Curriculum Crazies

I would like to share my current approach to homeschooling (and pre-schooling) my children. This post may or may not be interesting, depending on who is reading it. It's mostly just a little processing on my part, just to get a few thoughts out of my head and written down.

I'll save how I came to all this for another post, but here's the conclusion in short:

I use a Charlotte Mason, Classical, and Unschooling-inspired approach. I'll explain what each of these is in another post as well. I expect my education philosophy preferences and my approaches to change over time some, but I think these overarching philosophies are going to stick with me. I value both strong academics and ample free time/choice, both sit-down work and world-is-your-classroom learning. There isn't a pre-packaged curriculum that I could find that combines these three philosophies well, since classical and unschooling are kind of at opposite ends of the spectrum, so here's what I came up with for this year:

I do both daily work and a block schedule. The daily work is as follows:

*A letter of the day (example, today was "Q" day; you can do so much random, unplanned learning with having a letter of the day)
*A craft to go with the letter (right now, I give them a wooden letter to color with marker; at the end of the alphabet, I will display their letters on the wall and we will start a new craft project as we start over with A again)
*A Bible verse which starts with the letter of the day (I found ABC verses on icanteachmychild.com). This is an important element, even though it's a very small assignment, because it covers four things: Bible teaching, memory work, penmanship, and reading practice. This is the ONLY thing I have to prepare for the night before. It only involves typing in the verse to handwritingworksheets.com and printing it off. For Mikey (pre-k), I only type capital and lowercase letters of the day, because he is still solidifying his letter sounds and is just beginning writing. So, I simply have Bradley trace the verse, then read it aloud, and I help him sound out the words he doesn't know. The Bible is such a great source of sentences with a combination of very simple and very complex words. Great for reading practice. Again, the verses I've chosen are SHORT, so he doesn't mind practicing writing or reading them. He sees it as fun, and he looks forward to the next day's. It is a challenge, though, as it takes awhile for him to trace it and he talks about his hand being tired afterward. He is a reluctant writer (especially since he's a lefty), so I don't require him to copy the verse. I will start doing that next year, for first grade. The idea is to rotate the verses and do the same 26 over and over, month after month, until everyone has them all memorized, then change them up and repeat.
*One worksheet (front and back) of phonics (we are using "Explode the Code" and really like it)
*One worksheet (front and back) of math (we are using "Horizon" and like it)
*Practice one skill of math on the computer (we are using ixl.com and really like it; it reduces my workload considerably, and they love using the computer as part of their school)
*Glue the date stick on the wall (every week, i write monday-friday's dates on craft sticks and a number on the back that indicates what day of homeschool it is; our goal is to do between 80 and 100 days of homeschool before we stop for summer break, depending on when we feel we are "finished" for the year); I feel like this helps them keep up with the passage of time and it's solidifying Mikey's ability to count up high.
*Starting next week, I am going to ask them what they want to learn about that starts with the letter of the day and we will look it up in the encyclopedia and go from there (make diagrams, do crafts, memorize facts, draw pictures, or just read information); I wanted to get the skeleton of our normal day set up before I added in this important child-led learning (unschool) element, because this part of the curriculum could take us anywhere. I gave this a test run over Christmas break and it worked really well. We'll see if they continue to enjoy it. If they do, this will be a great way to cover history and science.
**Optional daily work is: calendar and journal. They each have calendars that they can fill in the date, add a shape pattern, and record the weather. They like to do this every few days and just catch up instead of do it every single day (I agree with them; it's rather redundant on a daily basis). The journals are little notebooks with blank space at the top and lines at the bottom. They can write in it and illustrate at the top. This is a favorite activity, but not one they do every day. They like to take their journals with them mostly on outings (nature walks or the zoo, etc) and record their findings. Sometimes I give them prompts and start a sentence for them to finish; those end up being really cute.

So, that's it for daily work. It sounds like a lot but it's really not. The whole thing (minus the encyclopedia bit that we haven't started yet) takes somewhere between an hour and 1.5 hours. The rest of the day is play time, which includes lots of outside time and me reading aloud. This seems to fit very naturally with what they want to do anyway, and I haven't had many problems with them not entertaining themselves, because if they ever get bored, we just do school. Once we're done with school or need a break from it, they're happy to entertain themselves with music or blocks or something. Our house rule is no screen anything until 3:00, and that's only if everyone's school is done.

Stuff I try to do on a weekly basis:

*Monday: Clean up. This is the day where I do extra housework beyond the daily maintenance. I wrote jobs down on craft sticks and we call them "job sticks." On Mondays, the kids each get to pick a job stick (usually, I set out the three most urgent jobs that need to be done) and I do what's left. This has worked very well so far.
*Tuesday: Swimming lessons
*Wednesday: extra phonics work (listen to phonics sounds with flashcards, play a phonics game, etc)
*Thursday: Karate
*Friday: Art and/or projects related to any subject

So far, this routine has provided me with the flexibility I need to stay interested, which is half the battle.