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Anyone Back to School and want to share how it's going?
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I have a year 1 and a 4 year old tag a long and a 20 month old “helper”
We started last week and did 3 days, leaving out history. This week we picked up on Tuesday and added in history are are going full force. I was planning to start at the beginning of July but we moved and I was happy to start as soon as we have.
So far it has gone well. We are doing Early Modern and my kids just love going and finding each thing we learn about on a map. My daughter is completely enamoired by our family BOC. Everytine we have added somebody/something she wants to see what happened on the page before and after.
We started embroidery today. She isn’t quite ready for it but has been begging for a year so I bought a cute kit at Target for 50% off. It is really going to test her patience and fine motor skills because it requires specific small stitches.
Print to cursive Proverbs is going very slowly. DD doesn’t have great printing but asked to learn cursive so I figured we could give it a shot. She loves how pretty it is and it trying really hard. But when only doing 1/4 of a lesson a day it is going to take a while to get through.
We are flying through the Treadwell First Reader. Since it isn’t challenging her I’m really making her focus on fluency and eloquence when reading. I don’t want to push her too soon with starting the second reader. She loves to read.
Math u see alpha is going slowly. Where my daughter is excelling in reading she is a little slower in math. We just do one page a day and the little kids build with the blocks while we work.
We are using 106 Days of creation and my ds4 loves it. I’m only doing 1 lesson a week and nature study/journal once a week. Plus all the outside time. Both kids are really enjoying this study.
We do art once a week. So far we hav e learned primary and secondary colors. We have also learned about mixing primary to make secondary. Next week I will talk about either tints and shades or complementary. This may be their favorite subject.
Composer, artist, hymn and folk songs are wonderful. I love these. Even the baby gets excited and dances around to Yankee Doodle. I love hearing what my kids have to say about the different composers songs.
So far we are happy with the choices. It takes us about 90 min give or take each day which flys by.
Okay, so this is harder than I thought. A few specific books come to mind for plants so let me list those. In the first list all several are old books you can find free online to read or download. I’ll list some websites with living book lists for science topics. Those you can wade through on your own!
Seed Babies and Little Wanderers – both by Margaret Morley
Plant life in Field and Garden by Anabella Buckley (it is part of a series)
One Small Square books – each focuses on a different habitat/biome.
The Burgess Flower Book for Children by Thornton Burgess
Little Flower Folks by M. L. Pratt
The Life and Times of the Peanut (or Corn or Apple) by Charles Micucci
Two Booklists on websites:
http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/sciencebooks.htm
http://www.pennygardner.com/sciencebks.html
Random titles I have out from my library right now (not the whole list):
The life of a bean by Hibbert
A Seed is Sleepy by Aston
Plant Life by Riley
A Fruit is a Suitcase for Seeds by Richards
Seeds by Robbins and Autumn Leaves by Robbins
We started school July 1st, but have not been doing full weeks. I started early because of my other daughter being in the hospital and making overnight trips to see her, since she is three hours away. It’s hard to get much school done on these trips, so I wanted to get a head start, so we don’t fall way behind.
Our days are going well, for the most part. I did encounter a problem with the language I chose this year, “First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind”. The format is not a good fit for my daughter, so I am going to make a change. I have English for the Thoughtful Child, so I have decided to switch to that. There isn’t a lot of grammar (parts of speech) in volume one, but I am not going to concern myself with that for now. Writing and understanding what is written is more important for her right now than grammar terminology.
We are using Math on the Level to work on certain math skills as we choose using real life activities and games, and I have my daughter working in a Kumon word problem book. Our history is going well, as we began with Creation, reading Christian Miller’s Story of the Ancient World. I am using Homeschool in the Woods timeline figures to make a timeline on the wall, so she can ‘see’ how things progressed from the beginning. Spelling You See is working great! She is doing wonderfully marking vowel chunks. Hopefully consonant chunks will be the same. I think that will really help her spelling. Character and Bible study is going very well. I have so much I want o cover in that area, as my daughter is nearing her teen years. We have been reading about PA birds for science, since we were just camping. I want to let her enjoy the outdoors as long as possible, so we will focus on topics that will take us outdoors (e.g., plants and animals), utilizing Science Scope and library books. We are using Abeka readers for her reading practice, and she is enjoying those stories. She loves when I read to her, and I have some books I can’t wait to read to her. Although we have to make this change in language, I am excited about this year. It has been a challenging 2-3 years understanding my daughter’s special needs and finding a good fit in curriculum, but I’m more confident now that we are on a good path. I finally have her testing date set in September, so I am hoping for even more suggestions for helping her move forward in her learning.
We started June 29. It’s been going about like usual. Good, but challenging. This is our 18th year of homeschooling.
I’ve never done a blog, but decided I’d post every day a bit about how the day went. There are some videos too. You can find it at
ThatFamilyJournal.blogspot.com
If someone wants to tell me how to make a link here, I’d love that!!
We have a junior doing Sonlight Government. They really give you a TON of reading don’t they? It should be good. She’s also doing Apologia Chemistry. I’m giving her these last 2 years to do it since she doesn’t need another science credit after Chem. She’s doing Algebra 2 and we started her Geometry book once or twice a week to add variety. She’ll finish that next year. We’re also using Brave Writer Help for High School.
My 7th and 8th graders are doing everything together. I use Brave Writer with them. Ideas from Partnership writing along with my own ideas. I have them doing American History starting with the Civil War. We needed modern history. We’re using A History of US and Landmark History of the American People. They like Landmark better. I use all kinds of things for math. Ray’s, Strayer-Upton, Calvert books, my brain. They don’t love math. No one here does except me. My 8th grader is using Apologia’s General Science. She’s just finishing it this year, and then we’ll do something else because we want her 9th grade to be Physical Sci since she has a hard time with math. We don’t want to hit Chem too early. My 7th grader is using the Wonder Book of Chemistry. Also, both of them are using Tops Analysis.
We read and discuss literature books independently and aloud of course, and I’m trying to make sure we do the other CM “fun” stuff each week. It’s hard because of health things. We’re happy with everything we’re using. The only thing that bothers me is not being able to get up as early as I want.
We started back on the 20th and I can honestly say it’s been our best start ever and shaping up to be our best year ever. I feel like we are learning more, but our days are shorter. Even my oldest, who never gets excited about school, told me that she was loving the way I planned everything and the book choices I made for her to read. I think a lot of why it’s going so well is because I really had a lot of time to think about what would be best for each child and the time to plan it all out for the entire year so it all flows and complements each part. Honestly, it’s that personalized education that makes homeschool so special combined with Charlotte Mason’s wisdom about reading really quality books slowly and thoughtfully, alongside the Circe Institutes focus on restful teaching/learning, truth, beauty, and goodness. It’s really been joyful to teach so far this year.
It has been great to read each response! Keep adding to the thread ladies any time you wish! I’ll go ahead and update from the rest of this week for my family now.
My overall impression of week 1 is that it went well. Easing in has been perfect because nobody feels like we’ve gone from summer’s uber relaxed days into whole hog days of assignments. Every day things have been done by lunch, and generally an hour or so earlier than that for most of the kids.
The one problem area we’ve got so far is one I knew we would have. My kids like to talk. They chatter and burst out with things that come to mind (related to our subject usually, but still total interruptions). So in family studies if I or someone else is reading something aloud to the group and it sparks a thought I have kids who will just burst out with it. Or if someone is taking a turn narrating/talking/answering a question/explaining a thought two or three other kids may start talking together or try sharing their thoughts while the first child is still speaking.
I love that they’re enthusiastic and want to share. I just need them to work on the respect for listening to another person and waiting for their turn to share. It’s a hard lesson when you’ve got 8 kids with 7 being elementary age or younger…lol. My goal for now it improvement. I will gently remind and they will slowly learn. Or so I hope. (The 14 and 10 year old do pretty well with this, the 9 yo is one of my chatterers, and the other five are age 7 and younger – they talk a lot.)
My impressions so far of the various curricula we’re using so far:
- History Revealed volume 1: Ancient Civilizations and the Bible – we are on month 4 of this and it’s going well. We like all the options. I’ve just added in Scripture Study for Latter-Day Saint Families: Old Testament this week to expand on our study and it is great. We started studying Joshua and the Israelites today, having finished up with Moses and the Israelites.
- Math U See: Works well. Makayla is my first to use Algebra 1 and the only thing we don’t like is that the test booklet is set up to look like ‘standardized testing’ so there are multiple choice answers. She still has to do the math to figure out the answer, but we would rather not have those options. Joseph and Emma are starting Epsilon (Fractions) and Emma is grasping it faster than Joseph (she’s 4th/9yo, he’s 5th/10yo and usually the more math-y). I think both need some more work on multiplication facts though, 7s and 8s seem to be tripping them up again. Sigh. Daniel is in the middle of Beta (subtraction) and doing just fine. Oliver has started Alpha (addition) and likes math for now so hopefully this will continue to be something he enjoys.
- God’s Design for Science: The World of Plants: We’re enjoying this. We add a lot of living books to it and just enjoy. I like that it has short lessons that lead us through the broad subject of plants a new concept at a time.
- All About Reading level 1: Oliver is more than halfway through this and just picked it back up after a break the last month. He’s enjoying it. He likes the stories, likes the activity pages when they come up.
- One Year Adventure Novel: Makayla and I are watching the dvds for this and she then pulls out the books to read and work through. So far so good. I think she’s intrigued and while it’s imposing structure on her she’s tried writing a novel on her own and seen how the lack of structure has made for poor progress at times. She’s willing to trust the process and try this.
- Independent reading books: Unbroken, Makayla likes it so far. Joseph, Emma, and Daniel are all enjoying their biographies from the Who Was series and enthusiastically narrating what they read. Emma actually finished her book today reading ahead. It works out really well as hers was about JK Rowling and today is Rowling’s birthday, as well as her character Harry Potter’s birthday, and yesterday was another character’s birthday, Neville Longbottom. We’re celebrating by baking a cake and watching one of the movies this afternoon. 🙂
Tristan, can you spell out for me what subjects you are starting with now and what you will be adding in and when? I read your first rundown of the first days and it seems that your ‘easing in’ weeks have almost all of my ‘busy days’ included. I don’t imagine I’ll ever be as gifted as you are in juggling all that we do – I think you must have magical powers really – but your inspiration is good for me.
Magical powers would be handy…lol. Here are the things we still need to add in over the next few weeks:
Brave Writer – this is for my 10, 9, 7, and 6 year olds. Oldest has already started her writing course, One Year Adventure Novel.
Apologia Biology – this is for my 14 year old. Younger kids have already started their science.
Spelling Wisdom – my older 3 use this.
Artist study
Composer study
Hymn study
Nature study
Those last 4 are done as a family. I’m going to check out the art museum we have a membership to in the big city to see what exhibits they have coming soon or that are currently up to help choose an artist to start with (and kick it off with a field trip). Composer study we’ve done a variety of composers over the years so far and I still have yet to do John Williams. I think I really want to start this year with him, so I need to find specific pieces we’ll cover. Hymn study just needs started, have hymns in mind already. Nature study – honestly, I’m waiting until late in August in the hopes of a slight cooling of temperatures. The kids do their own nature study discoveries but formal hikes/walks as a family have been on hold a bit in the heat with my pregnant self. We visited the Japanese Gardens about 2 weeks ago and while the kids had fun I did not.
Oh, and here are the ones we’ve already started, I missed that request until rereading your comment Shannon.
History Revealed – whole family
God’s Design for Science – The World of Plants – younger 7 kids.
One Year Adventure Novel – oldest.
Literature – older 4 have independent books they are reading, this round is biographies.
All About Reading – 5th child, age 6, is learning to read with this.
Copywork/Calendar work – the 7, 6, and 4 year old have letters/numbers/words/sentences depending on preference for copywork as well as blank calendar pages to fill in while they count to 100 days of school. The 4 year old is NEVER required to do school, but he insists he be like the ‘big kids’ with a binder of papers to do when the mood strikes.
Math U See – Older 5 kids.
This year I have a 3rd grader and a K’er, along with a 3.5 year old preschooler and am due in a few weeks with #4. We started last week to try to get a jump on things before baby arrives. We had been doing light school over the summer (read alouds and some independent work) so it wasn’t a huge transition for them. Mostly I think things went pretty well for the first week. I am having DS (3rd grade) and myself take turns with doing “preschool” and “kindergarten” activities with the two younger ones and they are enjoying that. Mostly he reads to them and plays games or does easy activities. We are doing a “morning basket” for scripture memory, Bible, poetry, spanish/Bible drill, and history reading. Then on Fridays we do art instruction, picture study, poem memorization, and I am letting the kids pick which extra reading to do if we have time.
DS has about an hour of independent work including math (math mammoth 4th grade), 2 independent readings (he gets to choose from assigned science, history and literature as to how he wants to arrange them during the week), cursive copywork, and then we are dabbling in some independent work for science and geography, and trying to do one Book of Centuries entry weekly.
Then I have another half hour time slot that I call “special” in the late morning where we do science 2x/week (loosely using Considering God’s Creation), geography (BFB geography through literature), nature study, and “girl time” (cooking/baking/cleaning with the girls).
I have also tried to organize myself and my chores a bit better. I have 2 half hour slots daily, one for “manual chores” and one for “paper chores.” The manual chores are just an assigned area each day of the week that I can kind of focus in to tidy up. The paper chores are request library books, filing, menu plan/grocery list, and school prep. It is going well so far, but I know it will be crazy when we have a newborn!
Nicole
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