It is the end of July. Before we know it August will be here, then September. Despite Covid 19 and everything else that 2020 has brought with it, the world keeps spinning, and time keeps moving forward. With that in mind I am looking forward to the 2020 homeschool year ahead and preparing our curriculum and schedule.
This is my second year homeschool my daughter and she will technically be in Kindergarten. We use The Good and the Beautiful Curriculum, and I'm excited to share with you what we got and my plans to use it.
Math | Last year we did Level K Math with my daughter, so this year we will move to Level 1. If we hadn't done level K last year we would start there since she will technically be in Kindergarten. I absolutely love The Good and the Beautiful Math Lessons. Last year I found we could get through about 1 lesson a day. Some lessons felt a little long, and others felt quite quick, but in general for us, it was just right. I love the lessons because they feel cohesive as you work on different skills for quite a few days in a row, but they also feel fresh and new each day. It is not rote learning, rather it is learning skills from different perspectives, angles, and viewpoints. It is really engaging as well.
I think Math is one of those things to do on a daily basis, so we will be doing one lesson of math Monday thru Thursday each week.
Language Arts | I am also in love with The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts Lessons. I love how through the curriculum is. It teaches spelling, poetry, art, reading, phonics, etc. It is fun and beautiful and really different each day. It never feels like you are just going through the motions because there is a wide variety or activities and learning.
Like math we did Level Pre-K and K last year so we will move to Level 1. Also like math I will be doing one language arts lessons with my daughter daily, Monday thru Thursday each week.
Handwriting | Last year we did Level K and Level 1 handwriting. This year I got the books for Level 1 and Level 2 handwriting. I like to make handwriting a consistent practice so it is something we will do daily, Monday thru Thursday each week. I also feel like handwriting is so important not to rush. So I have my daughter do one page a day, and give her time and space to give her full attention to it. I also have liked to repeat handwriting books, so she is solidly building her handwriting skills. I love The Good and the Beautiful Handwriting books because they include a space for little ones to draw and color and simply work on holding and using a pencil. My daughter really looks forward to that part as well so it is fun for her.
Science | Last year we chose to work on Space Science. It was a wonderful unit. This year we have decided to do Botany. Honestly, we are both so excited about it we have already started. I figure this is a good time to do Botany as well, since flowers are in bloom and trees have leaves. It is just a better time to observe plants in the summer. If we get done with science we also have The Human Body unit as well as the Meteorology unit.
I try to do science about twice a week at least. It really depends how long our daily tasks take. I also find that when we do science we do not necessarily do a whole lesson. We might split one lesson to do over the course of the week, or longer depending the the various activities and requirements. I have found that The Good and the Beautiful science activities can be quite engaging and interactive, so it can take a little more time for preparation and to complete the activity. I just take it nice and easy right now and do what we can and try to make it fun.
Electives | We purchased a few of the elective books as well - Creative Arts & Crafts, Drawing Level One, and The Nature Notebook. I have found that I do these less formally. Sometimes we just pull out these books and do them for fun when we need an activity and are just hanging out. This year I might try to do them more intentionally, but I also might decide to just keep it fun and keep them as activities we can do when we need something to do.
Books | Finally I got a big stack of books from The Good and the Beautiful Library ranging from Level 1B to Level 4. My daughter loves to read and will read almost anything she can get her hands on. If we were still working on reading I would have gotten many more lower level books, but since I wasn't really sure what reading level would suit her needs, I decided to just get a variety.
My plan is to give her a book each week, starting with the level 1 books and moving up. Her task will be to read the book independently and then come up with some sort of activity that will bring the book to life. We could make a recipe that was made in the book, make a stop motion video retelling the story, sing a song, write a poem, make a craft, go on an outing, really anything that would relate to what was going on in the book.
I hope that by doing this I will foster creativity in her as well as gauge her reading comprehension. I think it will be really fun.
There you go. That is the curriculum we will be using for our Kindergarten homeschool this year and my plans of how we will go about it. Are you deciding to homeschool too? What are you most excited about?
Mallory
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