When we made the decision to pull our then fourth grader out of public school and home school him and his younger brothers we were not prepared beyond the fact that I was available for the job. The first thing I did was frantically google "home school curriculum" and then I descended into an absolute rabbit hole of opinions, philosophies, streaming, co-ops, text books, workbooks, free stuff, expensive stuff, supplies, schedules, routines, barf, barf, barf, barf, barf! It makes me dizzy even remembering.
I did the newbie move and ordered expensive box curriculum with streaming classes for Everett's fourth grade year and a similar set for William's kindergarten but I settled on teaching him myself. I learned some things that year. It was a hard year.
I moved in a new direction this year. Our family needs simplicity. It has a lot to do with my own personality but for better or worse I am these kids mom and I am what I'm working with, ya know? YouTube to the rescue! I found a channel https://www.youtube.com/c/OurHouse by this lovely woman, Karen, and it changed our lives. She introduced me to the Robinson Curriculum (RC). https://www.robinsoncurriculum.com
If your google searches typically begin with simple, minimal, calm, peace, classic, Christian or traditional, like mine do, the RC may be for you too. The main gist is it focuses on the three R's; reading, writing and arithmetic. It is such a simple and beautiful approach to education (also super affordable). I had to jump on this bandwagon. I grabbed onto RC like a life raft and it set a whole new lifestyle into motion for our family and we are so grateful.
Since RC seems to be a less popular curriculum I have found other home schools using it quite sparse (although there is a really supportive Facebook group) and the curriculum itself is vague on the day to day. I also reside in a state that requires social studies and science for all ages which didn't exactly align precisely with the curriculum. So, today I present to you how I fit RC with my state subject requirements. If you too are an RC parent and would like a jumping off blueprint for some peace of mind this is what I have come up with so far.
First, I use RC materials and resources and drop them into the state's required subjects. Then when I didn't think I had anything RC to fit well enough for say, Science and Social Studies, I added something. It sounds simple but it took a lot of mental energy for me to get to something that I feel good about.
Here are the lesson plans I'm going off of for this week. You may notice I don't plan math in advance for my first grader because there is no guarantee of mastery, and mastery is the goal, so I record daily what we do and I allow him to progress at his own pace. My fifth grader is similar. He uses a Saxon math book but there is no guarantee that he masters each lesson each day so I record the lesson he works on and if he needs to repeat it the next day there is nothing for me to have to erase or change.
I created my own lesson planner and put it on teachers pay teachers if you need a cheap and easy solution to the multiple students and a six day school week situation RC parents need to organize. I keep track of grades in a spreadsheet. I prefer a gentle grading system. Quite a bit is completion based at this point but I find math tests, book tests or reports, vocab tests and science reports to be simple to grade and good feedback for my fifth grader. I also feel I have something a social worker could easily understand if I ever had to explain myself (oh the paranoia is real!).
Link to this planner: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Land-Of-Kakiak
I check off assignments as we go for my first grader. My fifth grader is more independent. We get a to do lists done each morning and he works through that. Then at the end of the day we have an accountability meeting and I check off what is complete and acceptable and jot down grades in the planner and at the end of the week I record grades in my spreadsheet and plan the next week. And for the love of God only plan one week in advance. Ask me how I know.
Once I had a school schedule set that I nestled into my daily housework routine life just clicked so much more naturally. I find simplifying the "extra" subjects works best while allowing deeper work in the three R's. I plan on doing a post on each subject and how we do it. I love learning as I go and sharing what I know! Happy educating friends!
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