Planning for Our Year One- Literature

Over the next few weeks I am going to post about my planning process for my oldest upcoming school year. My ds is going to start year one in June. Why June? Well, we are going to school year round and my ds turns 7 yrs in May. My husband and I thought this would be a good time to start. We also don't want to get caught up with starting the same time as the local PS. So, June it is.

I am currently reading all 6 volumes of Charlotte Mason's writings. Slowly might I add. I want to base our school year on her writings, but I am also going to use Ambleside online as a guideline. I have made some primarily decisions. First being that I do not want a strict schedule with times to follow, but instead I want term goals that are then broken down into weekly goals for us to accomplish. Does this make sense? On Sundays I will print out our weekly goals. I might try at that point to spread out our weekly goals over the week, but that won't be done til the Sunday before that week. Week 6 and 11 will be review weeks and week 12 will be oral exam week. This will help to break up the term a bit.

Now the fun part, subject planning. Let's start with literature. If I am reading Charlotte Mason correctly, I am looking at 3 fables and 3 fairy tales for term one. Now, I look at Ambleside and see what they have schedule for literature. Wow! They have a lot scheduled. They have 12 fables from the Aesop book alone. Not to mention stories form The Blue Fairy Book, Parables From Nature, Just So Stories, and Shakespeare. Decision time. This is where we as parents can individualize our children's schooling. Isn't homeschooling fun? Back to the decision at hand. I think I will stick closer to what Charlotte Mason suggests. I will put 3 fables and 3 fairy tales on our term one goals. So, spreading these out over 12 weeks, the schedule will look something like this.
week one- Aesop fable
week two- no readings
week three- A fairy tale from the Blue Fairy Book
week four- Aesop fable
week five- no readings
week six- review week
week seven- Blue Fairy Book
week eight- Aesop
week nine- no readings
week ten- Blue Fairy Book
week eleven- review week
week twelve- oral exam week

Literature is all done. Like I mentioned before, Ambleside has many more literature and tales scheduled. These are wonderful books and I don't want my son to miss out on these beautiful stories. I think I will put the stories from Parables From Nature on our Sunday reading list. This follows in line with what Charlotte Mason recommends. We will not narrate from this book. Also, the stories in Just So Stories will be added in our free reading list. Again no narration required from the free reading books.

Next, I will tackle history, but that will be another post. Hope I did not bore you with my planning. But, this is a place I can put my thoughts down and try to get a handle on those thoughts.

Again, I am new at this. I will not try to pretend I know all that is Charlotte Mason. I am doing the best with what I understand of her readings. I have not doubt there will be revisions before June comes around. Ambleside online is wonderful and the site is chalk full of info and advice from people who have been teaching based on Charlotte Mason's philosophy for a long time. I can not tell you how much Ambleside online has help me. Many blessings.