2020-2021 School Year Plans

I never do a big write-up about our school year at the beginning of the school year because it's just not my style. Some people love to plan every minute of their year ahead of time- I am not that homeschool mama. 

Instead, I prefer to have a rough outline plan- I've wrote in depth about how I plan my school year on this post.

We plan to start our school year in two weeks, and I'm finishing up preparing. I wanted to share with you a few of the books and resources I have planned for this year. 

These are the books I have planned for my fourth grader for this year. My second grader will also go through many of these with us, though a few of her literature and geography books are different. My third daughter turned 6 this summer, and she will also begin to join in on some things with us. The books below include poetry, natural history, citizenship, literature, history, Spanish, and geography. We will also begin British history this year- that book isn't pictured, but we plan to use The Story of Britain by Patrick Dillon.

For math, we will continue to use Simply Charlotte Mason's Elementary Arithmetic series. My 2nd grader will finish up book 1 and move to book 2 this year. I will start doing book 1 with my 6 year old. And thankfully we got to be beta testers for the 3rd book, and I will finish that up this year with my 4th grader (the 3rd book is set to come out by the end of this year).

I got our artist prints for the year printed off last week. I am so excited about who we will be studying - Pablita Velarde, Horace Pippin, and Jean-Francois Millet.

I'm doing something a little different this year, and I ordered Handwriting Without Tears books for writing. In the past I have always just used blank lined paper, appropriately sized for their ages, and then have given them lines to copy from poems and books. I wanted to intentionally teach cursive this year and felt better equipped with a book, and I ordered Printing Power for my 6 year old. We never do workbooks, so they're excited about these books, haha!

I wanted to give you a bit of a look inside my brain. The sheet of paper on the left has my ideas for artists, poets, and composers for the year. I always like to have an idea ahead of time of who we will study each term. Occasionally I this changes, but usually I stick to the plan.

The second sheet of paper will show you my history planning process. I always take the book I plan to use as a spine for the year (this year it is A People's History of the United States for Young People by Zinn)- and I comb through it, figuring out where I want to have biographies (or historical fiction) placed and which ones I want to use. This gives me a rough outline for the year that we will follow. I don't plan ahead to cover a certain book on a certain day or a certain amount of pages a day- I just have our plan of what books and in what order I want to cover.

For geography we plan to cover South America this year and do a deep dive into that continent with books, maps, and youtube videos.

I still have a few things left to figure out and organize for the school year, but as someone who never has an exact plan, I am feeling almost ready! I love our summer break so much but find that when it's time to start the new school year, we are all ready and excited!