Homeschool Family Subjects 2023-2024
As I have grown as a home educator and learned more about my kids we have honed in on Classical and Charlotte Mason being the two main styles reflected in our daily homeschool. This year is a more in-depth attempt to combine a Classical and CM approach to our homeschool! There are a lot of things that we fit into our days BUT nothing takes a long time, each thing is relatively short and sweet! The boys are always able to get up and move around and take breaks as needed! Also, not every subject is done everyday, plus I am always up for flexibility during our day. If something isn’t working in our homeschool, we shift and try to learn from it. The family subject approach has actually given extra freedom to our homeschool and it gets the littlest ones involved too! Family subjects provide a lovely rhythm to our homeschool mornings that I am so thankful for!
Our family subjects cover History, Geography, Poetry, Bible, Picture Study, Composer Study, Timeline, Art, Nature Study and Science respectively. We also have a read aloud going most of the time either in physical book form or audiobook!
What is a family subject?
A family subject allows us to accomplish multiple subjects as a family together - rather than individually. Our family subjects take place at two different points in our day, things I call: Morning Time and Poetry Tea Time. We start every morning with our Morning Time and each mid-morning we have snacks over Poetry Tea Time, according to my 7 and 4 year old Poetry Tea Time is their favorite “subject”, that gave me a chuckle! Math and Language Arts are done separately between and after our family subject times.
Morning Time:
Morning Time starts around 8:30am for us. It can start while the kids are eating breakfast or right after. It is basically a time where we gather, pray, and kick off our day. I usually have some sort of activity sitting out — a coloring sheet or playdoh or maybe some other kind of manipulative! The first thing we start with during morning time is our Hymn. We follow along with the monthly hymn that Happy Hymnody puts out and when the 23/24 guide is released I will be buying the bundle with the full year lineup off of their Etsy shop! Here’s a look at our Morning Time rhythm starting around 8:30 (geography and science are on a loop schedule) and lasting about 45 minutes - 1 hour with a small break following:
Scripture Reading or Bible Study, we have used a study called My Brothers Keeper from Not Consumed Ministries a couple of times and it has been so good. Otherwise we just read a bible story and a proverbs or psalms.
Manipulative play or coloring sheets, many times I find print offs from Classical Conversations resources but you can find coloring sheets simply by googling! Even my 9 year old really enjoys coloring in the mornings.
Classical Conversations Memory Work and Timeline Song we listen to each morning during the 24 weeks of CC. It’s about 3 minutes long, so short and sweet! I usually read a Timeline card or two daily also!
History (Daily): Currently we are reading about the early American Indigenous Tribes and for a full look at our history spines and living books this year you can check out this Living Books For History post. Once CC starts we will follow along with the history sentences + read corresponding living books. I also am adding in a notebook from Anna Vance Paper Co. for the boys to draw pictures in, write key statements or ideas in or do both when it comes to History!
Science (T): During the CC year we follow and dig into the material provided which for this Cycle 3 is a study of the human body, otherwise we just explore on our own and I do not have a formal science curriculum, the kids are scientists already anyway :)
Geography (M/W): Trace maps and label places and people of the places and times we are talking about in History. During the CC year we will follow along with the Geography memory work. We always have maps handy for any homeschool work we do — when a location is mentioned I have made it a habit to grab the globe or a map to show the boys where it is! This is my favorite Maps book pictured below and linked here!
Poetry Tea Time
Poetry Tea Time does not always have to involve tea but it always has to involve snacks! I have a designated vintage Pyrex snack tray I’ve used the last few years for our snack tray! I pull it all out around 10:30, I gather any snacks that I have on hand or already prepared and bring it to the table. Poetry Tea Time offers a calm where we can gather, snack, chat and then simply listen to a few poems. This year I have a list of poets, composers and artists we will be studying as well as a new art curriculum I am excited to add in! Here is a look at what Poetry Tea Time looks like in our home, it is usually somewhere between 15-30 minutes with a break after:
Sing A Song Of Seasons Nature Poem of the Day is where we start off Poetry Tea Time! We’ve used this book for about a year and a half and it’s just lovely! (Photo is below!)
A.A. Milne Poems are up next, I usually read 2 or 3 poems! Other poets we will be studying this year will include Christina Rossetti, William Blake, Walter De La Mare and Wordsworth. Ambleside Online has many free poems and bios about poets! I highly recommend using this resource! I will have the boys do copy work this year with poetry also! Also, I leave freedom to explore a topic that they want to look up — for example, today the poem talked about the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace and we weren’t sure what that looked like, so we watched a very interesting YT video on it! Making connections and helping your kids make connections is so important!
Picture Study is up next! Currently we are studying Monat - this is a short activity that I will try to implement daily! We look at the painting, try to visualize the painting in the minds eye and learn about the artist. The boys will make thier own impressionist painting in a couple of weeks too! Other artists we will be studying this year are: John Singer Sargent, Picasso, O’Keefe, Rockwell. Ambleside Online and A Humble Place all have fantastic resources for Picture study! I recommend checking them out! Memoria Press also has various Art Card Prints that I really like to have around the house!
Art Lesson (W) from Yellow Spot Sun is where our art lessons are this year! I purchased the history based art lessons called Trailblazing Transit to do with the boys! It will fit perfectly in with our U.S. History this year!
Composer Study is simply listening to a piece of music and then learning a bit about the composer. Currently we are learning about Handel. I am simply following the Classical Music For Dummies book CD and going from there. Ambleside also has great free resources about Composers! Towards the end of the CC year we will do a composer study but I wanted to extend it throughout the entire year. We will practice listening for different types of instruments throughout our studies!
***We are no longer doing Morning Menus but the photo above has some things I mentioned in this post, that’s why you see it! Morning Menu’s worked for a couple of years for us and we may revisit them someday :)
Nature study
Friday’s are our nature days and I plan on having the boys bring their notebooks to sketch or write in while we are out and about, but I don’t force nature study. I believe free play in nature is enough for my boys right now and I am already naturally seeing my eldest get more excited about sketching while he is in nature. I don’t want to force it, but I do want to expose my boys to the outdoors as we have since my eldest was 2 — through free play! We go outside all of the time and try to make it a priority to be immersed in nature. I will utilize a few resources for nature study this year:
The Young Naturalist by Wild+Free it has a physical book then online tutorials and videos to go along with it!
I hope you have found this Family Subjects post helpful! It’s a lot of information but take what you want from it! Use what you need and disregard the rest! That’s the beauty of homeschool, you can tailor it to your liking and your families needs! Drop any comments or questions regarding this blog post if you have any, thanks friends!
— Jacki