With this listing, you get to choose which printed books you want for unit #2: Gardening & Preserving. You can choose from: The K-6th Teacher's Guide (essential), the K-6th student notebook, the 7th-Adult Teacher's Guide (you don't need this along with the K-6th Teacher's Guide if you are teaching multiple ages), and the 7th-Adult student notebook. 

If you have multiple ages you are teaching, we recommend teaching from the Teacher's Guide for K-6th and read it all together. Then let either your K-6th students work from the student notebook or your 7th grade and up to work from the adult student notebook. 

Welcome to our brand new project: The Sterling Spectacles Homeschool! Join the Sterling Family (as featured in the popular Sterling Spectacles book series!) as they take on the giant and exciting task of building their homestead from scratch. 

You will get to join them as they buy their property, think through electricity options and water sources, buying animals and building barns, planting a garden and preserving the harvest, cooking, baking, and so much more! And your family gets to learn along the way. 

If you have any interest in real life, modern homesteading, then these new units and are for you! 

Throughout the units, not only will you learn all about modern day homesteading, you will also find an emphasis on real life, real world skills that can be passed down to future generations. Let's dive into this exciting new project:

As homeschoolers, we want to provide our children with a rich, deep, and vibrant education. 

We want them to learn their multiplication tables and how to write a solid paper. We hope they fall in love with reading and learn biology.

But another huge part of my educational goals for my children is helping them to learn real world skills. To learn how to pick up a hammer and some nails and make something new. To know how to bake bread and start a garden. Real, essential skills that they can carry on to the next generation one day. We want their vibrant book learning to meet rich real world skills that engage their mind and their hands.

But, with so much of our focus going to those essentials of reading, writing, and arithmetic, it can feel so hard to be intentional about the rest. As a homeschooling mom of 7 kids, I know this challenge well. You can have the best intentions but it can be so hard to figure out how to fit these additional skills in, or even know how to teach them.

We designed the units so you would work through all 4 one after the other. However, you can just jump into any of the units you want, without feeling like you missed something. 

Unit #2: Gardening & Preserving

With unit #2, you'll all about gardening and preserving the harvest from that garden. The beginner and the more experienced gardener will both find wonderful gems in this unit. 

Join the Sterling Family as they start their own garden on their homestead and learn what to do with all this new produce they have from it. The unit takes you through the very beginning stages of planning out your garden, starting seeds, building your soil, and then move into different food preservation methods like canning, dehydrating, and fermenting your harvest.

Each unit is broken down into 12 weeks (or 12 lessons). It’s designed to easily fit in with all your other homeschool endeavors.

Each week features 2 parts: The first part is the teaching, your lesson for the week. It has about 2-4 pages to read together, it features a brand new Sterling Spectacles short story about the family settling on their homestead, and includes a real life video, bringing the lessons to life! You will also get access to the full audio version of the story AND the teacher's guide so if you just want to hit play and have Jason read it to everyone while you drink your coffee, you can do that too!

The second part to each week is your project. You will get a fun project to work on each week to really tie the learning together. For example, week #2 is all about planning out your gardening year, and you’ll get to make your own wooden garden markers! In the building your soil lessons, you’ll get to make your own compost!

We include step by step pictures along with the tutorial, and a supply list. 

Our aim is to be able to go deep into these essential topics, but also engaging and fun while being soo easy on the parents. It would also work excellently in a co-op setting!

The student notebook will give you a coloring page and an additional project for the week that your kid can work on throughout the lesson!

Table of Contents: 

Week 1

• Lesson 1 - You Can Garden Too! Different Types of Backyard Gardens
• Project - Handprint Garden Stepping Stones

Week 2

• Lesson 2 - Planning Your Year
• Project - Wooden Spoon Garden Markers

Week 3

• Lesson 3 - Building Your Soil
• Project - DIY Compost

Week 4

• Lesson 4 - Starting Seeds
• Project - Egg Carton Seedlings

Week 5

• Lesson 5 - How to Deal with Pests in Your Garden
• Project - Bug Hotel

Week 6

• Lesson 6 - Growing Your Kitchen Garden
• Project - Observing Potato Regrowth

Week 7

• Lesson 7 - Herbal Medicinal Garden
• Project - DIY Elderberry Syrup

Week 8

• Lesson 8 - All About Canning!
• Project - DIY Strawberry Jam

Week 9

• Lesson 9 - All About Dehydrating!
• Project - Dehydrating Fruit

Week 10

• Lesson 10 - All About Fermenting Foods!
• Project - DIY Sauerkraut

Week 11

• Lesson 11 - Fall & Winter Gardening
• Project - DIY Hoop House 

Week 12

• Lesson 12 - Expanding Your Garden
• Project - Homemade Salsa

Teacher's Guide:

This teacher's guide is all of your teaching for the 12 weeks. This is what you will read out of and guide the learning. When you purchase the print version, you will also get FREE access to the digital version AND the audiobook that Jason reads. 

Then you'll get a student's guide for each student you are teaching that they can work through throughout each lesson. 

Download a sample of our new curriculum! You'll get access to all of Lesson #1 Unit #1 to try it out! 

Download it here: https://sterlingspectacles.mykajabi.com/Unit-1-Lesson-1-Download-Sign-UP