French Immersion Homeschooling

I was on top of things this summer and I have already chosen and ordered our books for September. I think most of what I ordered was secondhand either from Amazon or Lireka. Ordering secondhand means you do have to allow for a longer period for things to arrive.

Français:

These books are actually for grade 3, but since we only started French immersion last year, M1 is not at a grade 6 level in French reading and writing. I find these books are at just the right level to neither be too hard nor too easy for her. She did about half of it last year when I switched her from Les mots sont vivants, and when she is done these she will start level CM1.

Orthographe/dictée:

M1 started this book last year and has been doing really well with it. When she is done this one, I have the CE2 level for her. There is a very expensive guide pédagogique that you can buy, but I didn’t bother. I divide her spelling over 4 days. On day 1 and day 2 she does the two pages in the book. On day 3 she does the pas-à-pas from Bout de gomme (and practices her words/dictée). (Unfortunately it looks like most of the Animaux du monde pas à pas have been removed from bout de gomme. I will leave a comment on the website and see what they say. Update 14/08/2026: the pazapas have been removed and are now only available through purchase in a book called En Route pour le documentaire, which is not yet available in Canada. But I’ve been told you can google other pas-à-pas with the same animals, but unrelated to this specific program). On day 4 we do the quiz. Without the guide pédagogique you don’t have the actual dictées, but you can still use the vocab words. Somehow I did find the dictées online, though. There is an entire Facebook group dedicated to this book, with extra resources if you need.

Écriture:

This is a fairly short refresher course on cursive writing. M1 could really use it, because her writing is quite sloppy, however much I nag her to do better. It is only 30 pages, and I don’t know yet what I will do when she is done this. Pretty soon I will probably stop making her do cursive as its own subject and instead require her to do most or at least some of her French work in cursive. The important thing is to learn it. Later on if she wants to keep using cursive or not is up to her. I don’t think I know any English Canadian that uses cursive in their everyday writing, but I am at least grateful to know how to write and read it.

English Writing

She still needs to finish the first book in this series, and then we will start book 2. I have divided each chapter up into two weeks, because they are fairly large, and I only devoted two days per week to English writing, and we need one of those days during week 2 to revise what she wrote and do a good copy. (By the way, I found I did not need the teacher’s edition at all).

English Spelling:

Comme d’habitude, we are using the Spelling Workout series (warning: it’s American, so things like colour and neighbour and flavour will be spelled weirdly). I really like this series because it is so easy for my child to do on her own. It is neatly divided up into 4 pages per chapter. The first page is just a paragraph to read, with some of the vocab words in it. What we have always done is: Monday – first two pages, Tuesday – second page, Wednesday – no page, just copy out your words, Thursday – third page, Friday – quiz. Easy peasy. M1 doesn’t have dyslexia or any other learning disability, other than sometimes being a whiner. For M2, who does have dyslexia, we have tried many other resources, but this year I think she is finally ready to start Spelling Workout. One more thing I forgot to add: eventually this series starts giving 20 words per chapter instead of 10. I think that is too many, so for the quiz I tell M1 that she can choose whichever ten words she likes best.

Conjugaison:

This book took ages to arrive when I ordered it, but right now Amazon is saying it is a Prime item, also 41% off. So there ya go.

When I firsted started M1 on Les mots sont vivants, conjugation was a huge part of it and I realized I need to seriously do some catch up. But as that book was too hard and we switch to La Librairie des écoles, conjugation is not as pressing. I have her doing conjugation only twice per week this year, and it will most likely show up in her grammar books as well.

Rédaction:

I think this series looks really good. It is attractively layed out and each chapter is nicely divided into several sections. I wouldn’t call it Charlotte Mason-approved, because it is a step-by-step approach to writing, which I seem to recall her opposing. But I think this looks perfect for a student that does not have French as her first language. I bought my copy on Amazon.

Grammaire:

So far I have loved this series. I did not start my kids with grammar right from grade 1, which is partly why she is only in CE2 this year. However, you could probably start grammar in grade 2 with this series, because the first book is fairly easy and repetitive. I got mine used on Amazon (although, frankly, they didn’t look used).

Géographie:

I had been inspired by Charlotte Mason to search for a geography curriculum that used interesting stories about people to teach about the different parts of the world. I finally settled on the Atlas mondial des enfants by Éditions Casterman, but then M1 told me that she wanted to do more Canadian geography. Well, one of the benefits of homeschooling is that you can tailor the curriculum towards your child’s interests. Luckily for me, our library had Mon Atlas du Canada, so that I could preview it. Obviously it has no workbook that goes along with it, so this is the system I came up with: she will do geography twice per week. Each province has 4 pages in the atlas. On the first day she will read two pages, then write a narration of at least 4 sentences about what she read, and then do a drawing of something that represents that province. It could be an animal, plant, building, flag, landmark, etc. On the second day she will read two more pages, write at least four sentences about what she read, then draw the province itself and label its major cities.

Lecture:

Will she get through all of these this year? Maybe yes, maybe no! There are some that could be cut if we fall behind, and some that could be read out loud during morning time. Vercingétorix and Jeanne d’Arc are also fairly short and shouldn’t take her too long. I tried to choose books that aligned with our study of the medieval era this year in history, plus a tiny bit of the ancient world and early Christian history that we didn’t get to last semester. You ought to see our timeline, it is filled right up to the Trojan War and then all of a sudden it jumps to Julius Caesar, because I saw that we were running out of time. This is the tentative reading schedule I have come up with so far:

• 1. Vercingétorix contre Jules César par Hélène Montardre
• 2. Au-devant des lions : Saint Ignace d’Antioche par Julio Jimenez
• 3. King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green (priorité)
  • Book One
• 4. Sainte Geneviève : Protectrice de la cité par Louis Bernard Koch (à lire ensemble)
• 5. Moi, Clotilde par Blandine Malé
• 6. King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
  • Book Two
• 7. La Chanson de Roland en 11 récits par Michel Laporte (priorité)
• 8. Aliénor d’Aquitaine par Catherine de Lasa (on pourrait le laisser tomber si on n’a pas le temps)
• 9. King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
  • Book Three
• 10. The King’s Shadow by Elizabeth Alder (priorité)
• 11. Tristan et Iseut par Béroul (peut laisser tomber si nécessaire)
• 12.  King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
  • Book Four
• 13. Jeanne d’Arc par Histoire juniors

Histoire:

Last year we did ancient history and this year we are doing medieval history.

I must admit this book is not the most exciting one to read. It certainly isn’t what Charlotte Mason would call a “living book”. But it is quite good as a history spine. It covers pretty much all the important points and you can jump off from there and go deeper on any topic you want. Last year during our study of ancient history I used this book to teach the kids how to outline and how to pick out the most important info in a paragraph and then sum it up. This was harder for them than I thought it would be. As someone who has pretty much been doing that since forever, it comes so naturally to me. My kids just stared at me like I was asking them to build a particle accelerator. Anyways, it took a lot of me modelling how to do it before they started to get the idea. They generally copied down what I wrote from the whiteboard. I remember copying a lot from the blackboard/whiteboard at that age, and I realized that that was actually an important part of learning how to write my own notes at some point.

This is quite expensive on Amazon. I think I ordered my copy directly from La libraire des écoles along with a bunch of other things in order to make the shipping costs worth it.

Aside from that, I have tried to align their novel studies with medieval history as well, as you can see on this post and on the next ones that I will write for the other grades. I also supplement our history studies with books from the library and sometimes with videos on YouTube.

Latin:

Exact same as last year. My kids have enjoyed these books so far. I like to go slow, and the fact that I am dividing the time between the two programs means that we are using these again this year.

Catechism:

Les trois blancheurs are published by the FSSP in France and are very traditional catechisms. My children complained a bit about the year 4 one, saying that they already knew what it was teaching. So I changed things up a bit, and they will alternate with doing the catechism some weeks and reading a saint story other weeks. The catechism is still good for them to study even if they feel like they have already covered this material, because it uses very technical language which is good for the kids to memorize (which I mean in the sense of being able to accurately explain the Catholic faith, not in the sense of increasing their French vocab, although it does that, too!)

We are sooo lucky to have inherited a copy of this wonderful children’s Bible. We are almost done volume 5 and will then read volume 6, which is the last one, and then we will have read the entire thing! And then we will start all over again!

Not exactly in keeping with our medieval theme for saints’ lives. It partially had to do with which books I could find used for a reasonable price, and also looked interesting. M1 and M2 tried reading Au nom du Christ Roi on there own last year, but found it a bit difficult, so I will try reading it out loud. I guess I forgot to mention that these are books I will be reading out loud with everyone a couple times per week during our morning time.

L’étude de l’art:

Probably will be doing Ambleside Online’s rotation, unless I find something similar in French: Art Study – AmblesideOnline – Charlotte Mason Curriculum

Mathématiques:

My husband teaches the math and they have always used Saxon.

Sciences:

We won’t be doing science until second semester, and I hope to go with Miss French Immersion’s 5/6 science course, minus the human body systems and biodiversity, which we did last year. The units can be purchased individually, so I will probably start with just the first one, forces and flight, and see how we like it before buying the others.

Poetry:

Haven’t yet found anything as good as Ambleside Online, and I feel it is important to do English poetry. We will be doing Book 5.

That’s it for now! I’ve been thinking about Shakespeare and Plutarch as well, but haven’t yet found a way to fit them into our schedule. Perhaps I will do what I’ve done in the past and take a week or two to only do those subjects.

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