California History and Geography Curriculum Planning

Homeschoolers are so optimistic. As we crash land the remainder of the school year, doing the bare minimum to get by, abandoning what little of the plan we had left – we are optimistically planning for next year. Or at least I am.

I’ve had an extremely busy month with house guests, volunteering at a fundraiser, finalizing plans for a home renovation and interviewing contractors, leading music at church, organizing our summer vacation plans, my husband traveling for work, and oh yeah, homeschooling the kids. My priority. Anyways, sadly this means I’ve gotten behind on my blogging. Usually I have a few posts queued up but this week, well, I’m flying by the seat of my pants. It’s Thursday night at 10:30 pm and I’m writing this post on my phone from my bed.

With the school year almost over and summer vacation soon to be upon us, I feel the pressure cooker ramping up to figure out what we are doing in the fall. I want to enjoy the summer, and part of that means preparing early so I can relax later. Plus, my charter school’s curriculum library closes in a couple weeks for the summer so if I want any books or curriculum content to prepare with over the summer, I’ve got to figure out my plan soon.

And this fall, the plan is going to be a hairy scary mess.

On Tuesday, we start a long-planned house renovation. We will be fixing our not-to-code-in-any-way staircase so that my husband doesn’t have to duck anymore. We are replacing these creepy basement stairs with new ones in a better location. And then we are adding an extension out the back of our house. It will be a new master bedroom, ensuite, walk in closet, laundry and mud room, and a half bath.

This renovation will take about 7-8 months. And we will have to move out for about 3 of those months. I’m not sure yet where we are going to go, but I think we will have to rent something nearby on a short-term lease. A 1 bedroom apartment in a building with a pool seems doable. The kids will share the master bedroom, and my husband and I will sleep on our pull out couch in the living room. The pool will hopefully make homeschooling in 600 square feet for 12 weeks doable.

I’m optimistic, but I’m also a realist. I know these renovations will be disruptive. I think we might go a little squirrelly, so I’m planning some short road trips around California during that 12 week period. We can’t leave for long because my son has therapies (occupational and speech) he must attend weekly, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to schedule our lives next year with a few days where we can go on a few 3-4 day trips around the state to see different California geography and historical features.

The schedule next year is going to be a real Tetris olympics. Have I been preparing my whole life for this challenge?

I am planning that next year we will study California’s history and geography, as well as earth environment systems and astronomy for science. This content will tie in nicely to some adventures in our home state.

I’ve purchased a few curriculums to help guide me in my planning. The Around California with Children’s Books by Rea Berg is a beautiful curriculum full of wonderful literature suggestions and a curriculum plan broken down into individual lessons, assigned readings, and short videos. It is inspired by Charlotte Mason. I’m actually really impressed with what I’ve seen so far and I’m excited to dive in.

I’ve been gathering together all my California books that I’ve bought over the years at various library book sales (many of which are also recommended in the curriculum!) and sourcing other books recommended by the curriculum from our charter school’s curriculum library and our local libraries. With them all in one place, I’m going through them and deciding which ones are appropriate for my son’s independent reading level, which ones would make good readalouds, and which will be good background reading for me.

It’s a lot of books! I think I’ve whittled it down to the following (though I still need to forecast out to decide which we will have time for and which will have to be supplemental.

Homeschool Planning Hack – Archive.org

Another resource I have found very helpful in planning and assessing resources is archive.org. Did you know you can borrow almost any book ever written for 1 hour on their website? It’s handy for hard-to-find resources that you’re not sure if you want to purchase. Or, if you’re okay with reading digitally for your homeschool days, it’s a great way to save time and money, not having to track down library books the week you need them or purchase the books to use one time.

Homeschool Road Trips

To go along with the books, I’ve searched out some day trips that get us out of the house (under construction) or apartment:

• Coyote Hills Regional Preserve Visitor Centre: There is an exhibit about the Ohlone people whose traditional territory is in the Bay Area and Santa Clara Valley. Some state provided curriculum for grade 3-4.
• Docent-led small group tour at San Juan Bautista Mission.
• Docent-led small group tour: Life on the Rancho at Castro Adobe State Park.
• Sunnyvale Heritage Park Museum hosts a schools program each spring. The spaces are usually filled by all the public schools in the area but I’m hoping I can arrange a docent-led tour of the schools program area on a Sunday afternoon for Sunnyvale homeschool and private school kids.
• Chabot Space and Science Center
• Lick Observatory (astronomy)
• Cable Car Museum
• Market Street Railway Museum

Some loose plans for overnight road trips:

• A trip to Sacramento to visit Sutter’s Fort, California State Capitol Museum, California State Railroad Museum, and SMUD Museum of Science and Curiosity.
• A trip to Santa Rosa to visit the Charles Schultz museum (my kids LOVE Charlie Brown), and the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County.
• A trip to Jamestown/Columbia to learn more about the gold rush time period and visit Railtown 1897.
• A trip to LA to see the LaBrea Tar Pits (prehistoric California), and also Disneyland, because it’s historic…and also because, Disneyland!

I’ve found a budgeting hack for visiting many of these places! I volunteer at the Sunnyvale Heritage Park Museum, and one of the memberships for purchase is the North American Reciprocal Museum Membership. I bought one from the Sunnyvale Heritage Park Museum for $100 and it gets my entire family admission to over 150 museums in California, including a lot of the ones I plan to visit with my kids. So worth it! The Membership includes thousands of museums across North America – so when we travel, we can also bring along our membership and get free admission. Sadly Disneyland isn’t included in the network (LOL! But the savings I’ll make on admission prices at all the other museums should pay for a Disneyland admission ticket!)

One final planning hack!

I’m just diving into using AI to help me with my planning. I do not use AI to help me in my writing, because I want to be authentically me in what I write to you. And I don’t want an internet full of blog posts written by AI.

But I do like using AI for some planning, brainstorming etc. For example, I used Google Gemini to help me figure out if the artists we are studying are featured in any museums in California.

I’ve also asked Gemini to share 6 famous artworks from these artists and recommend children’s biographies related to each. It has linked me to high quality images that I can print at home for picture study.

Soon I will share my forecasting process for how I plan to actually incorporate all these learning materials into our daily school schedule.

But that’s enough for now!

How is your planning for next year going? Have you read any of these California classics?

Warmly,

Heather

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