Homeschool Series: Curriculum Year 0

If you've followed me for any amount of time you know I love Charlotte Mason. Her method is so gentle and rich in living books and learning, and that's exactly what I love.

In the last year or so I branched out to include the Classical method which I love as well, but was happily surprised this year when God interrupted my plans and asked me to use His word instead of the grammar and writing (more for 3rd grade) I had originally had been planning to use under the classical curriculum.




So with out further ado here is what we've come up with this year.

Let's start in Year 0 shall we?


Year 0 is similar to Kindergarten but very short and gentle. You can adapt this to use in Preschool as well.

He does quiet time first thing in the morning using one of the children's bible we have.This one or this one. He usually goes through the pictures or stories we've read before, and he loves to copy them word for word.

We will be reviewing the letter sounds, Leap Frog Letter Factory is a favorite way to review this and I'm going to let home make his own alphabet scrap book using Mr. Printables Alphabet book.  I will have him cut and glue items from magazines and draw. He loves stuff like this and he knows his sounds but I would like to make sure it's mastered.

Reading: 20 min a day.

I mentioned above that we will be using the Bible a lot, so this is how I will use it for him.

Every morning during Bible time, we read the Bible. He will sit right by me and read along side me. Tristin opens his own Bible and reads along with us.

I will read the same story/verse all week so he becomes quite familiar with the words.

Along with that I use The 3 R's as a guide on blending and new words. We will not get in any hurry and just keep going at his pace. We will use the Bible, Bob books, Nora Gaydos books , Frog and Toad, and
 Little Bear to practice reading.

I can go into more detail of the actual lessons if anyone is interested.

Writing:
He is copying the Bible and using Delightful Handwriting

Math:

I want to finish Singapore Essential Math and then we're going to move into more of a living style math.
I love using the book Family Math for games and ideas that reinforce math. We love Sum swamp for adding and subtracting. And for oral practice and on the board I'll use Ray's Arithmetic.

Some fun math ideas and goals:

play dominoes
roll dice to 100
use beads and pipe cleaners for counting and number bands
sorting by size, color etc.
3D shapes Mummy Math
Introduce measurement, estimation, volume, estimate, money

Literature:
We will be using Five in a Row
I love this because we will read the same story all week and use the guide for discussions about the history, geography, and more each day.
We may add a project per book but I haven't planned that yet.

We will also be reading the Ambleside booklist for year 0.

Nature: he will join our nature walks which I will post about, but I wanted to add that we LOVE the
Barenstain Bears Big Book of Nature

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I love this List of Attainments that we'll be working towards:

"A Formidable List of Attainments for a Child of Six", a reprint of a curriculum outline from a CM school in the 1890's.

1. To recite, beautifully, 6 easy poems and hymns
2. to recite, perfectly and beautifully, a parable and a psalm
3. to add and subtract numbers up to 10, with dominoes or counters
4. to read--what and how much, will depend on what we are told of the child
5. to copy in print-hand from a book
6. to know the points of the compass with relation to their own home, where the sun rises and sets, and the way the wind blows
7. to describe the boundaries of their own home
8. to describe any lake, river, pond, island etc. within easy reach
9. to tell quite accurately (however shortly) 3 stories from Bible history, 3 from early English, and 3 from early Roman history (my note here, we may want to substitute early American for early English!)
10. to be able to describe 3 walks and 3 views
11. to mount in a scrap book a dozen common wildflowers, with leaves (one every week); to name these, describe them in their own words, and say where they found them.
12. to do the same with leaves and flowers of 6 forest trees
13. to know 6 birds by song, colour and shape
14. to send in certain Kindergarten or other handiwork, as directed
15. to tell three stories about their own "pets"--rabbit, dog or cat.
16. to name 20 common objects in French, and say a dozen little sentences
17. to sing one hymn, one French song, and one English song
18. to keep a caterpillar and tell the life-story of a butterfly from his own observations.