Our New Year at a Glance

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, this means that I will make a small commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you.

“Chose promise, chose due”. Or: a promise is a promise. Our first week of home education is under our belt, the plans have been tweaked, and we are on our way. This year is very different for us than our previous years. First, I only have three students, gasp! That has not happened in about 15 years! It feels strange… Second, I am working outside the home part time, challenging our rhythm. And last, but not least, my students are all in very different places and it has been harder to combine everyone but at the same time very freeing.

Morning Time

This time tested staple of our home education has become even more of an anchor for us this year. This is the one thing for which all of my students are gathered together. Morning Time is still the heart and core of our homeschool day, allowing our family to thrive and be strengthened. As always we pray together and learn about the saint of the day. This year we will be using Lives of the Saints by  Reverend Hugo Hoever, S.O. Cist. I rescued this lovely volume from a parish’s library sale. The daily entries are short and well researched and followed by a short prayer. I am liking it so far. Then follows our Daily Picture Book, this great umbrella of culture, history and discovery. I am also trying something new. We were gifted wonderful old volumes that I really want to read with my girls, so each day has a special one attached to it. I call them our thought-provoking reads. And then of course, a read-aloud.

Thought-provoking books

Most of them are older volumes that I had never heard of before. They have definitely tickled my curiosity, and the girls’. 

Here they are:

• Gaining Favor with God and Man, by William M. Thayer
• Wonders and Workers, by Reverend John A. O’Brien
• Forts in the Wilderness, by Edith McCal
• The Fallacy Detective: Thirty-Eight Lessons on How to Recognize Bad Reasoning, by Nathaniel Bluedorn, illustrated by Hans Bluedorn (not an old volume).

Each is fascinating in its own way and we are learning a lot through them. 
Gaining Favor with God and Man, by William M. Thayer. A collection of biographies of great historical figures. 
Wonders and Workers, by Reverend John A. O’Brien. A collection of short stories and poems about little known people, events and facts throughout history. 
Forts in the Wilderness covers the exploration and discovery of the heartland of America from the years 1679 to 1779. Lasalle, George Rogers Clark and Daniel Boone are at the center of these explorations.
The Fallacy Detective is a great introduction to logic and we  have read it in the past and greatly benefitted from it.   

Read-alouds

We always have multiple read-alouds going on, but our Morning Time read-alouds usually focus on what we are studying in other subjects, and more often than not are historical novels (my favorite genre). I am always careful to choose a living book that has survived the test of time. We are starting with The Outlaws of Ravenhurst, by M. Imelda Wallace, SL. It is quite the swashbuckling novel and everyone is loving it. It smells of heather and sea spray, rooted on the Scottish coast. Being Catholic in Scotland in the Seventeenth Century is an act of treason punishable by death… How will the young Laird of Gordon face this threat? We are continuing our exploration through history but as we skipped a little too quickly over the Renaissance and the Reformation this is a wonderful book to fill that gap.
If you want to stay in the know about our family’s read-aloud, sign up for my weekly newsletter.

Kindergartner

My 5 year old is as curious as they come, and “doing school” is the highlight of her day. She loves to craft and spend one on one time with mom. She is a delight to teach but sometimes is asking for more than I have time for, lol! So, knowing this, I have designed her curriculum to include read-alouds, crafts and basic reading, writing and math. I don’t usually start school officially before 6, but there is no stopping this girl, so she might as well learn things the right way.

What we will be using

For catechesis we will be using the Catholic Children Treasure Box books (post coming up soon on how I use these). For literature and read-alouds we will work our way through the Before Five in a Row booklist and keep working our way through the My Book House books. We are currently on book 5: Over the Hills. The stories are getting longer, and historical facts are sprinkled throughout.For crafts and finger plays (another favorite) I am digging into my archives, and looking for inspiration in the out of print Little Saint Curriculum and 26 Letters to Heaven.
Mathematics and Language Arts are covered by Little Sprouts from Harbor + Sprouts. We are loving these beautiful and gentle workbooks. Each lesson is 3 pages long, which is perfect for our schedule. And of course, as much nature study as we can possibly fit in.

6th Grader

My little baker is growing up quickly! She has some set ideas of what she wants to learn about this year. We will spend our first few weeks deep diving into Culinary Arts, from Harbor and Sprout. Then we will move into one of my favorite history time periods: the Age of Exploration. With exploration comes geography and we will cover both history and geography together.
Her book club is the perfect fit for literature and we will explore many classics.

She will be using Saxon for math and IEW for writing. We are doing some remedial work with writing as it really fell by the wayside last year. I am hoping that by starting slow and easy we will be able to work quickly through the first few lessons until we get more confident. She reads out loud to me daily to progress in reading.
This year for catechism I am trying a more independent approach and she will be finishing Book 2 of Into the Deep on her own. If the reading gets to be too much for her we will read it together.

8th Grader

Another independent young lady! Morning Time and nature study will be the only things that she will be doing with the rest of us. However, her curriculum does look somewhat similar to that of her sister. She will also be using Book 2 of Into the Deep on her own, they will alternate days to avoid being annoyed at each other. We had started this book together as a family the year before last but never picked it back up last year.

She will also continue with Saxon and IEW. After talking with one of IEW’s wonderful customer representatives we thought it would be best for both girls to start in the same spot and if my 8th grader needs to move faster she can do that easily. If you ever have questions about IEW I highly recommend giving them a call, they are wonderfully helpful and very nice!Where the main difference will be is in the history and geography areas. She really wanted to skip the Age of Exploration and deep dive into the American Revolution. Therefore equipped with George Washington’s World as a spine, a basket full of chapter and picture books she is making her way through the American Revolution on her own. For geography, she will be exploring the Thirteen Colonies and creating beautiful Notebooking pages similar to the ones suggested in Pages and Places.

Nature Study

Here again we are trying something new, my work schedule making it difficult for me to be present for everything. My 6th and 8th graders are enjoying The Young Naturalist offered by Wild+Free. It is really well done and allows for quite a bit of observation and free time outside. As for my kindergartener, she spends a lot of time outside and we try to go on an early morning nature walk while her sisters are doing their chores. 

This lovely feast of ideas, people and discoveries should carry us until Christmas break. I usually use Christmas break as a reset and to alter any course that needs to be revamped. The older girls being more independent is going to be critical for us this year as I am often gone during school hours to work outside the home. Thankfully older siblings are frequently around to answer any questions and give a hand. This is a new and different year for us, I am not sure how I feel about it yet. But onward we go!
Love,
Mattie