Autumn Term

We are starting our first proper home educating year. Charles is 2 years 9 months and has been going to pre-school for about a month. He's settled in amazingly, and is starting to interact with the other children which is fabulous, of course. 

However, it doesn't lessen our resolve to home educate. Pre-School is play based, and that is really all he needs right now. We are going to continue the play based education until he is ready to move on, and even then I really feel against any "sit down and learn this" type of education. 

I am working on a term at a time, and as we've started in October, we have three months of fun to plan. 

We are focusing on Charles' interests, as we are free to do with home education. He currently really loves counting, and learning letters. We likes to sing, and paint as well as craft. He is interested in shapes, animals and transport vehicles. We are going to encompass all these things into a curriculum for them. Our first week is almost planned! 

We have a main theme per month, for example, October's main theme is Autumn. We then have 4-5 weekly themes under that, depending on how many weeks are in the month. Our October themes are Autumn, Hedgehogs, Squirrels and Hibernation. We have a letter of the week to learn about, an animal of the week to learn about, a number of the week and a shape of the week. We will also practise skills such as cooking, pencil control and cutting. We have several crafts and cooking activities to do each week and are planning a day trip that ties in with our theme, once a month. This month we are going to Brownsea Island, in Dorset to try and spot a Red Squirrel. 

I have various curricula to work from including the one by Miri Flower, shown on her blog www.herewearetogether.com, www.allinonehomeschool.com, and several written curricula such as The Big Workbook - Pre-school and The Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills - Grade Pre-school. We also have an aray of workbooks from Collins Education, Leap Ahead and First Time Learning. 

We are going to be creating a theme table display each month, that will slightly change each week. It will display Charles' artwork, books showing our weekly themes, things we have collected on our outings and anything he has achieved. 

I look forward to sharing our journey with you, starting Monday!