Our Charlotte Mason Kindergarten curriculum (Child #1)

| Charlotte Mason, Homeschooling, Year 0/Kindergarten

My dear daughter’s (DD) Kindergarten year formally commenced our family’s home educational journey. However, it was not particularly an exciting event, as it should have been, because my DD embarked on her educational career without her father, my dear husband, who passed the previous year.

I was also in a state of grief and confusion because I was not only navigating the early stages of widowhood and solo parenthood but also because I felt that everything I’ve studied and learned about Charlotte Mason (CM), the educational philosophy and/or method we would be using for school, and everything I did to prepare for homeschooling my children went out the window when my dear husband died.

And I have to start from scratch.

But in spite of a gloomy start, we went ahead.

And by God’s grace, we were able to start, persist, and finish well.

All glory and praise to God!

Formal academics

We formally did Kindergarten because it is required in the Philippines. And since it was my first time to homeschool, I still didn’t have the guts to go against the system then, so I complied.

The absence of my husband, however, made me uncertain whether I would be able to homeschool my children long-term, meaning, I needed to be open to the possibility of sending my children to a brick and mortar school anytime, if need be.

So just in case that happens, I would be needing official school records. So I also enrolled my DD in a homeschool service provider for Kindergarten, which she started at six years old.

I intentionally started her school “late” as prescribed by CM where no formal academics are begun before six, so I waited. (But it is only late by common standards because for homeschoolers, actually, there really is no such thing as being late).

And even if Kindergarten is not required in a CM education, I believe it was still a useful experience for my DD as it served as a warm-up exercise that prepared her for the load of Year 1, especially in developing her narration skills.

Planning

Because it was my first time to homeschool, I do not know if I came up with a good curriculum. But I did the best I could and chose books according to how I understand CM.

Curriculum planning would have been a fun experience if not for the scarcity of local living books. The freedom to choose books is one of the things I love about homeschooling, but it was a bit frustrating because of the limited availability of Philippine/Filipino living books. So we just settled with what was available even if I think a book wasn’t quite living as long as it was, in my opinion, the best available out there.

I would be following the CM curriculum provided by AmblesideOnline (AO) in the succeeding years, so I started to take and actually used a couple of the Literature books in AO’s Year 1 book list.

I did this (1) because my DD is already six years old so she is technically allowed to peruse the books in AO’s Year 1, and narrate, and (2) to lessen my DD’s load when she starts Year 1 the following year since we would still be adding books to accomodate local subjects such as Filipino and Araling Panlipunan (the latter, however, could simply replace American History instead).

And since we were enrolled in a homeschool service provider back then (in 2022, before the implementation of the MATATAG curriculum), we also needed to follow the subjects prescribed by our local Department of Education (DepEd).

Curriculum

So here is the curriculum I came up with for my DD’s Kindergarten. In the table at the end of this post below I showed how I aligned the DepEd subjects with those prescribed by CM.

Language

Reading Lessons

Filipino
English

Copywork

  • Poetry
  • Tagalog kids’ songs/Nursery rhymes
  • Folk songs/Sunday School songs
  • Bible verses
  • Tagalog P&W songs/Hymns

Recitation/Memorization

  • Poetry
  • Bible verses

Edukasyon sa Pagpapakatao/Values Education

Bible

Filipino

Poetry

Literature

Alamat
Kuwentong-bayan

English

Poetry (From AO Year 0)

Literature

Mathematics

Supplement

Science

Nature Study

  • Random nature objects

Natural History/Nature Lore

Philippine Nature Lore

Araling Panlipunan

Philippine History/Culture

Supplement

Geography

Supplement

MAPEH

Music

Music Appreciation (Free listening to famous classical music)
Hymns
Folk Songs
Supplement

Arts

Picture Study
Media/Drawing
Handicraft

Physical Education, Health

  • Free outdoor play, e.g., biking, swimming, running
  • Exercise videos from YouTube

Free Reads

We use supplemental books as free reads, i.e., no narration, mosty during our Morning Time/Basket.

charlotte mason kindergarten philippine books
Kindergarten book feast.

Getting into a rhythm

The curriculum may look a lot and overwhelming, but I promise, it is only at the start. Once you get into a rhythm or fall into a routine, everything will fall into place, sort of 😁.

But why a curriculum that looks so overwhelming for a Kindergartener? Well, because CM advocated for a broad and generous curriculum which, surprisingly, does not overwhelm a child, I found out.

…the unspoken demand of children is for a wide and very varied curriculum; it is necessary that they should have some knowledge of the wide range of interests proper to them as human beings, and for no reasons of convenience or time limitations may we curtail their proper curriculum.

Volume 6, page 14

Here’s what we did…

We started very slowly and gently. We didn’t do everything or read every book listed all at once. We started doing only two subjects a day for the first couple of weeks, and added more gradually.

We did very short lessons (a very important CM principle), like only five minutes at the start, slowly extending until we were able to work for a full ten minutes per subject.

For Bible, for example, when we started (in Genesis), we read only one day of the creation account per lesson, which took us even less than five minutes, sometimes, to finish. So it took us a total of seven non-consecutive days (which translates to weeks) to finish just the creation story.

In other words, we split lessons into several lessons, as many as it would take us to finish.

You might think five to ten minutes for a lesson is very short. It is. But if you do it consistently (with full attention so that no minute is wasted), you’d be surpised with how much material you’d be able to cover at the end of the school year.

Another example, we read Aesop only once a week at the start before we started reading it twice a week, starting only in the 2nd semester.

For Math, we started with just doing mental Math, and introduced MEP only in the 2nd quarter.

And we didn’t read Just So Stories until the second semester.

Also, some of the books are very short that you can read them in one sitting (books listed under Philippine Nature Lore). So naturally, the books you would be able to read at the end of the school year would amount to a lot.

And our reading lessons and copywork sessions were, each, also limited to ten minutes max.

Lastly, it should be noted that we didn’t finish some of the books listed.

Schedule

Here is the schedule we followed during my DD’s Kindergarten year.

I think I revised our schedule 10 times or more before we finally settled with what worked for us, so the one below is the final schedule we followed and does not include anymore the books we have finished earlier.

It may also look overwhelming or complicated, but, again, once you get into a rhythm or routine, it would flow more or less smoothly, as long as there are no interruptions such as whinings or tantrums or a younger sibling interrupting. Haha.

So as you can see on the schedule, we have subjects that we tackle once a week (usually in the middle of the week, Wednesdays) and subjects we tackle twice a week (which I have scheduled either on Mondays & Thursdays, or Tuesdays & Fridays).

But we usually read a book just once a week (reading short and slow is also one important CM principle). If a subject is on the schedule twice a week, we use a different book the second time during the week. That’s how we get to read two books for a given subject at the same time.

During my DD’s Kindergarten year, since the load was still very light (and my mom-in-law cooks for us since she was living with us then), we were able to take a break in between subjects then which we usually spend with a short walk to our village’s clubhouse to hang out there for a few minutes.

Copywork and other mechanical tasks (e.g., handicraft) were done in the afternoon.

All in all, we get everything done in about 45 minutes to an hour, excluding breaks.

By the way, back then we schooled from Tuesdays to Saturdays and go out on Mondays for errands (e.g., grocery).

homeschool kindergarten schedule
Our final Kindergarten schedule.

Curriculum at-a-glance

So at-a-glance, our Kindergarten curriculum would look like this…

(Until I learn how to create a decent table in WordPress, you would have to excuse me for using an Excel-generated picture, which I do not know how to sharpen).

charlotte mason kindergarten philippine curriculum

I would be writing about how we did each subject in my succeeding posts so stay tuned 😊.

Featured image by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

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