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This week, I’m sharing my curriculum and book choices for the upcoming year. Each day will focus on selections for one of my five homeschoolers. Today’s selections are for Birdie, my rising 5th grader. Birdie will be 10 this fall, and is starting her fifth year of Foundations and first of Essentials. This is her second trip through American history, a topic she already knows far better than most kids her age (thanks, older siblings!) and is ready to take a deeper dive. She has a strong autodidactic streak, is a voracious reader, and loves art and music as well as math and science. Birdie loves a good challenge and doesn’t view most learning as “school,” but rather a chance to be engaged in something worthwhile.
Foundations— Birdie is moving up to Masters! While she’s beyond excited to make the jump to “bigger big kid,” it’s also a little bittersweet because our community’s Journeymen tutor is just so, so good. However, I have to say that she is absolutely ready for the next step and will absolutely rock the additional expectations of the new grouping, academically and socially. She’ll journey through my Morning Basket Plans, and use the weekly assignment planner pages from Grace For This Mom.
Math— Birdie enjoys math for math’s sake. I’ve somehow managed three of these learners in my homeschooling career and let me tell you, it is a gift. To me. Kids who truly like and have fun with math can use just about any curriculum and progress, taking off a lot of pressure I feel as I weigh my kids’ individual strengths and weaknesses against what’s on the market. Birdie will be sticking with CTC Math as she finishes out elementary math skills this year. The lessons are brief, the practice problems aren’t burdensome, and being able to customize the review sets means I can have her circle back on weaker skills and continue to reinforce them over time. Her living math book for the year is volume one of Mathematicians Are People, Too: Stories from the Lives of Great Mathematicians. If she flies through it (it’s Birdie, she very well may) I’ll add the second volume as well.
Latin—While her older brother is preparing for the Challenge A Henle plunge, Birdie still has more time to learn to actually love Latin. During lockdown, I stumbled upon Logos Press’ Beta program for Storybook Latin for free and snapped it up. (It’s still free! Check it out!) This inventive, unique program will provide the backdrop of Birdie’s Latin learning for the upcoming year. It’s a very visual curriculum, and one in which I think she’ll ask to do extra lessons just because.
Science— As I mentioned in John Mark’s curriculum overview yesterday, we will be using Learning With Friends 20/21 Science School Year Pack this upcoming year. Did I mention yesterday the Creation Connection in each lesson? Goodness, this was a find! An added bonus for Birdie in using this particular curriculum is that since the experiments use such simple home items, I’ll be able to allow individual kids to handle their own processes rather than teaming them up to conserve precious, harder-to-find resources. Since Birdie tends to show less confidence in this area (she’s a perfectionist and will ask an adult to step in if she’s afraid she might not get the desired result), insisting that she go it solo means she’ll fail… and learn that in science, you note what went wrong and do it again. Her living science readings will come from Childcraft: How and Why Library (1939), vol. 11, Scientists and Inventors, and she will of course journal with Nature Anatomy (Julia Rothman).
History— I intended to use a classic children’s history as a spine this year, but in the end am selecting chapters from Genevieve Foster’s The World of Columbus and Sons, George Washington’s World, and Abraham Lincoln’s World as well as The Landmark History of the American People (by Daniel J. Boorstin). From there I have so much excellent historical literature, which I’ll outline in a later post.
Birdie’s specific independent history readers were chosen to allow her plenty of time to take her own reading rabbit trails through U.S. history. The truth is, she’d pick any of these titles and a hundred more if given the time. My specifically scheduled reader for her are:
Vostaas: White Buffalo’s Story of Plains Indian Life (William White Buffalo)
Walk the World’s Rim (Betty Baker)
Ben Franklin of Old Philadelphia (Margaret Cousins)
The Witch of Blackbird Pond (Elizabeth George Speare)
The Captain’s Dog: My Journey with the Lewis and Clark Tribe (Roland Smith)
Sarah, Plain and Tall (Patricia McLachlan)
Understood Betsy (Dorothy Canfield Fisher)
The Cabin Faced West (Jean Fritz)
Rifles for Watie (Harold Keith)
Heroes in Black History: True Stories from the Lives of Christian Heroes (Dave and Neta Jackson)
Abraham Lincoln and Frederic Douglass: The Story Behind an American Friendship (Russell Freedman)
Lee and Grant at Appomattox (MacKinlay Kantor)
Indian Captive: The Story of Mae Jemison (Lois Lenski)
Geography—This year, we’ll use Geography Through Literature by Beautiful Feet to study the United States and its features. Using Holling C. Holling‘s excellent, engaging tales, we’ll map and research different geographical areas. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this aspect of our school year! I’m even considering using these books as a launching pad to craft our own Seabird, Paddle-to-the-Sea, cottonwood tree, and Minn. If you or someone you know has ever done this, please reach out to me!
Bible—Birdie will begin the year working through the book of Mark and reading the corresponding material from The Victor Journey Through the Bible (by V. Gilbert Beers). I have not scheduled her next book, because I’m curious to hear what the Lord speaks to her through this one before deciding prayerfully where she should go next!
English— This will be Birdie’s first year in an Essentials class! Our community’s tutor is fantastic and Birdie is such an eager and enthusiastic writer that I have no doubt she will love this opportunity to sit alongside friends and soak in more of what’s offered there. Last year, during her brother’s first tour, I gave her an abbreviated run here at home, introducing the charts relevant to our Cycle 2 New Grammar and giving her the chance to do her own essays many weeks. I’m glad I did, because it showed me that while she soaked it in quickly and easily, her passion for literature wasn’t watered as well as it could have been. That led me to go ahead and find used copies of Learning Language Arts Through Literature 5th grade (Purple) to add in for that extra dose of creativity that her spirit craves. She will also work through Word Roots Level 1 this year. It was an absolutely essential vocabulary tool for the eager writers I’ve taught in the past, but I’m not sure it will be as essential for her thanks to her Latin immersion. Time will tell!
Music— Birdie without music would be a very sad Birdie indeed. She’ll continue violin lessons and daily practice, as well as piano. She’s auditioning for a spot in the youth symphony she’s been a part of for the past three seasons, but Covid means we’re all curious as to whether or not there will even be a season. God knows.
Tomorrow, I’ll share my curriculum plan for Simon, a rising 2nd grader.
Hi Heather!
Could you tell me about how you use the Nature Anatomy book for journaling? I’m considering *gasp* piecing together our science this year rather than just doing SL science. I may pull from SL as well as a few other sources.
Yes! We use it two ways. During some seasons, I’ll actually assign from it—- say we’re studying cloud formations. Those are covered in the book! We’ll read what Julia Rothmann has to say, and use her drawings as a baseline for our own and for labeling. We also use them for reference. It’s a fairly regular event to have a child discover something, or ask a question, and find them a few moments later checking out Nature Anatomy. (We have Farm Anatomy as well, and it’s in constant use, too!)