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Our winter school term.
Generally speaking, we school year round. However this year we’ve been following more of a traditional school schedule. Our next term begins this week and I’m so excited to dive back in. Between travels, holidays, and sickness, it’s been a bit of a wild and unorganized few weeks. This term we are using some curriculum that I’ve been holding onto since the fall and I am so excited to dive in. Keep reading for a complete list of what we are using for our winter school term.
Fifth and second.
Currently, my children are in fifth and second grades. My son is ten and my daughter is seven. We have been homeschooling from the beginning, with my son going to a private school very briefly for four year old preschool. To see a complete summary of what we have used so far, check out THIS post, it includes lists and links for a wide range of curriculum.
It’s been so interesting to see how our curriculum choices have ebbed and flowed as my children grow, and we’ve arrived at a mash up that has served us well for the last two years.
Our backbone.
The backbone of our homeschool curriculum is Ambleside Online, a Charlotte Mason style, literature based curriculum. I use a mash of years in order to cover the distance between my children’s ages. We are currently working our way through Years 3 and 4. It can take a bit of time to make sense of the Ambleside approach, but it has worked well for us for the past four years. If you have questions about how I schedule this out, send me an email or message me on Instagram.
One of my favorite things about Ambleside is the nature study focus each term. For our winter school term, the nature study topic is rocks and geology. It offers an “umbrella” of a topic to study but we have the freedom to study it how we want to. I am so excited for the field trips I have planned this term, excursions to museums, rock shows, crystal digging, and fossil digging! You can find a resource list HERE!
For a quick breakdown on our week, here is how I schedule things out:
- Monday – Geography focus/Handwriting/Reading/Math/Typing
- Tuesday – History focus/Handwriting/Reading/Math/Spanish
- Wednesday – Nature Study focus/Handwriting/Reading/Math/Adventure Day/Fieldtrip
- Thursday – Art and Composer focus/Handwriting/Reading/Math/Typing
- Friday – Flex day for field trip or what wasn’t finished earlier in the week
Something new for winter term.
This term, we are starting our new study from Beautiful Feet Books. We will be using the History of Science unit for a deep dive into the sciences and where they originated from. I’m over the moon excited for this one. It’s a literature based study that also includes some great experiments and hands on learning opportunities.
I’m planning on working through this unit at a pace of two lessons per week. It will stretch into our spring term as well. The curriculum is geared toward fourth through sixth graders but I’m confident that I’ll be able to make it work for both of my children. To see the complete book list click HERE. For an unboxing video, click HERE.
Additional curriculum.
For the rest of our curriculum, I’ve pieced together things from all over to round out our winter school term.
- Foreign language: we use Homeschool Spanish Academy for once per week. live, virtual lessons.
- For handwriting we use The Good and the Beautiful Handwriting books (Yes, we do cursive!)
- Both of my children use Teaching Textbooks for math, at their respective levels.
- I purchased a membership to Typing.com for my children to learn typing and word processing.
- Our art studies come from the Picture Packets from Simply Charlotte Mason.
- For reading, we do lots of reading! Both of my children read independently for a minimum of an hour each day, broken up into fifteen minute or thirty minute intervals.
- The rest of our read-aloud books come from the Ambleside curriculum books and free reading books.
- Extra-curriculars: soccer and tennis, plus a backpacking trip or two that I have planned.
That’s our winter term.
That’s our winter school term in a nutshell! I hope that this brief write up is helpful. I’ll be updating with new posts periodically as we work our way through the history of science study. Thanks for reading! As always, please feel free to email or direct message on Instagram if you have any homeschool questions. I’m happy to answer them.
If you’d like to see a wrap up from a previous study we did on the ocean, check out THIS post. For the resource and book list that I used for our solar system study, check out THIS post.
Thanks for reading! Wishing you and your family a wonderful winter school term!
