Planning for the Coming School Year
I absolutely love planning for a new school year and thought I’d share what we have coming up, since some of you asked!
The plan is to begin 1st grade and preschool on August 1st. With the heat, humidity, and mosquitoes, it’s not very fun to be outside right now. I’m hoping that by starting the school year early, we’ll have extra days later to take off when the weather is nice!
First, I’ll share what we’re doing for 1st grade and then what we’re doing for preschool.
We loved Five in a Row and Exploring Nature with Children and I feel a bit sad not fully following those this year. My reasoning for choosing what I did for this year is to provide a base to build on for subsequent grades. I think that what we did for preschool and kindergarten was a fun way to prepare us for 1st grade!
1st grade
- History — The Mystery of History: Volume I: Creation to Resurrection
- Math — Horizons Math and games from my Pinterest board
- Art — I’ll find projects to go along with themes in other subjects.
- Bible — Continue from preschool and kindergarten: catechism, verse, Bible story, song from Happy Hymnody, prayer; Add: learn the Doxology and Apostles’ Creed
- Physical development — soccer, bike, swim, hike, maybe the homeschool PE class at the Y, join in with his brother’s activities (listed below)
- Handwriting — Handwriting Without Tears
- Reading — Evan-Moor Daily Reading Comprehension, Bob Books, games from my Pinterest board
- Science — Elemental Science: Biology for the Grammar Stage, Exploring Nature with Children (probably a simplified version)
- Music — Sing common children’s songs, go through My First Classical Music Book again, learn letter names of the keys, practice playing key by key higher and lower, possibly Kindermusik
- Habits & Character Development — Laying Down the Rails for Children
- Life Skills — Cooking, responsibilities/chores, gardening, budgeting with money earned from chores; review full name, address, phone number; improve communications skills, learn basic time management, practice goal setting
- Handiwork — Home Depot workshops
- Field trips — I’ll look for activities/experiences to reinforce what we’re learning that week in addition to regular trips to the library and our local children’s museum.
Some of these subjects we’ll do every day. Others will be spaced out!
Preschool
Our little guy loves to be a part of whatever we’re doing. I’ll pull in activities from my preschool courses so he can be learning a subject parallel to his older brother.
- Bible — The three of us will do this together at the beginning of each school day: Catechism, verse, Bible story, song from Happy Hymnody, prayer, learn the Doxology and Apostles’ Creed
- Letters — proper pencil grip, write some letters, recognize upper case and lower case, write first name
- Math — count 10 or more things, write some numbers, copy shapes, identify colors, recognize numbers 1–10
- Character development — grow concern and empathy for others, the three of us will also work through some of the habits from Laying Down the Rails for Children
- Art — draw a person with at least 6 body parts, color with crayons, manipulate Play-Doh, cut with scissors, join in on projects with his brother
- Physical development — Stand on one foot for 10 seconds or longer, hop (may be able to skip), learn how to somersault, swing and climb, ride tricycle, swim, hike
- Music — Sing common children’s songs, go through My First Classical Music Book again, learn letter names of the keys, practice playing key by key higher and lower, possibly Kindermusik
- Life Skills — responsibilities, gardening, learn full name, address, phone number; improve communications skills
- Handiwork — Home Depot workshops
- Field trips — I’ll look for activities/experiences to reinforce what we’re learning that week in addition to regular trips to the library and our local children’s museum.
Some of these subjects we’ll do every day. Others will be spaced out!
At this point, I don’t intend to offer the 1st grade lesson plans in the course library. The preschool and kindergarten courses will remain available though!
As always, I’ll share our adventures on Instagram and Facebook for those who are interested.
