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Struggling with next year's plans – seeking input and wisdom please!
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Am I the only one stressing and trying to figure out our plans for our next school year…. which I might add starts Monday for us. Our children are 6 (girl, with high-functioning Autism and health issues) and 9 (son, Sensory Processing Disorder). We do a 5 day week, with Monday set aside as a lighter day where we try and focus on more of the “fun” things (nature walk, field trip, art/handicraft etc), and then Tues-Fri are the typical subjects (LA, Math, Science etc…).
I know somethings:
I’m using old-fashioned readers for both of the kids for phonics/reading comprehension (my son’s reader includes exercises in dictation, copywork, grammar etc… so it’s a great all-in-one). Daily copywork for penmanship. For science/nature study, we’re using Exploring Nature with Children which actually includes a picture study and poem for each week.
But it’s everything else that I’m struggling with, and always have with a CM-inspired education:
– the poetry, picture, hymn, music studies. I just can’t do them all every day. So, I’m torn between putting them on a loop schedule during morning basket, or a block schedule. I know CM would advocate for more regular study, but… to me, I think I’d rather allow ourselves time to really dive in an enjoy the poems, or pictures… to spend every day on them, rather than once a week or two. Then, do I just use the resources I have (Exploring Nature) which covers multiple artists, or do I really try and buckle down and do a more focused study on ONE artist at a time (which will require investing in some resources?)
– History and geography – my daughter with issues at hand is just too young to get it, and honestly my son could care less about history. What he’s interested in is other countries and cultures. So, do I force him to learn history? Or follow his interests? If we do history, WHAT do we do? I confess, I don’t like SCM’s 6 year cycle. Too drawn out for me. So I’m torn between: Story of the World (which would work well since we could do a 4 year cycle then spend a year on intense study of our country, then cycle back again for high school), or spending a year studying the history of our province, or just doing an interest-led approach and learning about whatever he’s interested in: biographies of famous people in history, knights etc…?
– And then, there’s faith: we’re Catholic and we have been really slack in integrating our faith into our lives. We pray before meals and bedtimes (and other times when a need arises), but that’s really it. I have several different resources, and I want to use them all, but then feel overwhelmed trying to juggle them all. I am also bad at seeing other people talk about what they’re using, and then feeling like we should be doing more, kwim? In all honesty – why can’t we just read our Bible daily? Isn’t that enough? Do we have to memorize catechism on top of that? And learn the saints? And learn the rosary? And do a devotional study? And so on and so on. I feel like there are so many things we should be doing, that we’re not doing when it comes to faith studies, that I feel like a failure.
I purchased a program called PACE (Program for Achieving Character Education) which is great. It covers a different character trait each month and gives oodles of suggestions for that trait – stories from the Book of Virtues and Moral Compass, plus other great literature selections, Bible verses, quotes all pertaining to the trait, Saints and other historical figures (such as “Honest” Abe) to learn about that exemplified the trait, plus writing suggestions, discussion topics, picture and music study and other activity ideas – all that tie into the trait. I really saw it as a spine we could use that would allow us to do character work, memory/copywork, expand on our faith studies, we could do biography studies for history, writing ideas etc… It really is wonderful. However, on the flip side – it’s a spine, and I have to schedule it all, and it will require quite a bit of planning.
If I were to be really honest… all I really want to do? Is read a Bible story daily, and then use our Veggie Tales devotional, because I know it’s something the kids will enjoy and they’ll “get” it. But I feel like a slacker, like I’m not preparing them enough, when I see what everyone else does.
– My last struggle is math. Our son’s math takes him so long (45-60 minutes), that by the time we’re done that and LA, he’s pretty well tapped out, so things like history, science etc… always end up getting shoved aside. We normally spend 1.5 – 2 hours in the morning on lessons (math, LA), and once he’s done, he’s done. It’s very hard to give him a break, and then transition him back into lessons later in the day. I confess, I struggle with it too, as our afternoons are normally spent in free play for the kids, chores/cleaning, errands, appointments etc…
It’s not that the math is hard for him (though he gets really anxious when new concepts are introduced), as much as he just really struggles concentrating/focusing on math. Math has always been his nemesis, largely because I forced it on him long before he was ready. It turned into an epic battle, which we’re still suffering the repercussions from. We now use CLE, and it’s been the best of them so far, and he’s doing very well with it, but the lessons are long (on average 4+ pages of questions plus a speed drill and oral drill) and sometimes I wonder why am I getting him to spend all this time on stuff he already knows. But, it’s a spiral program, so it’s not set up to really skip ahead. I’ve been toying with switching him to Math on the Level, which would allow us to work on what he really needs, and would allow a much shorter lesson. But he says he likes CLE, because of the speed drills (which he likes). So… what do I do? Keep on with the CLE math that he enjoys, but is sucking time from the rest of our lessons? Or, try MOTL?
Anyways, I really appreciate your input. I’ve been praying for guidance but so far only feel confused and conflicted. Though deep down in my gut, I feel like I’m trying to do too much, and need to pare it back.
I have just a couple minutes but here are my thoughts as I read through your post.
Poetry, picture, hymn, music – Read the poem once in a week. No big deal! Once is better than none. Picture study – look at it together the first day you introduce a picture and then hang it up where you’ll see it daily (near the dining room table, in the bathroom, wherever). They will see it. The next week look at a new picture and put it up next to the first, or in a new spot all together. We hung ours up in a row. Hymn study – we pick one and sing it each morning to start out day for a week or so, BUT instead why not play one each day when you are ready for the kids to gather for school, or in the car, or at bedtime? Exposure, without a formal lesson or stress. Music, by which I’m guessing you mean composer study, can be just as simple. Get a cd or make a playlist and turn it on every so often. In the car, when you are cleaning, after lunch, etc. Keep it easy and don’t worry about adding a biography about the composer or poet or artist.
History and geography – Do a countries and cultures year! We did. It was awesome. It was 2014-2015 for us. We moved to a new continent about every month, grabbed a host of books from the library about countries in that continent, and read one every day or so. We had maps for at least the continent and 1 country that sounded interesting on that continent. We played with our GeoPuzzle for that continent each week of the month. We read a chapter book set in one of the countries in that continent. We had Material Plant and Hungry Planet:What the World Eats to look at. We didn’t do all those things every day, but we did them all every week. And we did NOT try to cover all the countries in a continent, just a few. We enjoyed the books Children Just Like Me, A School LIke Mine, and others by DK that share about kids in a lot of countries. I took the list of books Five in a Row suggests and sorted them by country (picture books mostly). Then we just used what we could get at the library.
Religious studies – your kids are young, do what works for them. I am not Catholic so I’m not familiar with catechism, etc. We read from the scriptures daily. Or a scripture story reader for my littlest ones. We talk about questions they have.
Ok, I’m out of time! I’m sure others will chime in with ideas!
I didn’t read through Tristan’s reply, but I’m sure she has great advice! I hope I’m not repeating her too much.
–Poetry, picture, hymn, music: We don’t cover these every day. Most CM homeschoolers aim for once a week. In the past, we’ve done composer study while they clean the kitchen…I just turn on the composer’s CD as we listen as we clean. Some people play it in their car. As far as one artist or multiple artists, it’s up to you. I think your nature study plan sounds simple, which is always good! A loop schedule for these subjects is a great idea.
– History and geography: SOTW is a great choice for little ones. My DC really like the coloring & map pages or you can just read aloud and narrate. Some HSers play the SOTW CDs in their cars, so that wouldn’t take any time at all! You can also do interest led history or pick a few “unit studies” for the year. This year I picked a few topics to focus on : Ancient Greece, Explorers, Colonial Times, and States & Capitals. Those topics are our focus for the year. I’m liking this better than the typical 4 year rotation.
–Bible: We’ve struggled getting it all done here. We are Lutheran, so we have our own Catechism that we work on memorizing. I find it difficult to keep up with this and learn new Bible verses, so we tend to focus on one or the other at a time. Over a few years, it really does add up. We spent a year on 10 Commandments, one on the Apostle’s Creed, and one on the Lord’s Prayer, so now we are mostly reviewing them, plus they here the Lord’s Prayer and Creed in church every week. In addition to this, we aim to memorize one longer passage and a few shorter verses each year. I don’t aim for perfect memorization, but am happy with familiarity and if they can recite it along with everyone (which is a bit easier than recitation on their own). “Just” reading Bible stories has been amazing for my DC! They are very familiar with those portions of the Bible, and my DD does very well with adult Bible studies. I credit this to all the time she spent reading through Children’s Bibles. I imagine your DC will also have Catechism instruction at your church, so they will learn more there too.
– Math: 40-60 minutes is too long, IMO. Break it up. If you spend two days on the lesson, that’s okay. We cover math year-round, so I don’t have this struggle to finish the book by the end of the year. We also don’t have 2-3 months over the summer for them to forget their lessons. I often have them do math on non-school days or over the weekend. When it’s only 20 minutes or so, it’s not a big deal to fit in. I’d stick with the math if it’s working. I have to “tutor” my oldest DD through her lessons. I need to be there working with her for most of it, especially with new concepts. I’ve just excepted that she needs extra help here. Your DS may be the same way. We often work through the first few problems together on the white board, then she tries the rest on her own.
I hope this helps! Another thing that helps us is to get to our 3R’s work first (or at least earlier in the day). I feel much more accomplished if we at least get math & phonics in. The world won’t end if we don’t finish our science or history curriculum or get to picture study each week, but regularly skipping math or reading can be more problematic.
I could echo the other comments.
Your children are young. Do less with more enjoyment. The Enrichment Studies lesson plans from SCM would help you to plan doing those extras as morning basket time. Once a week for each of artist, composer, etc… is plenty. Ever so much more than they would get in public school.
20-30 minutes for math tops. Can you do manipulative based?
What about for history reading 50 Famous Stories together and having them narrate.? And then on another weekday read either a two page spread from The Usbourne World History Book and have them make a page for their own history of the world notebook or just narrate. Or use A Child’s History of the World. Make it an enjoyable, on the couch read aloud. No pressure. Still more than they’d get in school. My children have also loved listening to SOTW in the car.
Pick a few wonderful read alouds to do this year at lunch.
I grew up Catholic although I am no longer Catholic. Check out Sarah Mackenzie’s blogs. She is Caotholic I believe. Also, Dawn Hannigan at bysunandcandlelight. They integrate their Catholic faith all through the year in wonderful family friendly ways. They can most assuredly point you in the right direction there.
Do morning basket. Take a short break. Do the 3Rrs if necessary. Some days skip one or two of the 3R’s if it’s one of those days. They will survive. Take a break. Do history and science/nature study on alternating days. Not both on same day. Read aloud at lunch and maybe bedtime.
Enjoy. They are only little once. Take your time and bask in the sweetness of being home with them and having the ability to go slow and really enjoy learning.
I love Sarah MacKenzie’s blog! I actually read through quite a bit of it last night. So much of it really, really spoke to me, especially the following two quotes:
“Our children get a broader education when they go deep into a few carefully selected subjects, not when they dabble in 10.”
“We learn more from deeper experiences, not more of them.”
I really needed to read that, because it really confirms what that nagging thought has been for me all along: we need to do less, and spend more time on it, rather than trying to rush through a checklist.
So, I returned the PACE program I bought. As beautiful of a resource as it is – I know that it is going to become a checklist for me, and that I will try and do too much with it.
I agree with you all that we’re doing too much math, we need to cut it back to 20-30 minutes tops. How I’m going to do that, I’m not sure yet. I may just alternate oral drill and speed drills (not do them both on the same day), that would free up 5 minutes. Then, I’m not sure whether I’ll split his lessons into two days, or if maybe I’ll go through and cross out all the extra practice problems of stuff that I know he knows really well. He’s been asking me, “Why do I have to keep doing these questions, when I already know how to?” (and he really does). I am considering trying Everyday Arithmetic, as well. It’s free, and could easily be done in 20-30 minutes, and if I printed out the lessons would give my son that feeling of independence that he likes. I may try it for a week and see how it goes, and if he really doesn’t like it, then we’ll just continue with CLE as I just mentioned. Sound reasonable?
I love the idea of “schole”, focusing on Truth, Beauty and Goodness, and I think that is what we’ll base our Morning Basket on. Truth will be our faith studies (which will be prayer, our Veggie Tales devo and Bible reading), Beauty can be all our CM goodies. I’m still not sure how I’ll rotate that yet, but I’m leaning more towards a block schedule – spending a month on Language (Poetry & French), a month on Art (picture study and drawing), a month on Music (composer study & recorder). Goodness will be our family read aloud.
Then, I may even pare down our Nature Study. The program is wonderful, but it does include a lot of extras, that again, I can see us getting really hung up on, feeling like we need to check off a list. So, I’m leaning towards having Mondays dedicated to Nature Study (just taking a walk and journaling). Then, the other days of the week, we’ll just read – it might be a science book, a history book, book about a country etc… We have hundreds of wonderful living books sitting getting unused – so this way we can get to them, and of course we’ll narrate.
So to break it down into a daily schedule:
Morning Basket at breakfast
Then,
Memory & Copywork
Math
Language Arts
Reading
That’s it 🙂
And a happy dance! I scored all 4 of the William Bennet virtue books for children (Virtues, Faith, Home and Heros) for $16 on Amazon! So I think we’ll use those as our family read aloud for the year in our Morning Basket.
I think it sounds great too!
Sometimes I like to see our curriculum as a “menu” that we can select from, instead of a checklist we must complete. That might be a possibility for your nature program. You could just do a few lessons from it or pick and choose from them as you go…I’m not really sure how it’s set up. You can save other lessons for the following years. We do this with quite a few of our programs!
Math – We also use CLE. You can cross out some problems you know he does okay with in the review “we remember”. Sometimes there are two or three of very similar problems, so just have him do one and if he gets that one okay, then cross out the others that are like it in concept. Also, we have two math sessions, each no longer than 30 min.
History/Geography – We also did a fun countries and cultures study on our own and used the Dover Countries “Around the World” coloring book, Passport to the World book, Look What Came from…series, and other library books on that country. It was a lot of fun. We did a fun recipe from the country of study sometimes. And there was a bit of history at times. If this is your children’s interest, I’d go with that.
I haven’t read any other replies so I am sure you have already been given great advice. I have had you on my mind since first reading your questions and I just had to come back and throw in my 2 cents.
Poetry-get an anthology and read one poem every day. That’s all you have to do. Read more if you want but this shouldn’t be stressful.
Hymn-I let the kids pick what to sing. Some days we sing 1, some days we sing 3. Some days I pick. It shouldn’t be stressful. We have an old hymnal.
Picture/music study-CM only did these once a week, not every day. Buy one of SCM picture portfolios. Download some Mozart and play it during lunch one day a week. Don’t let it be a source of stress. Find the easiest path for your family.
History-I have tried tons of history resources and the kids never were that interested until we tried D’Aulaires biographies and some of the other Beautiful Feet history books. After listening to A Delectable Education podcast on history I bought some of the ‘spines’ they recommended. Wow! So much better than SOTW or Usborne!
Bible-just read the bible! We are focusing on the stories! That’s it! No character discussion, no linking it to anything. Just read and enjoy. No stress!
Math-we have used CLE and I would say shorten up those lessons and mark out the problems that he/she doesn’t need extra review on. Do the drill at a different time of day. Or do it orally. No need to do every problem every day.
Deep breaths. Big hugs to you. It will be ok! Can you tell I am trying to remind you not to stress? It doesn’t have to be a big production for every subject. Read, narrate, move on. Short lessons. Its actually very liberating when you embrace her teachings!
My kids are 10 & 11 and here are some things I used with them when they were younger that worked well and were pretty stress free on my part.
First, for the whole artist, composer thing…. I let someone else do all the work. I would pull up this site on my computer and we would all look it over. I could leave it up and let the music play. Then I would read the poem. We did this at least once a week, but honestly I would pull it up during chore time and have it playing while we all did our chores and we could see the picture as we moved about and I did this daily. Best part…. it is free!
http://classicalmusicnartcharlottemasonstyle.blogspot.com/
As for the math, I agree with shortening those lessons as previous posters have commented. I would be hesitant to change curriculums because there is always the chance of gaps, which brings with it a whole other set of problems.
History/Geography conundrum… I used all these resources and found them great. I also used STOW in the car, but my kids love history…..
If he likes geography and cultures, this book is great and it also includes how to pray for the people of each nation. (We didn’t do the praying part, so much for good catholic!)
If you want to add in a bit of music and map fun to the geography try this… https://www.amazon.com/Geography-Songs-Kathy-Troxel/dp/B002CB3KPM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471385991&sr=8-1&keywords=geography+songs+kathy+troxel
If you you decide you want to hit history with each country… try this
less spine like with pictures for your daughter to enjoy as well.
If you really want to add some art into the geography/history and make it super unforgettable you can use this….. https://www.amazon.com/Geography-Through-Art-Sharon-Jeffus/dp/1931397589/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471386105&sr=8-1&keywords=Geography+through+art
That is 4 resources that cover several subjects..ART, MUSIC, RELIGION, GEOGRAPHY, & HISTORY and you could just use one resource a day and you have your week covered. using probably 15-20 minutes a day.
I am catholic also and I while I tried to be the “good” catholic too, I found that the easiest thing and what actually got done, was an app from itunes call ipieta. Here is a link that takes you to either itunes or android
This app allows me to pull up on my phone the daily readings and then it has another tab for saint, which I read too, and then There is also a tab for prayers and I select one and we pray it together. The last tab is catechisms and I just use the Baltimore #3, but your kids maybe on #2 level and I just go through a few questions each day and discuss. Because it is all in one place, it makes it super easy to do. This year we started a little notebook that we list people who have died or are sick or just need prayers and everyday we select one person from the list and say one prayer for them. Kids really are enjoying this aspect of our praying. This takes us about 15 minutes to complete.
I personally think your bible story and veggie devotional is great for their ages and if it works best for your family, then that is what you do. We all get into that comparing with others trap and when we try to do what they do, it is usually a big fail because every family is different.
I use my kids as my compass…. if they are happy and engaging then I know we are doing something right. I highly recommend using your child’s interests when you can because they will engage more if they are interested.
I hope this helps you and whatever you decide, I’m sure it will work out just great.
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