After much research and deliberation, we have landed on our main themes for the year for History, Nature Study, and Culture Study. In this blog post you will see the curriculum we are using to base our lessons off of. If you want to extend lessons at home, these would be the best choices to do so considering we will only scratch the surface of what is included for each theme. The curriculum is not required to purchase, but if you do decide to purchase it, we would appreciate you using the links in this post because we will get a small commission off of some of them.
Below are our main themes for K-4th Grade. If you keep reading you will find curriculum breakdowns for each subject.
History Curriculum: Beautiful Feet Books: Early American History K-3 by Rea Berg & Rebecca Manor
For our History Station we will use three main components:
–Living Books – We will read aloud many great picture books suggested in the curriculum above but we will also pull in our own books if we feel they are a better fit for the topic we are covering. Here is a great article by Ambleside Online about what qualifies as a Living Book.
–Narration – I love this definition from Simply Charlotte Mason about narration:
“In simple terms, narration is telling back in your own words what you just read or heard. It’s a wonderful evaluation tool that requires much thinking and assimilating on the student’s part.”
You can read more about the different forms of narration here.
–Notebooking – The children will write the narrations from the books we read in their notebook. Sometimes, especially in the beginning, we will compose a narration together or have the children copy a portion of the text to encourage using rich, descriptive language and proper composition. Pre-writers will either dictate the narration to an adult who can write it for them or write one letter or word depending on ability. They will also complete an illustration to go with their narration. We hope these notebooks become cherished keepsakes for the children to look back on what they learned throughout the year.
Jodi Mockabee has a great guide on notebooking that I highly recommend. You can check that out here.
We pulled many of our monthly themes from the Beautiful Feet Books Curriculum mentioned above but we are also using this Native American Unit Study (for September) and America’s Story Part 1 by Master Books.
Culture Study Curriculum: Beautiful Feet Books Around the World with Picture Books Part 1 by Rea Berg
The goal with our culture study station is for our kids to experience a country’s culture not just learn facts about it. We will do this primarily through:
-Listening to traditional music, interviewing people who are from the country we are studying or who have been there, hearing the native language, looking at maps for main geographical features, looking at famous art and architecture, studying indigenous animals and even tasting spices and traditional food.
We will use excellent picture books to transport us around the world and hear the stories, fables, legends, folktales, and biographies of the people who live there.
Nature Study: Treehouse Nature Study: Autumn
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We fell in love with this Nature Study curriculum as it integrates poetry, picture study, living books, music, nature journaling, and experiments for a rich feast of delighting in God’s creation! This curriculum is so robust that we decided to take the Fall edition and stretch it throughout the year. We took the weekly themes and made them monthly themes and we still will not be able to cover it all. The curriculum utilizes many different types of books but she does recommend purchasing these nature guides to go along with it. We will have copies of these in our classroom but they also make great additions to a home library.
The Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock
This concludes our theme and curriculum review for our first year. We cannot wait to learn alongside your family this year! You will also receive monthly previews of lessons by subject with suggestions for chapter books, picture books, videos, and family movie night to keep the learning going at home.
