I sat down a few days ago to start planning out our 2023-2024 school year. After a few days of working on it, I finally have everything planned, organized, and ready to go for fall. (never mind that it just turned spring, ordering books early usually gives a discount which is always welcome and once they come in we are always excited to look at the books and it just helps get everyone excited to finish their school work so we can start on the new books!)
It is a bit of a mix because some books work better for some kids than the others.
Some things will be the same for all the kids like our read alouds for history, science, and enrichment. All the kids will be working on learning more ASL (American Sign Language) as well continuing our Latin studies that we stared last year.
These are our books for this year with Simply Classical 4 Memoria Press. You might notice a lot of books that look the same, that is for each child who will be using those books.
For kids who are using other materials in addition to Simply Classical, these are their books (a couple of books are missing from the picture but are currently being shipped and should arrive soon).
One way I help keep the kids' books organized is by putting color coded stickers on the books. Each child has their own color so they can easily spot which books are theirs. This way the kids can make sure when they put their books away they are not putting them in the wrong spot. Books with a spiral on the side have their stickers on top of the cover page.
Last school year we started working on learning states and capitals. This year we will learn more about the states and review all their capitals. We are also going to be learning about Mythology, reading animal Folk Tales, continuing our studies of famous composers and artists, as well as learning more poetry and Bible verses.
When we started learning bible verses, poems, and hymns back in October 2022, I wondered it if would be too much. We have discovered that they are more than able to and have actually shown improvement in other areas of their school work because of it. This year we are stepping it up a little bit because part of our homeschool curriculum with Simply Classical 4 has the kids learning two longer poems, Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
I had already preselected all the poems that we were going to be doing prior to us getting the curriculum guide and was happy to discover that one of the poems I had selected, Who had Seen the Wind? by Christina Rossetti, was the third poem that the kids would be learning in Simply Classical 4. I had not originally planned on doing Paul Revere's Ride or The Charge of the Light Brigade, so I ended up having to take down some poems we were going to do in the place of those, but we can always learn that in the 2024-2025 school year. I already have a large list of poems, bible verses, and hymns for future years.
If a poem is somewhat short such as the Rain by Robert Louis Stevenson or Singing by Robert Louis Stevenson, I have it so we will be learning both poems for that month. Most poems that we have learned the kids have been able to learn in one month, however this year we will be learning a couple of longer poems and while we will still add a poem each month, if a poem is really long we will continue to work on that one as well. The poem we are learning in January and April are very long poems. We will work on the one in January all the way until April and the one in April all the way till the end of school or until they are both learned as those two are part of our homeschool curriculum with Simply Classical 4.
One thing I have started doing for some poems is making a slide show with some picture clues to help our kids visualize the poems.
This is the one I made for The Months poem by Sara Coleridge. The picture below shows January and that part of the poem goes, January brings the snow, makes our feet and fingers glow.
By having the pictures while the kids are learning the poem, they are later able to visualize the pictures when they are reciting it without seeing it. At the end of the month, they are asked to say it without any help from the slideshow or with me helping to remind them. They have been doing so well!
These are the books that our kids will be using this school year.
The majority of our work is from the Simply Classical program by Memoria Press. It is a wonderful program and works very well for many of our kids. However, for some of our kids who are able to work at a faster pace then their program but not fast enough for their typical program we have a few other things we use.
With spelling, some of our kids are able to move at a pretty fast pace if they do not have too many words to memorize. This is the struggle with typical programs because there are so many spelling words to remember per week. With Simply Classical there are fewer words per week to memorize, this works very well for some of our kids, however, for one of our kids that can move a lot faster we will be using Abeka while another one of our kids need to move a lot slower and need more activities to help them learn so in that case we have turned to Super Teacher Worksheets for Spelling. We do let the kids go at their own pace for spelling. Each of our kids are at various skill levels. Some kids are able to memorize their spelling words in one week, while others can memorize them in a few days, and others still will take a few weeks to learn them.
Super Teacher Worksheets has been an amazing discovery. They have a large collection of worksheets that is perfect for preschool- 5th grade with everything from math, reading comprehension, spelling, phonics, phonies, and much more. Their spelling includes things from the spelling words plus activities like cutting and gluing to make sentences with the spelling words, word searches using the spelling words, and much more, which is perfect for our child who need that extra practice.
In addition to our learning Bible verses, poems, and hymns, the kids will continue learning about famous composers, listening to music they wrote, and learning about famous artists and seeing pictures of their artwork.
Another part of our homeschooling this year will be to take advantage of all the recipes we have collected over the last couple years from a subscription to Radish Kids. Radish Kids is a kids cooking subscription where kids receive a recipe each month, as well as a grocery list, some table talk cards, and easy to follow directions to make each recipe.
Homesteading brings science to life. We have an orchard that was planted in the spring and the kids have been watching it come to life. We also set up our garden in the spring and the kids have been getting their hands dirty and learning about gardening. The kids received a baby bunny in the spring from one of our dear friends from church along with a rabbit hutch. They love their little bunny! We also have chickens. We got our first baby chicks in April, some more in May, and then even more in July. They have gotten to see how they grow and develop and we are excited over the coming year to be able to watch our chickens hatch some of their own eggs.
Something new this school year will be that our older girls will be working two days per week for a place that employees people with disabilities. We took a tour and the girls loved it there and are looking forward to being able to spread their wings a bit and be able to earn some spare cash. This will give me extra time to work with the youngest three kids and allow the older girls to learn new skills on the job.
Another fun thing we will be doing now that we are more settled in from our move in 2022 is we will be exploring our state with field trips! We will be exploring places such as the
Laura Ingles Wilder Home and
Museum, caves, seasonal events and festivals, zoos, as well as tours of places like a fire station.
Our church hosts a Talent Show night in September and the kids are so excited! We will start working on learning something they can do to preform for the talent show around June. We are blessed to live in a state with so many things to do!
In Feb 2024 our older girls will once again be able to attend Night to Shine and are so looking forward to it. Our younger kids are looking forward to when they will be able to attend but you need to be at least 16 so they have a few more years to go.
Life is Good!
