Planning Your Own Homeschool Main Lesson Blocks

EP191: What if you could transform your homeschooling journey into a series of unforgettable milestones? Listen up as we talk this week about creating engaging and immersive main lesson blocks for your homeschool. This episode is packed with insights on selecting compelling themes, choosing captivating stories, and effectively mapping out your lessons. Whether you’re pondering a month-long focus on farming or a three-week fairy tale adventure, discover how main lesson block learning can breathe life into your homeschooling year, making it more fulfilling for both you and your children.

Find the Show Notes Here (www.artofhomeschooling.com/episode191)

Taproot Teacher Training (www.artofhomeschooling.com/taproot)

Inspired at Home Membership (www.artofhomeschooling.com/inspiredathome)

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

You're listening to the Art of Homeschooling podcast, where we help parents cultivate creativity and connection at home. I'm your host, jean Miller, and here on this podcast you'll find stories and inspiration to bring you the confidence you need to make homeschooling work for your family. Let's begin. Hello, my homeschool friend, I want to talk today about planning your main lesson blocks. I'm currently in the process of planning workshops for the upcoming in-person Taproot teacher training, where participants get to experience lessons as if they were the students. So I woke up this morning thinking I should share my process for planning a main lesson block with you here on the podcast. So in this episode I'm going to talk about how to choose your theme or topic for a block and then how to choose the stories and begin to plan out your lessons.

Speaker 1: 1:22

I was inspired to bring you this episode because I get this question quite often, especially this time of year it's summer as I'm recording this episode and when parents are beginning to plan for the fall for the upcoming homeschool year. So many ask me, jean, where do I even begin to plan a main lesson block? Now, I know that purchasing curriculum seems easier, doesn't it? But here's what so often happens we purchase that grade level curriculum, open it up to begin and soon realize there are parts in there that don't really suit our child and there's no way we're going to get it all in. But on the other hand, to plan your own main lesson block seems daunting, I know that. So where do we even begin? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today. So keep listening, my friend. This isn't as hard as you think. Block learning really is the simplest way to plan your homeschooling year and allows for a more immersive experience for both you and your children. Put simply, a main lesson block is just a set period of time where you're focusing on a particular subject and then each day during lesson time, you expand on that topic. So maybe you choose to focus on farming and gardening for four weeks, or you're going to focus on fairy tales for three weeks. Any of that can be done in such a way that you plan your own blocks. Now, the truth is, you can build a main lesson block around a topic, a wonderful book or a project or set of activities. It doesn't have to be just the traditional block topics that are brought, but those can be a good starting point. So if you want to see a list of typical block topics by grade for the Waldorf approach. I'll put a link in the show notes to my Waldorf block rotation for grades one through eight. Look for those show notes at artofhomeschoolingcom slash, episode 191.

Speaker 1: 3:44

Before I get to my examples of planning a main lesson block, I want to share a few of the many benefits of main lesson block learning. Teaching one topic or theme over a month or more gives you time, space and flexibility to build up that topic, to find what's most interesting to you and your children and to gather materials as you go. You want to make some decisions ahead of time and I'm going to tell you exactly what those are today. But this kind of learning can also be more organic and satisfying. In my experience, teaching with blocks also allows you, as the home educator, to find some aspects of the topic that spark your imagination and interest. Modeling this for our children is so valuable. There can be blocks with a geography focus or math science, as well as blocks that focus on literature or stories such as fairy tales or fables and, later on, history. Teaching with stories in a main lesson block of several weeks gives you a chance to live deeply into these imaginative realms as a starting point for the learning. Lastly, teaching in blocks gives your child milestones to remember. When we are homeschooling, the lessons in life often blend together into one beautiful journey and your child can look back as he or she grows up and remember certain blocks or stories, topics or experiences that marked events or achievements for them.

Speaker 1: 5:34

So let me walk you through my thought process for planning a language arts and history block for grades one through four. This is one of the workshops I'm helping to lead at Taproot this year. This can be a mixed ages and grades block, or you could take these ideas and hone them for whatever age or grade your child or children are. Right now, for these grades, my workshop co-leader, sarah, and I wanted to find some overlap in story content between either grades one or two and grade four for a block that we decided to call Tales from the Northland. We decided on Swedish folk and fairy tales for the younger ones and Norse myths for grade four. Or you could pick Celtic folk and fairy tales for the youngers if you wanted to, fairy tales for the youngers if you wanted to. This would provide for some overlap in theme, but we'd plan to read one story to the younger child or children and a different story to the older one. The older could enjoy listening to the folktales and the younger might play while still listening along to some of the myths, their main lesson books, the children's main lesson books would be different. They'd each be making their own main lesson book, but that work could be done simultaneously, side by side, during this block, and then the lively arts could be combined, like you're all painting together, drawing or modeling. Even singing and poetry could overlap A little process note here when I talk to parents about planning their own main lesson blocks, I suggest making these decisions as you begin.

Speaker 1: 7:27

These are decisions for you to make, even if you have a purchased curriculum that you're going to use as a resource. So there are three questions to ask yourself. Number one is what topic, book or project and activities will be your focus and for how long? That's the first. The second is what resources will you use? And the third question is how will you record the learning? So if we use these questions as our starting point and look at this language arts and history block, what we did was we found two books to use the Dallaire's Book of Norse Myths for older kids and an illustrated treasury of Swedish folk and fairy tales for the younger ones. I'll put a link to both those in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 8:19

The idea is then to find stories in each book to share over a three or four week block, and if you're homeschooling with this Waldorf rhythm, I like to use a two-day rhythm that lends itself well to a four-day homeschool week. You'd need two stories a week for each group. So find stories in each book to share over these three or four weeks and then decide how to record the learning. Are you going to make main lesson books? I think in this case these stories really lend themselves well to drawings and paintings, because there's so many images of mountains, caves, farms, gnomes and trolls that would be really fun to draw and paint. And then from there you can choose what skills to focus on, like writing sentences or paragraphs, working with word families.

Speaker 1: 9:13

From that point you can flesh out your blocks by finding go-along books, perhaps a read-aloud chapter book, bringing in some songs and poetry, and even setting up a little scene in your home where the kids can act out some of the stories. That's it. That's how to get started. It really can be that simple, such a creative process. That really all started with the question of what topic we want to bring and then asking yourself what resources we have or could find Don't forget, your local librarian can really help with great resources and then thinking about how you will record the learning. The most important thing here in how to plan a main lesson block is to keep it simple. I like to say start small and add from there, so you're really creating a scaffolding on which to build out your main lesson blocks.

Speaker 1: 10:16

If you want more support to help you make this magic planning process unfold, here are three ways I can help you and I'll put links to all of these in the show notes as well. The first come to Taproot. This is an amazing weekend training and retreat for homeschoolers that happens every August, where you'll get to experience lessons yourself and be in community with like-minded, heart-centered homeschoolers. My second idea for you is to get the holistic planning pack templates that we've created. These are 14 templates that you can use to make your own lesson planning binder and it gives you just enough structure. But you get to fill in the plans and that's a great way to learn to be consistent with planning your own lesson blocks. And the third way is you could join the Inspired at Home community, where you'll get the ongoing training and support you need to sustain your homeschooling journey. Inside the membership you'll find 35 masterclasses, group coaching calls and a loving community for sharing ideas and helping each other grow.

Speaker 1: 11:33

If you want to hear more specifically about lesson planning, go have a listen to episode 127, called Homeschool Lesson Planning. I hope this episode leaves you with the feeling I can do this, because, yes, you can. I know you can. It's a fun process that can bring you lots of wonderful learning connections with your kiddos. Enjoy the journey. That's all for today, my friend, but here's what I want you to remember Rather than perfection, let's focus on connection. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you on the next episode of the Art of Homeschooling podcast. Thank you.