A Look at Our Homeschool Plans- 6th Grade and Kindergarten

We take a pretty student led approach to learning in our household, so I always sit down with my kids before we order our curriculum and supplies each year to get their input on what topics we are going to cover. This year I'm making plans for both a 6th grader and a kindergartner, so I'm planning on putting together some unit studies that can accommodate both of them. Here's a look at what we have planned so far:

A look at our homeschool plans and the resources we're using for my children's 6th grade and kindergarten year

Science:

The last few years we've chosen one pretty broad science topic as a theme for the entire year. Last year we did geologic history, and learned all about the fossil record, dinosaurs, the ice age and more. The year before was birds. This year the girls picked astronomy. I'm putting together my own curriculum using a bunch of different resources. We're starting with learning about our solar system, then we'll learn about stars and other things beyond our solar system, and then I'm planning a fun STEM unit about rockets.

Some of the resources we'll be using include the National Geographic Space Encyclopedia, the Ducksters website, the American Museum of Natural History's Astronomy page, and lots of documentaries. L is planning on making a solar system mobile from scratch- probably with paper mache. I also ordered us a telescope and a glow in the dark star chart so we can do lots of star gazing.

If your interested in reading more about how I build my own science curriculum, I explain it in detail here: How to Teach Science Without a Curriculum.

Science is a favorite in our household so I'm sure we will also find lots of unplanned topics to dive into throughout the year.

Social Studies:

Last year we studied world geography, world cultures, and world history by choosing several countries from each region of the world to study. We learned about the basic geography of each country, local customs, local wildlife, major historical events, important places, and did lots of cooking projects and crafts. We ended up finding so many wonderful things to learn about that we only got about halfway through the list of countries we had planned to study. We did several countries from both Europe and Asia, and we finished our year with Australia. You can read more about the activities we did and the countries we already covered here: Learning About the Countries of the World.

This year we're starting where we left off last year. We'll start with several African countries, and then it's on to South and Central America.

I've really been enjoying doing social studies this way because both my daughters are able to participate and learn even with a 5 year age gap.

My 10 year old will also be working on the U.S. Facts and Fun workbook for grades 4-6 from Evan Moor. She did the one for grades 1-3 a few years ago and enjoyed it. It's a book full of short stories about important American historical figures, historical events, and famous places in the United States. Each story is followed by activities like crossword puzzles, mazes, word scrambles, and word searches.

Math:

My 10 year old is focusing on division skills and fractions this year. She doesn't love math worksheets, so I'm going to make an effort to do less worksheets and more hands on and problem solving math activities this year. I also ordered a really cool looking book called Do the Math! Challenging, Fun Math Puzzles for Kids that looks pretty awesome. It's full of grid puzzles, sudoku, cryptograms, and lots of other math and logic puzzles. I'm hoping she'll enjoy it more than a typical math workbook. I also ordered a more traditional workbook for multiplication review and division practice that we will pull out on occasion.

As far as my kindergartener goes, we're keeping math mostly play based this year. She's mastered counting to 10 just by practicing counting things around us while we play and explore. We'll take that same approach this year for learning to count beyond 10 and learning some basic addition and subtraction skills.

English:

We'll be taking the same pretty informal approach to English that we have for the last few years. I require my 10 year old to read for a short period everyday, but it's totally up to her what she reads. Writing practice will be mixed in with our science and social studies units.

My kindergartener is very determined to learn to read, so we will continue working on her early phonics skills at her lead. If she gets pretty comfortable with the letter sounds I may start introducing some simple sight words. She loves card games like Go Fish and Memory so I may make her a set of sight word cards. We will also continue to practice her writing skills following her lead. She currently likes to practice writing letters with her fingers in paint or outside in the dirt. Other than that we'll just be doing lots of coloring, painting, and playdough playing, to keep developing her pre writing skills.

The girls requested The Chronicle's of Narnia for our read aloud series this year. I ordered the entire set, we'll see how many we manage to finish this year.

Other Subjects and Skills:

In addition to those core subjects, we'll be doing lots of life skills like cooking, sewing, and gardening.

My 10 year old is taking online guitar lessons and is planning to continue learning about photography. My 5 year old has requested ballet lessons.

For PE we'll continue with our usual weekly nature hikes and playground days. I'm also hoping to get back in the habit of doing some kid friendly yoga videos a couple times a week.

I also bought 2 different nature journals so that the girls can record things that we come across on our nature hikes and other outings. I ordered 2 copies of the Exploring Nature Journal for Kids by Kim Andrews, one for each of my girls. It has a series of pages for drawing, painting, or taping in nature finds, with space for recording location, date, weather, and other notes and observations. And then I bought The Nature Explorer's Sketchbook by Jean Mackay for my 10 year old. It's full of tips and inspiration about sketching and painting nature, plus it has lots of blank pages for adding your own art.