If you missed the Year 1.5 Summer Term post, check it out for some background on how we homeschool.

Fall will be the beginning of our academic subjects. I decided to keep a slower pace this first year, and wait for a foreign language or any other additional subjects until next year. History, Geography, Math and English will be the only subjects we do every day. Everything else in on a weekly or ad hoc looping basis.

A lot of these resources are available online for free. I linked to hard copies because I dislike digital books, especially when reading Charlotte Mason style.

Fall Term (September, October, November)

Term Subjects

History

• Local History
  • The Peopling and Peoples of North America before contact with Europeans
    • Paleolithic Period
    • Archaic Period
    • Woodland Period
    • Mississippian Period
    • Iroquois Confederation
      • Iroquois Creation Myth
  • Contact and Colonization
    • America First: One Hundred Stories From Our Own History by Lawton Evans
      • Building a Canoe
      • Leif the Lucky
      • The Lost Colony
• World History
  • Creation Stories
    • Creation Stories from around the World
      • Marduk Creates the World from the Spoils of Battle (Babylon)
      • The Four Creations (Hopi)
      • The Menominee and the Manabush (Menominee)
      • Two Brothers and their Grandmother (Seneca)
  • The Ancients
    • Hunter-Gatherers to Agricultural Societies
      • What’s it like to be a Hunter Gatherer
      • How Farming Started
    • Mesopotamia
      • A Little History of the World by E. H. Gombrich(p. 17-23)
        • Sumer
        • Irrigation
          • Building canals
        • The Epic of Gilgamesh
          • Gilgamesh the King by Ludmila Zeman (all)
        • Cuneiform
          • Make Cylinder Seals
        • The Wheel
          • Antiquity Now: Invention of the Wheel
        • Ziggurat
          • Block building
        • Babylon
        • Hammurabi
        • Hanging Gardens
        • Assyria
        • Conquest of Babylon
        • The Library at Nineveh
      • Supplemental Reading:
        • Ancient Mesopotamia: The Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians by Virginia Schomp
        • DK Eyewitness Books: Mesopotamia
        • Hammurabi

I’m a historian at heart, with a hefty dash of anthropologist, and using living history books as a spine is one of the things that drew me to Charlotte Mason style homeschooling. I’m lifting the idea of doing local and world history at the same time from Ambleside Online, a Christian Charlotte Mason curriculum. This allows me to keep history chronological, which I think is important, while having enough time to cover US history, which I also think is important. We start history with creation stories, how our ancestors believed they came to be on Earth. In Fall Term , we’ll also read various Mesopotamian and Native American creation stories.

I’m starting American History with the history of the peoples of North America, and I writing all that content myself, as I haven’t found anything great to use for this age group. I’m also doing a few Mesopotamian unit for things I didn’t find a great resource for. Check back, once it’s done I’ll post it to the blog.

Geography: The Earth in Our Solar System

• Born With a Bang: The Universe Tells Our Cosmic Story by Jennifer Morgan
• Geographical Readers for Elementary Students by Charlotte Mason
  • Big Bang (Morgan all)
  • Our Sun
  • What is a star? (Mason p. 12-16)
  • Our Solar System (Mason p. 16-19)
  • The Earth is a planet in our solar system  (Mason p. 16-19)
  • The Earth is round (Mason p. 2-5 and 7-9)
  • The Earth rotates around the sun/sunrise and sunset (Mason p. 22-24)
  • The stars in our sky
    • Constellation Myths
      • Ursa Major and Minor

We are starting Geography with a bit of astronomy, just to be obstinate. In Geography, we will start at the beginning with the Big Bang and the creation of our solar system. One of the things I like about Waldorf is the idea of starting with the whole and then looking at the parts. So we start with our Universe, then the part of it that is our Solar System, and then our Earth. We’ll also cover the Solar System as seen from Earth: sunrise, sunset, moon phases, and the night sky.

Mathematics: Rightstart Math

I like the hands on, manipulatives basis of this program (and that I could get the manipulatives used.)

English

• Penmanship and Writing
  • Italic Handwriting Series Book B
• Poetry
  • A Child’s Book of Poems by Gyo Fujikawa
• Literature
  • Aesop’s Illustrated Fables
  • The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang
  • Among the People Series by Clara Dillingham Pierson

These will be read one story a day on an alternating loop through out the entire year.

Handwork: Master Basic Knitting (Goal: Knit a small animal)

Knitting will be our handwork focus for Term 1, building on the Term 0 skills. Knitting an animal requires more skills and brings more rewards than simple scarf knitting of the last term.

Health: Our Whole Lives K-1/Our Faith/Parent Guide

This is the K-1 sex ed programming the the UUA and the UCC created with the religious content (you can buy a secular version as well). It focuses on keeping our bodies healthy and welcoming new babies into the family (something we’re hoping to do by the end of spring term!)

Family Studies

Science

• Natural Philosophy
  • Trees
• Engineering
  • Wheel and Ramp – The New Way Things Work by David MacAulay (p. 10-17 and 30-35)

The wonder of trees will be the focus of our natural philosophy inquiries. Fall in the south provides trees running the gamut of seasonal change from green leaved to bare.

While Charlotte Mason often allows nature study to be the whole of science, and many Classical programs do away with it entirely, we plan on spending the first three terms discovering simple machines. We’ll be doing this with Reggio style provocations to play, with MacAulay providing further information.

Listening: Read Alouds

• Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
• The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton W. Burgess
• Viking Tales  by Jennie Hall
• My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
• The Tale of Despereaux by Kate diCamillo

Music Appreciation: Joseph Haydn

Haydn is one of the early composers of the Classical Period, and I’m considering doing the classical composers in chronological order. 

Music

• Folksong: This Land Is Your Land – Woody Guthrie 
• Hymn: Lift Every Voice and Sing (#149)

Art Appreciation/Picture Study: Lascaux Cave Paintings

The first known human art, how could I not put this in with term focusing on beginnings? When Kai reaches Year 1, I’ll probably add this to the Term Studies and we’ll do it again.

Art: Waldorfish Weekly Art

I really like these video based art classes. They use a wide variety of art mediums and give clear instruction about different art techniques. I am not artistically inclined, and I did all the sample projects before deciding on it, and had fun and learned a lot of useful stuff. I’m hoping the kids will enjoy this as much as I have.

Physical Education: Cosmic Kids Yoga

More yoga!

I’ll add links to other terms as they post:

• Summer Term
• Winter Term
• Spring Term
• Kai’s Summer Term
• Kai’s Nursery School Terms

This post contains affiliate links. Affiliate links provide us with a small commission when you use them to purchase goods.