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.

Saturday Family Traditions

I have really fallen in love with creating our own little family traditions. I love getting ideas from all over the place, but as I wrote a few months ago, I was getting overwhelmed with "keeping up" with all the fun stuff there is out there. So, I pretty much dropped it. I took my own advice and went with what I knew would really make a difference in our boys' lives.

Remember the everyday things like books before bed, family devotionals, pizza on Fridays, chores on Saturday. Those are the things children will find comfort in. Those are the days they will remember.

Without even thinking about it, I started lingering in bed an hour later on Saturday mornings, slowly getting up to the sounds of boys playing in their rooms. I'd head down stairs for a cup of coffee and open my wonderful southern cookbook and find the most beautiful pictures and recipes. I started craving the biscuits and gravy, the brown sugar and buttermilk waffles, the honey pecan coffee cake. Although I cook breakfast most mornings, I wanted this to be different. So, around 9:00 AM on Saturday mornings, I start what we call our Late Saturday  Morning Breakfasts. The boys make orange juice together and set the table while I whip up waffles, eggs, and bacon, biscuits and gravy, omelets, stuffed french toast, or sometimes just fruit salad and toast. Some other times, we make homemade donuts with our little donut maker.

It's all about enjoying each other, in no rush.







We read our Bible together, talk, and listen to old hymns or classical music. It has quickly become my favorite day of the week!

After we are finished, I go online to Lego Quest Kids and pick a challenge for the boys and their Legos. They spend the remainder of the morning coming up with their creations! They LOVE it! I also saw that Phyllis just started LEGO challenges on her blog too, so we'll add that one to our list.







I'm taking pictures for them and have plans to make a little book for him.

These are the traditions I love. It doesn't take a lot of effort and planning. It's not over the top or elaborate, and by no means an original idea. It is special and simple, and that's what makes it so amazingly wonderful!

Easy Pizza and Salad

In my effort to get the boys involved in cooking I found a very simple way to make pizza with the boys.

Idea from Clover Lane

Salad from 71Toes

Thaw and press down Rhodes Dough.
Drizzle olive oil on pan and dough.



Add pizza sauce.



Top with topping of your choice.



Bake at 400* for 10 minutes.

Make the salad while pizza is baking.
Toast some almonds in sugar.



Slice some strawberries and red onions or any other veggie you wish.



Mix all in with spinach and romaine and top with Brianna's Blush Wine dressing and a bit of mozzarella.



Serve and enjoy!

Cooking With Kids

This week, I had the boys help make Broccoli Beef and Stir Fry for dinner. They LOVED it, and spent several hours after they were done playing chef.

They got to use their new Curious Chef knives. These babies worked so well, I'm thinking of buying a set for myself.

Cut the steak:



Make the marinade:



Check our recipe for Stir Fry:



Chop those veggies:





Make some sauce:



Add a little oil and cook the veggies:



Cook the steak and serve over rice:



YUM!

Cooking With Kids

I have received quite a few comments on here that appreciate my getting the boys in the kitchen with me, so I thought I would try and share more of what we do (when I remember to grab the camera)!

For Christmas, we bought them a set of the Curious Chef Knives, (I'll let you know what we think of them when we use them) and we got them the Kid's Fun and Healthy Cookbook.

After looking the book over, I can tell it will be a big hit! This morning we had left over Christmas ham, and decided to put our cookbook to the test. I asked Tristin to help me this morning. He quickly jumped in for the chance to cook breakfast for us!

We wanted to make the baked Eggs in Ham.



We lined our muffin tin with slices of ham and broke an egg to put in each one.





He set the timer and in 12 minutes we had breakfast!





The boys claimed this is one of the best breakfasts they've ever had! :) It is definitely a plus to have them help out!