Homemaking Series: Homeschool for Future Children

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! Today we are going to talk about homeschooling options and researching homeschool methods before you have a child.

If you know me at all, you know that I do not have any children yet, however I desperately want kids. My fiancé and I have agreed that in around a year and a half we’ll start trying for children, since we’ll be married and he’ll be out of the army and on our way to Ohio (where his family is).

I really want to prioritize learning and faith for my children. From the moment they’re born, I want them to be able to explore the world around them and be curious about everything. I believe that curiosity is one of my strengths and I would love to instill that in my children. I also grew up in a household where faith wasn’t a focus and I think that has hindered me a lot in life. My fiancé and I have decided that we’re going to teach them a mix of Christianity and pagan faiths, since I’m Christian and we’re also both pagan.

So, since I want to instill that love of learning and a foundation of spirituality, I believe that I need to do as much research before I even conceive the child. I want to mix two different types of schooling methods together because I think that they will both benefit my children.

In this post, we will examine the homeschool methods that I wish to incorporate in my homeschool and the various core curricula that I researched using these methods (as well as how I wish to put them together).

Homeschool Methods

There are two methods that I wish to incorporate into my homeschool with my children.

The first method (which will be the main method that I use) is Charlotte Mason. As of writing this, I am reading Charlotte Mason’s books and I have fallen in love with her philosophy. As an avid reader myself, I want my children to love reading. As a part of my druid spirituality, I also want them to love storytelling.

I really love the teachings of Charlotte Mason. I like how intuitive and short the lessons are. I also really like how there’s a huge variety of subjects that every child learns. I also really like how the philosophy encourages children to love learning and her focus on poetry.

The other method that I will use is the classical method. This was the original method that I wanted my kids to learn through, but as I learned about Charlotte Mason, I liked hers a bit more. What I really love about the classical method is being able to achieve a really good foundation of reading comprehension, writing, and math.

Homeschool Core Curricula

So, this is obviously a work in progress, however, I want to share the various curriculum choices that I think will be a good guideline for me whenever I do actually have my kids.

Starting at birth, I really want to introduce stories, faith, nature, and character into my children. For my children ages 0-2, I want to spend a lot of time outside, probably taking daily nature walks, we’ll read a bible story and either a Celtic myth or Norse myth, and work on chores and habits throughout the day. I want my kids to really enjoy nature and get a strong grounding in both of our faiths at this time. We’ll get a strong sense of our purpose here on Earth, as well as an introduction to Jesus, Norse gods, and Celtic gods. I’m probably not gonna expect my children to do everything perfectly for chores, but I do want them to know how to put their toys away as well as basic hygiene, such as brushing teeth.

So, starting at age 3, I want to instill a “year round” homeschool. Now, age 3 is very early for a 5 day school week, however at 3 years old, I want to start with letter and number recognition and various preschool activities. We’re going to sing through the ABCs and work on counting and noticing numbers. I also want to include A Year of Tales Preschool curriculum, so that we have a good foundation in reading, creativity, and character development. I also want my children to have a great foundation in fine motor skills and holding a pencil at this age, so we will be using the Good and the Beautiful’s Doodles and Prewriting for Littles book. In terms of faith, I want to start reading a Children’s bible with them as well as continuing with Norse and Celtic myths. I’m also going to focus on coloring sheets and talking about those myths while they color.

When my children reach 5 years old, they will start kindergarten. This will definitely be more of a formal homeschool schedule. In Kindergarten, we will start math, PE, and health. Continuing on with language arts, my kindergarteners will use the Good and the Beautiful’s Level K language arts and literature as well as their Level K handwriting (the link for all of the handwriting workbooks is the same as the Pre-writing workbook). For math, we will start Saxon math and continue using that curriculum through high school (and I will explain how I wish to do that when I get to the high school curriculum). The PE and health curriculum will both come from Horizons by Alpha Omega Publications and this will go through twelfth grade.

Starting in grade 1, when the child is 6 years old, I will start to instill more core subjects. The core subjects that will be instilled in our schooling all the way through high-school are reading, writing, math, history and science.

The curriculum that I wish to use for reading (and language arts in general) is the Good and the Beautiful. I also wish to supplement this curriculum with independent reading and other curriculums for spelling and grammar (spelling will be for first through seventh graders and grammar will go to high school). For extra spelling, I wish to use the SpellingYouSee curriculum. For grammar, I want to use the Well Trained Mind’s grammar curriculum.

For math, we will continue to use Saxon math through the twelfth grade and as I said previously, I will explain the progression that I wish to use during middle school and high school. History and geography will be from Simply Charlotte Mason, starting with their ancient Egypt year and going through the cycle twice. And then for science, first grade will be Simply Charlotte Mason’s Learning about Birds study.

Second grade, or a 7 year old child, will have all of the same curriculum as first grade, except for science. Now, this is definitely up for grabs if I have children that are close in age and it depends on how our family will work, but I want my second graders to use the Outdoor Secrets study from Simply Charlotte Mason.

In the third grade, or for an 8 year old, again, everything except for science will be the same, however I also want to add a writing curriculum. I have decided that for my third graders, I will use the Simply Charlotte Mason Pond and Stream Study for science and IEW’s All Things Fun and Fascinating for writing.

Fourth grade, or a 9 year old, will do the same thing as previous years, with science being Simply Charlotte Mason’s Jack’s Insects study and writing being IEW’s Fables, Myths, and Fairy Tales Writing Lessons.

Starting in fifth grade, or 10 years old, things start to change a bit, everything will be the same, including writing, we’ll just go through IEW’s Theme Based Pathway, however for science, I will be changing to a more Waldorf style curriculum to encourage my children to dive deep into the world and question the world around them. So, the science curriculum that I will use from fifth to twelfth grade will be Oak Meadow’s Science Curriculum (here’s a link for grades 5-8 and another link for grades 9-12).

In seventh grade, or at 12 years old, we’ll start to decrease coursework. So, we’ll stop spelling at seventh grade and then the next year we’ll drop handwriting.

When the child is in high school, the math progression will be quite advanced, since I want my children to understand calculus before they graduate. If the child needs a bit more, then I’ll give them an extra year to do geometry from Saxon math (since twelfth grade will technically end when they turn 18).

I will add enrichment for my children from grades k-12 so that they can see and explore the beautiful world around them, which I will make a separate post for. I will also write another post explaining how I wish to structure the school year, especially when I have more than one child and going off of birthdays probably won’t work.

I hope that this post was helpful or at least entertaining and I’ll talk to you next time.

xoxo Meghan