The Deliberate Owl

This school year, my oldest turned 8. My younger kids turned 6, 4, and 1.

My biggest change this year was adding more structure to our daily rhythms: namely, daily chores (morning and evening), and morning lessons.

Curious about what else we've done for learning? Read about our school years:

Life Skills: Chores

All the kids had previously been helping out in age-appropriate ways, such as emptying and filling the dishwasher, carrying food scraps to the chickens, collecting eggs, picking up toys, and mowing the lawn. But last year I bought a laminator, and I put it to use. I wandered around the house during the day taking pictures for our homemade chore list: dishes in stacks, tables unwiped, piles of shoes in disarray, unswept piles of crumbs, and so on. That way, even without knowing how to read, all the kids would understand what they needed to attend to. I also printed and laminated sets of initials so the kids could mark certain chores for themselves if they wanted to, or mark when they had done something that they all needed to do (such as brush their teeth).

As the year has gone on, we've been switching from Mom making the chore list in the evening to the 8-year-old making the list, so that he gets practice looking around the house to see what needs doing.

Having a list has been helpful. The kids have a place to check what they need to do, and I don't have to continually remind them.

Morning Lessons

My goal was to do morning lessons a couple times a week, and to do them in the morning before we went on to other activities. This didn't always happen; some weeks were extra busy with activities or sickness; sometimes we saved our reading for the afternoon.

I had a list of subjects to cover. On a good day we would do all of them. On other days we'd do some of them, and then pick up where we left off the following lesson period, so that nothing would get left out by virtue of being last on the list. These included:

• Literacy
• Math
• History
• Religion
• Art

Literacy and language

Starting over the summer (after I picked some stuff up at a local homeschool curriculum swap), we began some classical education activities. We went through the book First Lessons in Language Education: Level 1 (https://welltrainedmind.com/p/first-language-lessons-level-1/) and started on Level 2. These books introduce basic parts of speech, some grammar, and related topics.

We did some poetry memorization from The Harp and Laurel Wreath (https://ignatius.com/the-harp-and-laurel-wreath-hlwp/). This book includes lots of Robert Louis Stevenson at young ages. It starts with short poems of a stanza or two, and quickly works up to three or four stanza poems. My 6yo loved this! We fell out of the habit later in the year, but memorized some prayers instead, so at least they were memorizing something.

The kids did handwriting practice. When I was little, I had to write a daily journal—only a sentence or two at first, often entries like, "I went to the park. It was fun." and "I went for a bike ride. It was fun." (I had lots of fun as a kid.) My older two kids got to start this too! We were inconsistent about it for the first half of the year, but got in the habit later on. My oldest liked to make up random silly sentences instead of writing about what he did.

Another literacy activity we like is making our own books. The kids make up the story. I write it or type it, then they trace it or write it, and then they can illustrate it! We're also in the process of putting together books about family trips we've taken, just as soon as I finish getting photos printed out.

We also use apps like Duolingo for practicing letter recognition and phonics. We might add some other phonics activities over the summer.

Plus, we read plenty. We read aloud chapter books and picture books. We read a book about famous men of Rome, and some historical fiction about Rome, because my 8-year-old likes Rome. And we're reading aloud the Little House books, too! We continued our subscription to Two Acre Books' library boxes, which are awesome collections of living books organized around a theme for each box (described further here).

Mathematics

As I've discussed before, we like keeping math real with board games. The kids also get to play games like the Logical Journey of the Zoombinis (a classic 90's game, lots of logic puzzles).

My 8-year-old began some regular math work, too, since we've decided it's important to learn math notation. We've been working on addition, subtraction, carrying numbers, talking about multiplication, and related skills.

As a fun practical math skill this spring and summer, my 8-year-old raised some basil plants for sale. He gets to count money, make change, learn about saving and spending—all good life skills!

History (and geography!)

Since we're involved in local civic life, I decided this would be a good year to start going through American history. That way, the kids would gain a little more understanding of why it's so important for Daddy to have so many meetings. But when I started looking at our books on the American revolution, I thought maybe we needed more context … so we went back in time to the European explorers who traveled across the oceans. My oldest loved the explorers! Starting there was a good call.

The explorers gave us a good introduction to geography, too! We have a giant world map on the wall, which was consulted frequently, and our globe basically lived in my lap next to the books as we read. We moved from there onto Jamestown, the colonies, the Indian wars and Europe fighting over North America, the revolution, and the founding of America.

Some of the books we read included:

• Around the World in a Hundred Years by Jean Fritz
• Magellan: First around the world by Ronald Syme
• In Their Own Words: Christopher Columbus by Peter and Connie Roop
• The Travels of Samuel de Champlain by Joanne Mattern
• The Golden Book History of the United States (vols. 1-3)
• Sections from From Sea to Shining Sea: A Treasury of American Folklore and Folk Songs
• American Hero Stories 1492-1865 by Eva March Tappan
• Tall Tales of America by Irwin Shapiro
• In Their Own Words: Benjamin Franklin by Peter and Connie Roop
• In Their Own Words: Paul Revere by George Sullivan
• A bunch of other Jean Fritz books
• Cornerstones of Freedom series books on the Mayflower, Jamestown, and the Revolution

Another fun tie in: occasionally, Rand and I play Civ 6 together. In the game, different civilizations from history appear, with their kings, queens, and other leaders. There are natural wonders in the map, and great wonders you can build. These tie into our history and art reading—we look up the wonders and the civilizations with the kids. Plus, in the game, some abilities or bonuses that civs get make sense when we learn about them further. Portugal, for instance, has bonuses relating to seafaring trade, which, when we read about the Portuguese explorers and looked at maps of Portugal, made a lot of sense in context! Our 8-year-old likes seeing these connections.

Religion

For systematic catechesis, we went through the Baltimore Catechism Level 1, and started on Level 2. In addition, the kids are memorizing key prayers and we read aloud various bible stories as part of the evening read aloud book rotation.

This year, as we expanded our liturgical year traditions, we added a Jesse tree for advent! With every ornament that went up on the Jesse tree, we read the related bible stories aloud throughout December. It's a fun way to visualize the history and lineage. It was a fun art project, too. I drew the outlines for the images on each ornament, based on the examples from Catherine Gordon's blog, and the kids colored them in and added glitter, then we laminated them and tied them on strings.

Art

We read a couple books about art history—one on painting, then one on architecture. Every chapter covers a couple related artists or a new architectural style. The book has a few pictures, but not enough, so after reading, we look up each artist or building mentioned, browse more work they've done, and view more art or architecture of that style. A lot of museums and archeological sites have good online portals for viewing the great works! Sometimes, we'll follow up with an art project of our own, such as making mosaics with beads.

We're pretty good about doing craft activities (such as weaving), but I'd like to find a good art for kids book that teaches the basics of drawing and color theory.

Music

We didn't do any formal music classes this year, but we continue to enjoy music as a family. We listen to music when driving, especially the Maestro Classics CDs (like the Nutcracker and Peter and the Wolf!). We watch ballets and symphonies online, and get general exposure to great music and music of all styles. With the warm weather, every city around here hosts music in the park, so we get to see bands play live all summer.

Forest school, nature, outdoors

We continued our weekly forest school group! We meet outdoors year around and various nature parks to enjoy the woods and rivers in the area. This continues to be one of my favorite things we do. The kids get plenty of free play time, and we do activities too—crafts, seasonal celebrations, survival skills, bushcraft, foraging, plant identification, apple picking, and more.

We also attended the Sudbury co-op intermittently, sometimes one day a week, sometimes one day a month. This past winter we all took turns being sick too much, traveled for a family wedding, and had family visit…. But we were happy to hug goats and explore the farm when we managed to make it out!

And everything else, too

In addition to all that, daily life is an opportunity for constant learning. We have science kits and electronics kits that we go through. We went camping, and learned about cooking outdoors. We visited a nearby cave for a tour. We traveled for a family wedding, and learned about airplanes, and visited a zoo and an aquarium. The kids are involved in gardening and yard work, beekeeping, caring for chickens, arts and crafts, cooking and baking, food preservation, fixing things around the house or building things with Dad, archery and games at the park, shopping, playing games, attending community events, and so many other things, too.

Need ideas for your own homeschooling?

Read these book reviews and education posts:

• How to Homeschool in the Early Years: Preschool and KIndergarten (ages 0-7)
• Book Review: Homeschooling with Gentleness by Suzie Andres
• How to Afford Homeschooling and Other Alternative Education on a Budget
• How to Involve Kids in Modern Work
• Schools Zap Kids' Motivation and Mental Health
• Why Watching My Parents Cook Means I Can't Share Soup Recipes—And How I'm Encouraging My Kids to Cook Too
• How to Consciously Be A Role Model in Creativity, Curiosity, and Crafting for Children
• Why Outdoor Time is Important for Kids
• Book Review: The Little Way of Homeschooling by Suzie Andres
• (Read my related book review of Teaching from Rest: A Homeschooler's Guide to Unshakeable Peace by Sarah Mackenzie.)
• Five Board Games We Play With Our 6-Year-Old for Learning Math
• Book Review: Simplicity Parenting by John Payne and Lisa Ross
• How to Harness Patience, Expectations, Flexibility, and Relationship to Make Parenting Smoother and Less Stressful