Creating a Scope & Sequence

During my hiatus I was having difficulty wrapping my head around how I would implement Montessori for Link full scale.  Up until now, it has been very hit or miss, and I knew needed to have a consistent flow of materials and new works into the school room.  I was a little very stressed out about it, lost faith in my ability to homeschool my boys, and ended up over-doing things a bit :)

Since then I have discovered that my main problem was the lack of a scope & sequence for our work.  I was overwhelmed when I opened one of my seven albums and saw a list of hundreds of presentations for each subject!  Then, often I would think to myself "My boys aren't going to like this" or "I don't have the materials to do this" or "That's way too complicated."  I would skim the book, find one or two things to do, then set my shelves up.  But the next week I felt like I was back at square one, wondering what I should do next!

That usually leads to me browsing blogs and collecting files and ideas.  I have a huge folder on my computer full of things I have found while browsing.  It had gotten to where I didn't know what I had or where it came from.  As I was going through my hoard this week I found a few scope & sequence files and thought "Hey, that would be useful!"  In some cases the TOC was the scope & sequence.  I didn't know where some of them came from, but here are the ones that I found the source for:

Maitri Learning - Planning Book/Record Keeping (3 to 6+ Curriculum)
MOTEACO - Albums for ages 3-6
Montessori By Hand - Meg's free albums (you have to be a member)
Montessori Research and Development - Early Childhood Albums TOC
Montessori Primary Guide - Math Presentations

First I took the Maitri learning list and deleted 90% of the list, until I felt like I had something manageable.  But still, I felt like something was missing - cohesion and flow.  So I went to the Montessori R&D TOC.  These seemed very manageable, as long as I had the presentations to go along with them.  So I started looking through my albums and found that I did have some, or at least access to them in some way.   But I wasn't crazy about my selection for Botany and Zoology.  Link is 5 years old, so he's at the tail end of the primary period.  So for him I've really been wanting Geography, Culture, Math, Botany, Zoology and Language.  Meg only has a free album for Math.   I have all of Karen Tyler's albums, but they don't have all that I was looking for. So what did I do?

I made a scope and sequence using the Montessori R&D albums TOC for Geography, Botany and Zoology. Then I went through Gettman's book, pulling what I felt was missing.  I used Meg's math album TOC for math.  I discovered that Jessica, at Keys of the World, has albums that cover ages 3-12, and bought her Zoology and Botany "Keys" albums.  (I also bought her music album based on advice from MBT in the comments of this post).**Edited to add** I'll use the KotU Botany and Zoology for Elementary, and Karen Tyler's for primary**  I sold my Math-U-See materials on eBay and purchased the Golden Bead Material.  I still plan to use my Logic of English curriculum, but to also do Montessori works to supplement.  (at this point that includes sandpaper letters & sound boxes)    I have a plan and I feel better!   We will still be doing Classical Conversations, but mainly for the chance to hang out with other kids.  I don't have a play group and I don't know anyone in the area with kids around the same age.  We'll see how we like it and decide if we want to continue it next year. There is also a chance that we'll be joining a Charlotte Mason group.  Its a mixed age group that meets once a week for "enrichment" or nature study.  I really hope that works out!

My scope and sequence is a work in progress since I don't have my Keys of the World albums yet.  I also have not finished going through all of my Karen Tyler books yet.  But, I thought I'd post it anyways.  It is linked directly to my copy, so as I change mine, this one will be changed as well.  (I guess that doesn't help you if you download it before I am finished)

You can download it here.

So that's where I'm at!  Stay tuned for our work plan preview!