Which subjects do you do everyday?
And which do you do less frequently?
Hi Maquenzie,
I do Little Reader, Little Math and Little Reader Chinese everyday.
On Sundays my son and I are exposed to my parents native language Hindi
On Tuesdays and Thursdays he has Spanish lessons
On Wednesday and Friday he has extra Chinese lessons
Elder: Math, reading and writing practice everyday. French, music, art less frequently.
Younger: Little reader/Math, either YBCR, Little Pim or Preschool prep everyday. Music/French less frequently.
Reading and Math are done frequently, everyday
Writing words , anything else is gravy and done when I can slip it in because my youngest also goes to preschool.
E. (age 7 months) doesn’t yet do any educational activities according to a schedule. We’ll start one soon though.
But I was just working on this question just now (updating our schedule) for H. (age almost 5 years). According to the new schedule revised yesterday, we read one poem every morning, first thing when we sit down to breakfast. That went beautifully today–H. was delighted that it didn’t take long. We’re also going to sing one song after breakfast/before the morning educational activities; today it was “Clementine” and no problem, H. is always game to listen to a song, and after he years one several times he can be heard humming or singing bits himself. After nap, we do Latin every weekday, sometimes on Saturday, but almost never on Sundays. The new schedule has us doing at least a very short practice at 5 PM every day except maybe Sunday. Also, as the first thing we do when sitting down to dinner, I plan to have H. recite one of the poems or quotations that he has memorized–just to keep them in memory. Again, this doesn’t take long and he was delighted that he could recite one quick quotation and it was done. At bedtime we read 2-4 pages of Bauer’s The Story of the World or Gombrich’s Short History of the World (which we are finding about as easy to read as the Bauer book–but quite a bit less detailed).
We’ve been doing Latin for the last six months or so, bedtime history reading for a month or two (and this is going very well), and the bedtime chapter books since he turned three or so. I’m pretty sure we’ll keep those things up. Not sure about the other activities (poem, song, and recitation).
Otherwise, I’ve got “subjects to read about during mealtimes” down in the following quantities: Fiction, 4; Science, 3; History (during mealtime), 2; Vocabulary in English and Foreign Languages, 2; Philosophy, 1; Logic (Lollipop Logic), 1; Chess Game, 1; Art History, 1.
In the morning we study 30-45 minutes after breakfast and before I go up to work. This involves Math 3.5 days a week; Penmanship, 3.5; Typing, 3.5; Memorization, 0.5, and Chess Tutorial (software), 0.5.
Obviously, we’re already homeschooling. The other day I finally calculated the number of hours I spend with H. on his education per day. Including mealtimes (which is about half of this time), it’s about three hours.
DadDude-
What curriculum do you use for Latin? Do you like it and can it be adapted for younger children?
For a younger child, which do you recommend, Bauer or Gombrich? We’re not ready for that yet, but at some point we will be.
Thanks!!
with my DD2 Miss A LR, YBCR, LM LR chinese plus reading books and gymbaroo exercises,
With DD1 writing, cutting, folding, reading, some maths, chinese. Day care on Mondays and Tuesdays and Montessori on thursday mornings.
My older son is 4 and he attends playschool for half a day from Monday to Friday. On most days he does a few writing exercises (could be Heguru homework or worksheets from BrainQuest, Kumon or any other activity book we have). We do LR Chinese, flash cards for right brain stimulation, and other right brain activities like memory linking, mandala, and space memory. We do Fun Thinkers or Logico exercises which I bought from Grolier. We read a few books. Once a week, he will go swimming with his uncle (pending his uncle’s availability) and his uncle is teaching him how to swim. We also do music from time to time. We don’t have specific science sessions but he’s been learning through music (Peter Weatherall and They Might Be Giants). Once a week, he attends Heguru (right brain class). We’re going to start Anzan/Soroban with him soon - waiting for our workbooks to arrive in the mail. Sometimes he watches TweedleWink with his younger brother.
My younger son is 17 months and he does LR Eng and Chinese, LM, and TweedleWink DVD. He attends TW once a week and Heguru once a week (we’re planning to stop one - just too expensive to keep both up). We do right brain flash cards, we read, we listen to Hestia and They Might Be Giants (for some reason he doesn’t like Peter Weatherall so we don’t really play that for him).
With my youngest nothing yet though I try to have one on one time with her everyday where I can chat to her and do some exercises for physical stimulation (help her sit, roll her over) We have found her watching the screen when doing LR with my elder child so once it is safe and she can focus better I will start that too.
With my elder DD (3.7 years) we do reading (she reads a page at least of a reader and I read a chapter book to her and other books, we do some phonics and LR everyday), writing (this varies from actual letter/number writing to mazes, drawing/writing with chalk outside and other pre writing exercises everyday) and math daily (sometimes a workbook, sometimes just counting, mental arithmetic, we are about to start a 100 chart just to check where she is with numerals too) and Bible (we read a Bible story everyday in addition to other reading) She goes to a playgroup once a week and may start ballet this term. We try to do some form of art daily too.
Science, history, geography and other subjects are not scheduled at all but included in the reading and we try to get a variety of books from the library for these. At least one will be done each day, but often more.
Yes, that’s something we need to get back into is Latin.
I like Song School Latin for little ones. It needs very little to no adapting for youngsters. It comes with a workbook that has a CD with songs. If your using it with a little one all you need to use out of it is the CD. My girls love the songs and I think they are really cute. Sometimes I’ll sing one in my head to remember what a word means. LOL
For children in 2nd grade and up I like Prima Latina by Memoria Press or Latin for Children.
For Latin we use Rosetta Stone. It’s very integrated, so there’s no easy way to take apart pieces and use them on their own. Some younger children (say, 2-3) might be able to use it, if they were unusually mature (and probably gifted), but the only way a child younger than that could use it is by sitting in your lap and watching you go through it. We used my old Rosetta Stone Russian program when H. was three or so, but not too often, and H. just wasn’t that interested. That might help–don’t know–I wouldn’t count on it, but maybe. Otherwise, I don’t think it could be easily adapted.
As to Bauer and Gombrich, Bauer is slightly more kid-friendly, because stories are interspersed among the history, and there are more pictures and maps (but not many). Gombrich might look like a book for older kids (no pictures, a few maps, ordinary adult-sized font) but the text itself is right about at the same level as Bauer’s, maybe a little more advanced.
We tried to read Bauer when H. was three. (I believe we had a discussion about it here on Brillkids Forum.) It was hard; just slightly too advanced. This was after we had read a dozen or more “Step into Reading” and other history picture books. He just didn’t like it very much, and I think it was because he couldn’t understand it very well. There were too many concepts that were unfamiliar–basic notions that are used throughout history, such as empire, battle, agriculture, etc. Instead, we read a bunch of Level 2 and a few Level 3 Usborne Young Reading history books, and that together with plain old conceptual maturity made him totally ready to hit Bauer starting a few months ago. He actually brought the book to me to read, and he seemed to understand and like it. I would recommend in any case to anyone that you use a laptop or iPad in conjunction with the reading, looking up hard words and looking up maps and pictures to illustrate the reading. This helps a lot. Bauer herself is opposed to so much use of visual media, because she wants children’s imaginations better developed; but I think that most kids don’t even know how to visualize a lot of things from history, because they’ve never seen them in pictures or video.
violin, little reader - english and traditional chinese, www.starfall.com, tweedlewink, foreign language (japanese or spanish) on alternate days, Jones Genius - English and Maths, memorising multiplication table, memorising classic chinese 3 zi qing,
books reading then time for bed.
Josiah is around 2 years and 2 months. We have a mini school session every day now that consists of Skills, Math, Science and History.
Skills consists of two pages from a Kumon book ( Let’s Fold, Let’s Color, Let’s Sticker and Paste, Let’s Cut, My First Tracing Book), and additional activities that I am creating myself like velcro sudoku, spot the difference sheets, laminated tracing pages, and eventually some memory sheets. I just set it up for about a month’s worth of work and we go through it. Sometimes, he asks to do school on weekends, so I don’t really know what a months worth of work is going to be lol
For Math, we use Jones Genius and Singapore, which we go back and forth. we may also watch a Peter Weatherall Math DVD about once a week, too.
For Science, we are using a combination of Peter Weatherall, Earlybird Science, and sheets that I am preparing myself to match with Weatherall DVDs.
For History, we go between The Story of the World and The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong.
We’ll keep repeating the Science Curriculum I’ve worked out and rereading The American Story each year and just adding more supplementation as Josiah’s understanding increases and as do his abilities (physical).
We also watch one TW, one Signing Time, and one Spanish(Whistlefritz, YBCS) video every day.
We do a little Geography every day. I’ve cut the big index cards into fourths and written the names of countries on each. I give them to him 12 at a time and he goes through them and points them out on the map. I keep giving him the same 12 until he pretty much knows their location.
We do our LR Curriculum, and LM if he’s interested. At the end of this session, I will show him this month’s LR files ( this month: Digestive System, Table of Elements 4, Clouds 3, Dog Breeds 4) and then that day’s language files (We do a different language each day of the week). And if he is still into the computer, we’ll do some powerpoints for various subjects and then maybe some youtube videos. When I can, I’ll try to get around to doing our Doman CDs.
And after all this is done throughout the day, we spend the rest of the time doing puzzles, and going through Montessori 3 part cards, doing Montessori activities off his shelf, reading homemade EK books, drawing on the chalkboard or magna-doodle, or reading books. Sometimes we’ll watch more videos. And, of course, free play both in and outside, when possible.
Reading is part of our bedtime and naptime routines. We usually read our library books at this time, 1 or 2 of them.
I know this seems like a lot, but if I don’t keep it coming… well, he keeps asking anyway. He is a very busy toddler and likes to have plenty to do.
Great info everyone. it is really great to know what others are doing and how they may organize their day and their child’s learning day. We have a schedule that is like this Monday is reading, writing, phonics
Tuesday is math
Wed is Social Studies
Thur is art, health, Bible, phonics, writing
Frid is Science
Sat. social activities
Sun social and family time
We keep this schedule with every homeschooler that we have so that everyone is on the same page everyday.
For the Nursery, Toddlers - K we have a schedule for TV or video time as well each day.
JJ is 17 almost 18 months.
We do fine motor skill every day. Montessori inspired things, transferring, pouring, sorting pom poms, stacking, shape sorting, lacing.
We do a sensory activity, playing in his rice pit, with gak, playdoh, flour and water, paint, the garden etc.
We read every day and point out his wall words and wall letters.
We go for morning and evening walk/jogs/runs we are up to 1/2 a mile in 20 mins. .
She is 22 months right now and I don’t want to “schooling” her until she is 2. Right now we take advantage of summer.
She watches her DVDs 1-2 times a day (between YBCR, sparkabilities, Elmo and whatever I get from library) <1.5 hours.
We do a lot of reading together too, 3-5 books a day.
Flash cards here and there
I sing to her in car when we ride
We play in her pool and sand box almost everyday.And help me water my flower. (She is having tons of fun practicing her skills)
Of course we do a lot of outing too like zoo(we live close by), children’s museum, festival & shopping with mommy etc.
Parks (4-5 times a week)
Open GYM every another week
Story time about once a week
She is having swimming class starting next week
After 2 tho, depend on where she is at, I would like to design 1-2 hours a day for more structured learning.