Monthly Themes Printables - Science, Composers, Artists

If you can't find something online... try making it yourself. 


I love the canva.com website for making my own printables when I can't find what I need somewhere else. In this case it was all-in-one pages of 12 top composers, artists, and science unit studies for this year. I already had some printouts from various websites for those areas, but all the loose pieces of paper floating around and a lack of a central list meant that we weren't as consistent last year in our unit studies as I wanted to be. We listened to classical musical occasionally, checked out some library books on famous artists, and had nature walks and watched science movies, and that was all good! But this year, with Bloom and Pippin a year older, some extra structure should help us learn more effectively and have fun along the way. And since we're expecting a third little human to arrive at our home this summer, I am allll about organizing now while I still have energy and time!

Another change I made was to organize the artists and the composers chronologically, instead of just choosing at random (although Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite" is always a good idea around Christmas! My goal is that over the course of the year we will be more aware of the flow from the Renaissance to Cubist art, for example, and from rich Baroque music to Hollywood symphonies. Obviously, with only 12 spots per genre, I had to leave out multiple famous artists and musicians, from Frida Kahlo to Verdi. But who knows, maybe studying these diverse frontrunners will spark our curiosity to learn more about these people who contributed so much to western culture. 

And the science themes? There's not as much deliberation behind those, except that I wanted us to be able to study insects and plants in the summer instead of the winter. And starting off a new year studying dinosaurs? Pippin will be thrilled. He does well with his workbooks, but I think diving into these enrichment themes will be a fun addition to the everyday basics of reading, writing, and math. We aim for well-rounded here, but also for FUN, and since I love history, learning more about the different time periods while doing crafts will make my teaching more fun. And I'm sure we can coax Papa to come join us for science experiments for the science themes each month, since science and technology are more of his thing. 

Happy 2021!










Feel free to print and enjoy! These are png image files, since the pdf files don't seem to upload on Blogger. 

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