The Coming School Year

For families in our homeschool group, here's the overview of the coming school year.

As always, we do a combination of whole group, small group, and one-on-one lessons. Each day begins with SSR, our Class Meeting, and Morning Math with the Montessori math materials. We have morning and afternoon snacks, lunchtime with a read aloud story, and an hour to play outside in the yard for recess. I usually run two simultaneous Waldorf Main Lesson Blocks, one for the older children and one for the younger children. Each of our interdisciplinary month-long topics is designed to be differentiated to each child's ability level through the creation of the Main Lesson Books, where they write and illustrate their very own book about the month's topic.

The younger children will be doing the classic Waldorf First Grade blocks and the older children will be doing the classic Waldorf Third Grade blocks. In fact, the Waldorf Third Grade year (designed for students who are 9) is so practical and hands-on and interesting that I don't want to rush through it! So I'm actually spreading these blocks over two school years so that we have enough time to do all of the cool topics that Waldorf assigns to grade 3... and we will do Building projects all year long in Science Club for extra practice in practical life skills & linear measurement.

I will also be teaching World History as a yearlong topic, working one-on-one after school with the oldest student in our group.

I will be offering Science Club Thursday afternoons from 3:30 - 5:30 pm. The theme of Science Club this year is STEM, with a focus on Things That Roll / Things That Float / Things That Fly. This topic was Zac's idea and he is extremely excited about entering a pumpkin car in the Great Pumpkin Race in October and a cardboard boat in the Cardboard Boat Regatta in April.

Also on tap this year we have nine Famous Artists, one per month. Art History is a weekly special that is included during the school day (on Wednesdays) and will also be an offering on Saturday mornings from 10 am to noon for those who want to join us for even more Art time!

Of course, we will have Field Trips and Special Guests, handwork, cooking Foods of the World, and more!

Here is the basic overview:

September
Grade 1 - Form Drawing, Learning to Knit
Grade 3 - Cordage & Knots
using Fibers of Life: Natural Cordage and Ropemaking by Jeffrey Gottlieb

Art History - Piet Mondrian

October
Grade 1 - Quality of Numbers
Grade 3 - Clocks & Calendars

Art History - Louise Bourgeois

November
Grade 1 - Capital Letters I
Grade 3 - Wonderful Houses Around the World

Art History - Sister Corita Kent

December
Class Play

Art History - Yves Klein

January
Grade 1 - Capital Letters II
Grade 3 - Structured Word Inquiry

Art History - Faith Ringgold

February
Early Humans

Art History - Faith Ringgold, cont.

March
Grade 1 - Math Gnomes
Grade 3 - Currency

Art History - Zaha Hadid

April
Gardening
using Native American Gardening by Michael Caduto & Joseph Bruchac

Art History - Andy Goldsworthy

May
Building a Cob Oven
using Build Your Own Earth Oven by Kiko Denzer

Art History - Marianthe Loucateris

Special Dates

Nov 16 - Pajama Day

Dec 14 - Class Play

Feb 29 - Living History Day

Jun 1- Donut Art Show

I'm also offering June as an extra optional add-on month for those families who would like to participate. The topic for that month is Stories of Household Items, which is also a Grade 3 theme. This will include the story of Salt, Glass, Rubber, etc. and we will do science experiments to explore more about how these things are made.

It's Fun to Know Why: Experiments with Things Around Us
by Julius Schwartz