My Home Schooling Method: 6 Years Old

I was home schooled through 8th grade. But I never once purposed in my heart that I would actually be a homeschooling mama myself.

(so I'll put it out there right now, do YOU think I'm unsocialized and weird??? ;) )

Then, in simplest terms: enter stage left our own children AND enter stage right the drastic changes to our school systems........I am homeschooling ;)

Obviously, reasons to home school can be more complex than my abbreviated description above, but this post isn't really about WHY I've chosen to home school, but more about HOW I am homeschooling my oldest this academic year.

Because, besides DECIDING TO home school you also have to DECIDE HOW you're going to home school. And just like there is a WEALTH of information about how to raise your children on the world wide web, there is also an equal amount of information about how to home school at your fingertips.

And boy have I sifted through SO MUCH INFORMATION

But I feel like (half way through my daughter's K/1st grade year, nonetheless) I've finally come to a conclusion about my HOW for homeschooling. So I want to share that with you!

Bit of background:

1. I am not a licensed teacher, and you don't need to be one to home school (at least not in Indiana, North Carolina, or Florida). In most states you just need your high school degree. However, I do have my BS from Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs
2. Our oldest has been in "mom's morning out" programs, two different preschool programs, and one public school. And in the end those experiences were generally "good" but just not the "best" and we don't foresee putting etiher of our younger children in "mom's morning out" programs or preschool
3. Yes, I hope to have a retirement party after I finish educating our children through the preschool and elementary years, it IS time consuming 

After much research and learning our 6 year old's learning styles
(yes, styles, plural, she is totally visual and audio AND tactile)

I've become a blend of Charlotte Mason and Classical Education Styles 

Which for us has become a healthy balance of living education and wrote/memory work.

We are part of a Classical Conversations Co-operative (CC) and WE LOVE the SCOPE of FACTS that are covered. Six year olds are like little sponges and the information they are expected to memorize is more than I could have come up with on my own. And the idea is as they age up the memorized facts turn into the framework for the in-depth study of each subject. To me that is brilliant.

In CC each week for 24 weeks students are expected to memorize a new part of their: 

• History Timeline
• English/Grammar Fact
• Math Fact
• Art/Music Selection (composer or artist correlated to history period)
• Geography
• History Sentence
• Science Fact
• Latin Conjugation 

Pair the CC grammar stage to Charolotte Mason's belief that 6 year olds should be exposed to:

• Quality Literature
• Foreign Language
• Mathematics
• Science
• Geography
• History
• Writing
• Reading
• Memory Work
• Handicrafts 
• Hymns
• Poetry
• Art
• Music

And I believe you've got a winning combo!!!

But if you're like me you look at those lists and get overwhelmed by the breadth of study for a SIX YEAR OLD. Especially, when Charlotte Mason believes most of this study should happen outside by observation and reading ALOUD to your children through quality literature. BUT she also advises to not spend more than 10-15 minutes per subject ;) Just sounds like a scheduling nightmare, right?

Well, it is ;)  But it IS possible. Especially when you break it down into goals by subject. So for us this year a (K/1st combo) our academic goals are (academic goals) and then break your subjects into TWO groups: FUNDAMENTALS and ALTERNATES.

Some things just need to be done everyday and some do not.

Our FUNDAMENTALS are: Math, Reading, and Memory Work
Our ALTERNATES are: Science, Language Arts, Geography, and Writing

I fit in our "schooling" during the babies nap time which (by the grace of God) is a solid 2-3 hours after lunch. And we only do formal schooling 4 days a week. So 8-12 hours/week (including breaks/snacks). 

So for example on Tuesday this last week we did:

MATH:

• Money Coin Study (by worksheets I found online!)
• Read a Chapter in Life of Fred: Apples (and accompanying written work)

READING

• Read aloud two chapters aloud in the Chronicles of Narnia
• Reading Primer

MEMORY

• Practiced reciting & writing her chosen poem (I've laminated her poems)
• Listened together to all classical conversations memory work (it's a lot of songs on Youtube)
• Calendar memory work (just reciting the current month, day (ordinal), and year)

ALTERNATE: SCIENCE

• Read aloud 4 short chapters in our Nature Reader while she colored a picture of a painted lady butterfly
• Discussed the life cycle of a butterfly

This post has become way more in depth than I imagined! I hope this is helpful for someone! But if your brain is hurting then skip the rest below ;)

Thanks for peaking into our school day!

Math topics change daily between our goals for this year of: money, time, patterns, measuring (metric units included), math symbols, directions, skip counting, and counting backwards, but Life of Fred is read daily as well as accompanying written work.

Reading aloud currently rotates between

• The Magician's Nephew
• AA Milne's Now We Are Six
• A Child's History of the World

And we are continuing our work through our Handbook For Reading Phonics Text Book by ABeka. My six year old has no desire to read because (I think) she is afraid of failing, so this is a slow slow slow slow process for us (and we've tried Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and had to stop half way through). But give her a science experiment or read aloud to her for three hours and you've got her in her element.
Memory work always includes calendar recitation and listening to her CC songs (which covers a math fact, history facts, science fact, art/music fact, geography, and latin conjugation)
and then we rotate practicing her

• selected poems
• Ephesians 6
• hymn
• french songs

For the ALTERNATE subjects at first I didn't like rotating them every day, but now that we are it has helped immensely in her retention of the subjects. So everyday we either do

• science
• geography
• language arts
• writing

Rotating the subjects retains her joy for them instead of lamenting one that she doesn't excel at (aka writing;))