How I Created These Plans…
To create these reading plans, I started with Claritas Publishing’s classical memory work guides. The memory work is optional, but it does provide a nice outline for what to focus on each week. I love that the Claritas work is only for twenty-eight weeks and divided into four terms of seven weeks. I’ve been homeschooling for twenty years now, and I find that a 36-week program is daunting and difficult for many people.
The Claritas Memory Work includes the following subjects:
We use this memory work in the homeschool group I created in Lynchburg, Virginia: STAR Homeschool Community, except for the Latin. One cool thing about homeschooling is that you get to decide which subjects you want to include and which ones you want to leave out.
When I made the reading plans that are now on this site, they were originally for families at STAR. I wanted to include some other subjects at STAR, so I added the following components to the four cycles:
- Read aloud books for Form 1
- Read aloud books for Form 2, or for the whole family
- A composer, an artist, and a poet for each term, along with post card-sized art cards for each week of the term, poetry books to print, and song selections with Spotify links to listen to each week
- Weekly projects that line up with either the week’s history, geography, science, or the term’s artist
- An extra hymn each week
- Apologetics topics for each week (which often line up nicely with catechism questions)
Then, I remembered being in a classical community when our kids were younger & feeling like there wasn’t any context for the memory work. I wanted the families at STAR to have a different experience, so I started scheduling the following:
- History reading plans for all forms—so that students would be studying the same time period, people and places no matter their age
- Biography reading plans for all forms, with ten or more people to choose from each term of each cycle
- Geography reading plans for all forms
- Apologetics and Worldview reading plans for all forms
- Science reading plans for all forms—then I added more science and nature subjects, and reading plans for all of those
- Hymn reading plans to learn about a hymn each week, from several different resources
- Extra memory verses for people who go through the four cycles two or three times
- Bible reading plans to take a family through the whole Bible over two, four or eight years
- Extra literature for all forms—both historic literature that’s just for fun but isn’t twaddle
- Character traits for each cycle
- Life Skills for each cycle, and Life Reading & Survival Skills for Forms 4 & 5
- Electives for each cycle
- Language Arts suggestions and schedules
- Math suggests and schedules
…and I have so many more ideas!
I created STAR because I wanted a different model from the two popular options in our area:
The Classical homeschool community
The Hybrid “homeschool” community
I happen to think STAR is a pretty nice alternative, and I would love to see STAR communities pop up all over! (With freedom to run a community how you like—with gentle guidance, but nobody telling you what to do and when to do it). If you think you might want to start one of these communities, make sure to join me on social media and chat with me!
When I first started STAR, I made custom “family guides” for each STAR family. Now, I teach people how to make their own family guides. I love this, because it’s totally flexible and you can adjust it to fit your family’s needs anytime during the school year. Once you’ve chosen the books you want to use from the year (from the many suggestions I provide here), creating the schedule is easy and quick! Think of it like a Sonlight guide or an Ambleside Online checklist—but with the ability to copy and paste the resources of your choice and add them to the schedule. You can even make a schedule (or, check-off list) for every one of your children who is able to work independently. I dreamed up this kind of flexibility when I was homeschooling our three sons (who are now grown adults), and now it’s a reality!