’ve made my own, cobbling together some pages of the beautiful Waldorf-inspired planner of Kelly Ellis-Radahd alongside my own less lovely spreadsheets. There’s space in there to plan for each month and week, plus keep records of our read-alouds, A’s independent reading, and outings that we go on. I had hoped to shift my planning online this year, but I don’t have the time to learn a new system right now. I like the look of Notion and I’ll be gradually looking into it over the year to see if it will be a good fit in future.