Real-world curriculum
Some things cannot be learned on a screen: moving, writing by hand, writing a whole piece that a person reads, running a real experiment, building something. The app does not pretend to teach them. These are the plans for doing them at home, one sheet per subject, ready to print.
Each sheet says why it matters, what you need, what to do at each grade, how to teach it, and what done looks like.
- PE and Movement Children learn to move well the same way they learn to read: a skill at a time, practiced until it is automatic.
- Handwriting and Cursive Handwriting is a habit of the hand, and habits are set early.
- Writing Real Pieces A game can check a comma, but only a reader can tell whether a story works or an argument holds.
- Backyard Science: Watch and Record Science starts with noticing and writing it down, day after day, until a pattern shows up that nobody told him about.
- Kitchen-Table Experiments The backyard engineer's habit is the fair test: change one thing, keep everything else the same, measure, and do it again.
- Making Things: Art, Tools and Repairs Drawing from life trains the eye to see what is really there, and fixing a real thing with real tools teaches care and patience.
- Kitchen and Home Skills A child who can dress himself, pack a lunch and cook a meal is capable, and he knows it.
- Music and Performing Singing is the one instrument every child already owns.
- Reading Aloud and Real Books Fluency is heard, not clicked: someone has to listen to him read.
- Local History and Primary Sources History is closest in his own town and his own family.
- Money at Home Money is learned by handling it: counting real coins, watching a balance grow, and writing down every dollar in and out.
- Everyday Talk: Counting, Calendar, Flag and Place Some early skills are spoken, not tapped: counting out loud, saying the Pledge, telling where the cat is sleeping.
- Spelling and First Sentences Early spelling and sentence writing grow on paper, with a grown-up beside him saying words slowly.
- Living Things and Energy: Watch, Test, Draw Life cycles, habitats and energy make sense once a child has watched a caterpillar change, covered a leaf and seen what happened, and drawn the arrows from the sun to his own lunch.