A Twist on a Classical Education

We do some variety of classical education at our home. I wanted to create a pie chart to help you come up with your own twist.  Our homeschooling curriculum as you can see from the chart is comprised of a lot of reading and writing. All of the other subjects are included in reading and writing (because what else would you be reading and writing about?).  For example, when we are learning about nouns or verbs, we may be reading a book about Navajo Indians. When we do dictation sentences to learn spelling words, we may be pulling sentences from poems, or a science textbook. 

All of our learning starts with reading.

So...how do I explain the other pieces of the pie? Those percentages are talking about the dedicated focus on those subjects that have nothing to do with reading and writing as subjects. We do art every day, but only 15% of our day deals with art theory. When my daughter isn't learning, she is painting anyways. Likewise, we do an hour of math every single day, or about 20% of her studies. Get it? We do two days with history and every day has some form of science. I didn't add music because that isn't a school thing for us...it's just a life thing.

I was actually thinking that you could even use this pie chart to structure your day. You could convert the percentages to minutes with this charting being the base line -- kindergarten (or Year 1 as we refer to it). From there, you would add 5-15 minutes per year level, or as you see fit. 


Here is how I set up our classical curriculum, give or take:

DAILY

• 1 math lesson, including a new concept and problems (1 hour)
• 1 phonics lesson (5 minutes)
• 1 dictation lesson from spelling workbook (10 minutes)
• An animal, plant, or rock study using a field guide (10 minutes)
• Drawing or painting
• 2 hours of reading, one book required by me, and everything else her choice

MONDAYS AND WEDNESDAYS

• On Mondays, we create a history timeline.
• On Wednesdays, we talk and read about American History

TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS

• Science Lessons, usually concept on Tuesdays and experiment on Thursdays

FRIDAYS

• Oral spelling test
• Book report
• Geography lesson
• Go for a hike

Our schedule changes when we decide to get in the car and travel for a few weeks, but I always bring the essentials with me. I hope this helps you create your own homeschool curriculum.

Note: This is for first grade​.