I found these work plans in my son's papers.
June 18 work plan, finished the following week.
Then July 4 week.
He was 8 years old that summer.
These elementary Montessori work plans were developed based on the conversations we had together about next steps in each area, personal goals and plans, items already on our schedule (outings, etc.). The work plan conversation takes into consideration local education requirements (my parental and our family values, checking the local school requirements from time to time to see what kind of terminology is used and topics are covered), his personal interests and our family culture.
Joshua assisted me with our family business from the very beginning, so there are references to office management in there.
He was also helping to make some videos as well as needed/wanted review on some concepts, so you'll see some typically earlier items on this list. Some things we just didn't start until later, because he is a typical child in the regard of there never being just one right path!
We worked together as a team his entire life. That doesn't mean we did everything together, joined at the hip; it means we coordinated together and supported each other's personal time/interests. In that spirit, even at him being 8 years old, I still did some of the work plan writing for him.
Some more details
The first work plan pictured here was two weeks worth of work. Inititally it had one week on it; most of which he finished, but enough was undone that we just carried it over to the following week and added to it.
Astronomy: The boxes indicate he had activities to do on separate days (they could not be grouped together). He was working through the book
Signs and Seasons and there were daily observations and record-keeping. This chart was work over 2 weeks. He had finished the first week (June 18) in chapter 6, so we added chapter 7 activities for the last week of June. Hence the additional boxes.
Homemaking: "Office assistant" refers to a set of particular skills/experiences he wanted to learn at that time - I don't even remember what they were those particular weeks but it could have been organizing paperwork, typing some things on the Montessori Trails blog (he created the infant-toddler page with the list of links at one point, for example). "Organize" was probably referring specifically to our home. We had some minor life adjustments at the time and needed to get our physical space more up to date with our needs.
Latin: He used Lingua Angelica at the time and he created the flashcards. We still have them. I just found one the week before last that he had been using as a bookmark recently. Crown was the English word. Crown in Latin? Corona. His godfather was going through the items on Joshua's side table when he found this card and was completely floored. The timing.
TKD: Taekwondo - he had 1-4 classes a week (open class, he could attend any number of them) and he practiced at home. He liked to have that on his work plan so he had a better idea as he looked at it each day how much time he could allocate for each thing.
Chores: standard chores - morning, mid-day and evening times.
Attitude: there was something he wanted to work on at the time to improve himself.
First LA simple: Logical Analysis, simple sentences - from the Elementary Montessori Language album.
Adj = Adjectives: he was working through the grammar boxes again as he wanted some review on them.
Exercise 4 Verb: Language album again. I don't recall the timing, if this was a presentation or a work. But he didn't get to it, even after two weeks. It looks like we got to it the following week.
Runes: His chosen language study at the time. He chose what he studies, how long, goals, when the goals were met, if the goals needed to be changed, if it was just for fun exploration, if there was an intended outcome. But he had time for these personal studies every day.
Speech: he was in speech therapy and chose to write it on his work plan to ensure he remembered it when planning for each day.
Ec-Geo stories: Economic Geography stories. He was helping me research to write these for publication. We never did finish! But we had fun looking stuff up!
4 River Civilizations: Egyptian, then Sumerian - these were our chosen presentations for those two weeks.
History Question Charts: If I recall correctly this was his first presentation on those so he used them to answer questions about the above two civilizations. Once he knew they were available he used them several times on other cultures.
Millions: I have no idea what this was!
Bead Frame: The golden bead frame (flat bead frame). To finetune some skills that we hadn't covered earlier.
Fractions: Underneath he noted that the lesson was on notation. He needed some review because I know we had done those earlier.
Geometry Story: to hear it again
CSE: Congruency, Similarity, Equivalence --- Geometry work
Water: the river = The Work of Water, the River Model. Yeah he loved this. But we didn't get to it then. It came later.
Leafs: Clearly we were still working on spelling ;) We did all of the leaf explorations in the Biology album over the course of this week, the next and later that summer.
Ecosystems: Biology album again. We read books, watched videos and went outside to find some micro-ecosystems.
The second chart:
Sometimes he or I would note on the work plan the intended day to focus on an activity, such as "Th" for Thursday.
Create "cold" foods - this was an herbal study we had going where we were learning about herbal remedies. So we prepared foods that were suitable for assisting someone with a cold.
Office assistant and declutter continued from the week before, but he also sewed a pouch on the sewing machine. He sewed other things at other times.
Latin - continue the lessons in our own way.
TKD, speech, piano, music cards and Latin cards we decided he needed to practice daily. This is when he started piano - and LOVED it.
For fun, he also built paper pyramids and a paper castle. I still have them somehwere.
Logical Analysis: we added the extensions
Book of Kells: we read it together and he copied some of the art
Illumination - artwork inspired by the Book of Kells
Verb box and commands - Grammar Boxes
History: Calendar from
Signs and Seasons
History in 3 Phases from the Montessori History Album
BC/AD timeline
New World Civilizations: Montessori History Album
Practice long multiplication, adding/subtracting fractions of different families (denominators)
Game 3a and 3b from the squares and cubes chapter in the Montessori Elementary Mathematics Album
CSE of the Constructive Triangles from the Geometry Album
Continue long division
He wanted to work on the
memorization of math facts. Finally, at age 8, he finally cared!
Leaves: finish and classify
Explore How animals live and move via videos and books
That feels like so much even for 21 days of schooling, but it was just so natural and flowed for us. Some activities were 5 minutes, some took a few hours.
Legoboy and I worked together to develop his high school work plan. Way back when, we started with a daily work plans, moved to a weekly and a monthly (click on the "work plan" tag at the bottom of this post to see our other work plans through the years). Now, we can start looking at mapping out a multi-year education plan.
A notebook contains our notes for each course, which flesh out the names of the resources on the transcripts, describe the required areas of study in each subject, desired areas of interest in each subject, final project for each subject and any other pertinent information.
Each month we were to read together at least one book of extra-cultural origin, with the goal of reaching around the world, with representative samples from each continent.
Legoboy, my beautiful Joshua, has contributed so much over the years to our family businesses.
An excerpt from the elementary biology album that reminds us why we use generic shapes in the botany cabinet, as opposed to leaf names specific to a particular region:
