George Washington
Benjamin Franklin
Abraham Lincoln (Bicentennial Edition)
...and SO many other wonderful selections!
LANGUAGE ARTS
I am learning so much this year myself! It is really interesting to not have "curriculum" for most of our schooling, but to just have good books to read.
To help me get a good grasp on how a Charlotte Mason education looks and feels in the area of Language Arts, I am planning to use several items from Simply Charlotte Mason.
Here is the list, with the grade of the child for which it will be used:
A Child's Copybook Reader, Level 1 - Copywork AND reading practice for my 1st grader
Print to Cursive Proverbs - Copywork and cursive lessons for my 2nd grader
Spelling Wisdom - 2nd grader (he is advanced in spelling, but we will begin with level 1)
I will also be purchasing Reading Lessons Through Literature Level 1
for continuing in reading lessons with my 1st grader, and English Lessons Through Literature Level 1
to keep my 2nd grader moving forward in grammar.(Note: Charlotte Mason holds off on teaching grammar until around 4th grade, which is generally the age/grade that children are able to understand and remember grammar. We are ONLY continuing in grammar this year--using a CM approach--because we have been doing grammar the past two years using First Language Lessons. We do not want to drop it altogether with our advanced reader, but we do want to stick with the methods.)
SCIENCE:
For science this year, we are taking it easy like last year. My main goal is that we all build relationship with what we are learning. We will do that in the form of nature studies and reading great living science books!
We will start with Outdoor Secrets (and the Outdoor Secrets Companion) from Simply Charlotte Mason. It is perfect for early years (such as my 4 year old) up to second grade!
One other science book we will go through as we study American History is Science in Colonial America
. I am thoroughly looking forward to science this year! We have never felt like we were doing "enough", even though we have been, and this year will be simple, but full of hands-on, relational science!
MATH:
We purchased our math curriculum last summer and used it all year this year, and I simply cannot say enough good things about it! I searched all summer last year, and we nearly "settled for" many other programs before finding this one. When I finally prayed, did one more Google search, and this one single link came up, I thanked God for the RIGHT curriculum!
This program is a one-time purchase from preschool math through pre-algebra math! For a price of $300, it is not a "cheap" math curriculum up front...BUT...when I did the math for using this one program for my three children for roughly nine years of math for each of them, it comes out to under $12.00 per child per year! There are a few free math programs out there, but NONE that you purchase for that low price! We already had manipulatives (such as a base ten blocks set
), and this program is amazing!Math On the Level is a program that should really be more popular than it is currently! When I began searching, I wanted something that would help me teach my children the concepts with little to no workbooks. I would find great programs with tons of workbooks, or workbook-lite programs that didn't help me teach my children.
This program does involve a little bit of teacher prep, but only in creating the daily review pages called "five-a-days". The students literally do five review problems a day of written work--and you, the parent/teacher, decides what your student needs. Does that sound stressful? It is not! The company has created an amazing Excel spreadsheet for helping you know what concepts go on each day's page, and they provide TONS of sample problems for each concept to choose from! SO easy! And my oldest, who used to fight me about doing math (from workbooks) says his favorite part of school is his five-a-day page!
In addition to Math On the Level, we will also have a fun math day on Fridays, where we read Life of Fred
(with my 2nd grader) and Arithmetic Village
(for my 1st grader). WHEW!
Just a few subjects here, and it looks like SO much when I put it all down like that! This year really is going to be wonderful. It will be "simple" but rigorous!
If you have any questions about any of the resources I've selected and shared here, please comment below! I will reply!
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