Boatschool with a 4th grader and a preschooler
This year we are homeschooling or boatschooling Deirdre who is in 4th grade and Osiris who is preschool age. We have been homeschooling since Deirdre was preschool age and have tried various different styles over the years but have primarily been relaxed homeschoolers or unschoolers.
We provide an environment rich in books, games and toys that inspire our kids imagination. They learn from everyday experiences and interactions. We spend a lot of time reading together and visiting libraries. We haven’t had formal lessons though we do sit down together to explore topics that some or all of us find interesting.
This style has worked really well for our kids at their young ages. With no regular or formal lessons Deirdre has learned most if not all of the standards through 3rd grade. She learned to read and reads voraciously. She has learned basic math up to multiplication. She makes up stories, poems, and songs. She enjoys hearing stories from history. She creates art on an almost daily basis and enjoys programming with Scratch and Scratch Jr.
We will continue to learn in this very relaxed style with Osiris for the next few years. We believe free play and self directed learning are the best means for brain growth and developing a love of learning, especially at early elementary ages. So what has changed with Deirdre?
Nothing. I find it very easy to organically interact and incorporate early elementary learning into everyday life. Over the past year or so I have struggled to interact with Deirdre as much as either of us would like (can you say toddler?) I have also struggled to incorporate higher levels of learning into everyday living.
At the end of last year we did an annual evaluation of 3rd grade, as required by local homeschool law. In preparing for the evaluation I could see that our learning typically bounces all over the place but it tends to revolve around certain regular subjects.
I identified 7 subjects; History & Cultures, Writing, Math, Science, Spanish, Art, and Coding. We will continue with these subjects and I think we will introduce Music this year.
To build on the themes we already like in a deeper way we are trying to add a bit more structure and intention to our learning, while still maintaining a playful learning environment.
For this year Deirdre and I sat down and discussed what her goals are related to each subject. She decided she would like to learn about; Europe, writing a fiction story, more math, chemistry experiments, art on her own, and she wants to do more programming with Daddy. Deirdre has no goals for Spanish or Music and so we will mostly explore them at Osiris’ level because she enjoys them.
Based on her goals I have set up a more structured linear way for us to work through the year. We already sit down and have some ‘school time’ after breakfast until about lunch time where we work together. We added this in third grade to try to add more structure to our days.
Building on that existing structure we have decided that we will do Math on Mondays. For Math we will be using Beast Academy Level 3 as our framework and adding games and math picture books that are relevant to each Chapter. When we get through level 3 we will work on Level 4. The Beast Academy guide books are one of the only curriculum’s we purchase. The presentation is fun and engaging and the math is presented in intuitive ways rather than by rote memorization. Even outside of “school” Deirdre and Osiris enjoy reading them for fun.
On Tuesdays we will work on story writing. Since I have learned a lot about story writing myself I have created a year long program for us to work through the stages of creating, writing, and revising a story. To supplement this framework we will use story dice and some pages from the Brain Quest 4th Grade workbook.
On Wednesday we will explore cultures and stories from Europe. We are starting with the United Kingdom because we have some friends who just moved to England. We will use picture books, the Atlas, and an Orboot globe to explore the countries. We read Story of the World and other chapter books from around the world at bedtime. We will watch the Spanish immersion show Salsa by Georgia Public Broadcasting. It is available for free online and provides an early introduction to Spanish with fairy tale characters. We will add Spanish books as they are relevant.
Thursdays are when we will explore Chemistry. This is the subject that has been most difficult for me to get my head around. I considered buying a subscription to Mel Chemistry because it is a monthly box with real Chemistry experiments already to use. It is some pretty serious science which is awesome but it is also expensive and we aren’t sure if Deirdre is ready for that level of learning yet. Right now she says she just likes mixing things to see what happens. So I have done a lot of research online and came across the website thehomeschoolscientist.com she has a page with links to Chemistry experiments at progressing levels of difficulty and so I am using that as our framework for the year. We are going to try to do one of those experiments most weeks (assuming I remember to get the supplies). We also have games like Chemistry Fluxx and Valence Plus to explore some more ideas.
Deirdre has one more goal for the year; that we should go to more fun places this year. We regularly visit the library and the park in the afternoons but this year we are going to add Field Trip Friday. In the morning on Friday we will play games. In the afternoon we will visit local museums, children’s museums, trampoline parks, and indoor playgrounds, or parks.
Hopefully this added structure and planning will help us add more depth to our learning. Our goal is always to make learning fun and meaningful.
These are our goals for the year and we have started to implement them as best we can. Homeschool is awesome because of it’s flexibility. So far this school year we have had: a hurricane, a business trip (we went with Jason) and have been sick for almost 2 weeks twice already…
Luckily even when school gets away from our plan for the year the kids always have a fun and educational environment to play in. They learn so much from self directed play and the planned structure for the year lets us know exactly where to pick up from when we get back to school!
