My daughter has been entranced by the Little House books for years. Last year, we held a Pioneer Party with her friends where we all dressed up like pioneers and made butter, fresh sourdough, and yarn dolls.
Soon after that, our family of 5 dressed up as the Little House characters for Halloween. Needless to say, Laura and Almanzo are a part of the family. We are excited to be using the Playful Pioneers curriculum for the first time this year!
Here is a quick look into how I have organized the Playful Pioneers curriculum and our homeschool space this year. I am a big-picture thinker. So, when I open up a new curriculum, I immediately begin to think of any way I can zoom out to get a broad view of the material. With a bird’s eye view, I am able to grasp not only what is being asked of my child on a practical level, but also to see where we are headed. This is precisely where I can begin to see a vision for the material, breathing life into the work and our day.
First, a few supplies:
- These tabs help me immensely in finding anything I need in the curriculum very quickly. They can be moved around easily from week to week. I was previously using post it notes, which work well too. I have labeled tabs for the current week, the hymn of the week, supply lists, etc. to access easily.
- Prepare to be amazed by erasable pens that actually erase. I love using these pens for planning purposes and my kids love to use them for copy work or math, to mix things up.
- This pot lid tray (you weren’t expecting that, were you?) keeps the Playful Pioneer books from getting lost in the mix of the 973,458,576 library books that we have strewn in every corner of the house. I like that this also keeps the books out as a visual reminder to all of us, and increases the chance that my kids will want to grab one of the books during the day to page through on their own.
- I have a caddy (similar to this) to store morning time plans, books and a few fidget toys. These are one of our favorite fidget toys to use during read louds. I have another basket nearby of activities that we can quickly grab during a read aloud or lesson to occupy little hands.
- I am using this history timeline book from Schoolnest to add in important dates that we come across during the curriculum. I plan to print pictures of these events or people to put in the timeline book (using sticker paper + Canva). I also love the idea of hanging timeline cards, so I may do that in future years.
At the beginning of the year, I decided to create several documents to help myself organize Playful Pioneers.
1. Monthly Activity Outline: I made this activity outline so that I would be able to quickly glance over upcoming projects for several weeks/months at a time. I keep a printout of this document secured to the front of my Playful Pioneers curriculum. This timeline draws attention to the hands-on projects, activities, and recipes each week (essentially, the activities you may need think about ahead of time). This also helps me decide how I will fit in the activities to my week, as I plan. We do not necessarily do everything in order. For example, if we have time to make a recipe on Tuesday but not on Thursday, we will switch days. Having a list of activities allows me to plug in each one to the day of the week that we are most likely to actually complete it depending on our schedule. And finally, this is a great way to check off activities you have done and have a list of any projects you would like to get to at a later date (or even the next year).
2. Book inventory. I made a book inventory chart to note where I would be able to find the suggested book list. I included these categories: library, used book store, and my own home library. For the books I could not find in these 3 places, I searched for high-quality YouTube videos of a person reading the book or I bought them on Amazon. Every few weeks I take a look at my chart to see which books I need and where I can find them. It just takes a moment to see which books I should put on hold at the library or to see which video I need to pull up ahead of time.
3. Playful Pioneers booklist. I printed the Playful Pioneers booklist (by week) and taped it into my planner. This way, my kids and I can check off the books as we read them. This also helps me easily see which books I did not get to reading and would like to come back to in the future.
4. Timeline. Without a broad timeline plastered to the wall of my brain, I am lost. So, I added dates to each week so I will know what time period we will be covering from week to week.
I hope these documents or supplies might be helpful to you, as you continue with your school year!
Guest post written by Danielle Gilde
@daniellegilde on Instagram