Before you begin your daily lessons, please take some time to watch these supporting videos to gain insight into the Daily Wonder approach to learning.
This first step of the morning incorporates verses, poetry, songs, and intentional movement. It is recommended that you begin the day standing with your child and allow each of the components to flow together, much like a circle time would.
VERSES, POETRY & SONG
The opening verse acknowledges that the morning lesson is officially beginning. Instead of simply calling your kids to the learning space to begin the day, we build the experience of reverence by using verses, poetry, and songs to signal the start of your lessons. Singing each day enhances connection and offers a lovely balance to individual recitation. By including poems connected to the seasons, your child becomes connected to the cycle of nature through their feelings. Poems and songs connected to the unit theme enliven the topic of study and support our artistically integrated method. Encourage your child to memorize the poems. Recitation work builds memory, vocabulary, and the strength of individuality, as well as opportunities to practice oral language features such as intonation, pace, and volume. The goal is that by the end of a unit, your child will share the unit poem by heart.
The experience of a Daily Wonder lesson is creative and reverent. This is why Step 1 creates a special moment to acknowledge that the morning lesson is beginning, and Step 8 marks the closing of this part of the homeschool day. Participating in a closing verse, poem, or song is a meaningful and beautiful way to honour all the work and learning that has just taken place.
INTENTIONAL MOVEMENT ACTIVITIES
After reciting your opening verse, poem and song, it’s now time to prepare your child's body for settled, focused work. Intentional Movement Activities support the development of the brain-body connection and the building of new neural pathways. Activities can include a wide variety of things, such as clapping games, circle dances, rhythmical activities, ball-bouncing activities, jump rope, and more.
In past generations, children spent more time in these types of physical activities as a regular play experience with friends: clapping games, jump rope, hop scotch, were not only fun but they had a meaningful purpose in integrating brain pathways, left and right hemispheres, and vertical and horizontal midlines. They were the movements of childhood, and they promoted healthy neural pathways. Today, our children get less of this traditional gameplay, and it is essential to bring it in intentionally.
Math Practice & Activities
Math is something to practice daily for your child to continuously develop their math abilities. That is why Daily Wonder includes a portion of time set aside for daily math practice. Based on Daily Wonder's recommendations, this often looks like some time for fun math games and then some focused time working on skill-building. We suggest using a provincial/state math book available at your local bookstore and following our recommended math focus and suggested math activity in each unit. Daily Wonder ensures that you, the parent, cover all the important math concepts for any given grade. Each unit has a recommended math focus and suggested math activity. Some units also include specific math suggestions within the daily lessons.
Below are some Math activities as well as our approach to Math. The Resource Hub offers many more additional links to math games and activities to bring to your child.
Language Arts
STORYTELLING
What we know at Daily Wonder is that consistency in rhythm and routine along with developmentally aligned story themes is what gives space for the wonder, and the joy. We want children to live in the pictures and wonder at the world. It is from the wonder that their unique take on the world develops.
The rich curriculum is experienced even more deeply through daily story time. A good story offers nourishing soul food for the child. Daily Wonder often recommends a story theme and specific book to use, and when that isn't the case, Daily Wonder offers suggested readers, allowing older children to enjoy independent reading each day. Daily Wonder curriculum usually revolves around a great story theme from ancient myths, folktales, and religious paths. Children receive a depth of wisdom when they build imaginative connections through inspiring imagery. Following the daily steps, the story theme is reviewed and recalled the following day, enhancing understanding and perspectives, and then reflection through artistic rendering to bring it to life.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Our curriculum is concept-based and competency-driven. That means that we will guide you to bring hands-on, creative lessons (competencies to develop doing and knowing) to inspire understanding of concepts over time. By following Daily Wonder’s daily lessons, your child will cover major concepts of literacy. There are some units that have a central focus on literacy skills and others where literacy will be a secondary focus. However, literacy is a foundational skill set that must be practiced every day. We recommend that your child reads aloud or silently every day for 15 – 30 minutes within or after the morning lesson. We also recommend that you encourage regular use of a journal for writing practice; this can be as often or as little as works for your family. Your child will get a lot of practice writing in the morning lesson.
Science
Daily Wonder is all about the wonder and how to engage and bring that curiosity to your child. That means that we don't just feed you ready-made concepts and theories that have already been figured out. We want your child to engage in the process of wondering, pondering, exploring, experimenting, being curious, and coming to a realization through experience. This approach to science is phenomenological.
Social Studies
Daily Wonder delivers Social Studies units that guide parents to bring local, provincial/state, country, and continental geography and history to their child. These units guide parents to integrate Indigenous values and knowledge that pertain to the land they are living on. As well, Daily Wonder delivers units that highlight many of the major religions around the world. These lessons are brought through religious stories and biographical stories. They are brought in to deepen your child's appreciation and understanding of the various religions of the world, their contributions, and the lessons imparted. These units are not created for religious teaching but rather to teach about religion. Daily Wonder, Grade 5-7, offers units that encourage reflection regarding the positive and negative impacts of religion on the earth.
Is Daily Wonder Religious?
Daily Wonder curriculum explores many significant religions from around the world and across time within the context of history and geography. For example, Grade 6 explores Christianity and its impact on the world related to Roman and Medieval Times. Daily Wonder does not guide parents to bring Christianity as a religious practice but rather as a historical understanding. Throughout the years, Daily Wonder explores Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, and Christianity as they relate to the human story. Daily Wonder is integrative, and as such, we aim to immerse the child in the experience of the people they are studying. For example, in Grade 5, when learning about Ancient India, it's suggested that children chant Buddhist prayers in Sanskrit. In Grade 3, when studying creation stories, it is suggested that children learn to recite prayers in Hebrew. The Lord's Prayer is recommended as a verse to learn in Grade 6 because it fits with the Roman unit of study. There is an additional opportunity to learn it in Latin, which can be an exciting and challenging experience. This holistic and integrative approach, with a wide lens, promotes cultural appreciation and diversity of perspective.
Daily Wonder is not a religious curriculum, yet it is spiritually minded and has a foundation that acknowledges the unseen spiritual world. Parents will find verses and songs that refer to spiritual realms and offer terms such as Spirit or God. It is entirely up to parents whether they would like to use these verses or choose others that suit their values. Daily Wonder is a flexible curriculum that you can adjust to suit the needs of your family.
Bookwork
Daily Wonder students create their own learning portfolio to reflect the learning that is taking place. Each entry is an artistic representation of the concept learned. By creating this learning portfolio, the child directly engages in their learning process rather than passively reading and learning from an assigned textbook. A lot of pride comes with creating your own textbook, and a lot of care and attention goes into the writing and drawing, as well as the book's aesthetics, such as page layout design and neatness. The child is led from the early years through the grades to bring more and more independence and sophistication to their portfolio pages. We recommend using a large blank-page book (32cm x 40cm or 12.5” x 16”). In the video below, Rebecca demonstrates how to bring a drawing to a child in Grade 1, 2 or 3 for their Learning Portfolio. The Learning Portfolio is a place where your child will express their learning artistically. It is a place to gather evidence of their understanding of concepts brought to them over several days. The Learning Portfolio is a final good copy of your child's work.