We will be starting our second year of real-live homeschooling and the kids’ ages/grades by next fall are as follows:
WWD4 will be 10 and in 4th grade (Sept. birthday);
MRD will be 8 and in 3rd grade;
KLD will turn 6 and be in 1st grade;
JPD will be 3 and keeping the rest of us quite busy;
MPD will be (hooray!) probably sitting up but not really moving for, at least, the fall.
Things I plan to continue from this year:
1) Homeschooling!
Even though I have countless goals and ideas and things I want to try, I tried to set modest goals for our first year, as I was pregnant and then had a newborn, as well as needing to devote lots of time to helping my mother, who moved to town this year from Texas and has many medical issues. This year has been WONDERFUL, and now I hope never to give up homeschooling. Our Lord has so, so blessed our family in all this togetherness.
2) Our basic schedule: Math, piano, and language arts (spelling, grammar, journal-writing, phonics for KLD) in the morning; all other stuff in the afternoons.
3) Our morning family circle during breakfast with a morning offering,
saint-of-the-day, and catechism lesson or devotional story. The kids love this, especially the stories from
“Devotional Stories for Little Folks” from
CHC. I highly recommend that little book and we’re looking forward to its sequel! Next year I would really like to add the day’s scripture reading to our morning circle as well.
4) A daily warm-up for each child, which I prepared and set out at their places each morning (at least, I did until MPD was born). For WWD4 and MRD, this included
a page of math problems (we timed them at first, until that proved too upsetting for some of us), and either a
grammar “daily-gram” page or a
geography/map-skills worksheet or a religion worksheet of some sort. For KLD, it was usually
letter- or number-writing practice, a very simple addition worksheet, or a maze or word search. Sometimes JPD got a coloring page if he wanted one.
5) Religious education at our parish, St. Thomas Aquinas. This, of course, is in addition to our family reading and discussions about all things Catholic, and WWD’s participation in
ConQuest, which has enriched his faith and hugely blessed our whole family.
6) Lots and lots and lots of reading. For us, this made sense because Mommy could read while horizontal when necessary, because it’s the ultimate multi-age activity, and because we all just really love reading. I was encouraged recently, while discovering more about the
Charlotte Mason approach, that it seemed to be already so much the way we’ve been just naturally doing things. So all this lying around reading is an actual method! We also enjoy audio books quite a bit, mostly in the car and also just the kids on their own while I’m with the baby.
7) Lots of “practical life,” as they say in Montessori. Or, as they say at our house, “chores!”
8) Most of our curriculum, including:
-
Singapore Math for all, supplemented with software, games, and drills;
-
“Language of God” and
“My Catholic Speller” from CHC for English (although I am changing this for next year, I did like it);
-
“Story of the World” for World History;
-
“How Our Nation Began” for WWD4 for American History;
-
Typing Instructor Deluxe (so we can type as fast as Mommy—ha ha!);
- and miscellaneous books for religion, science, art, and of course literature.
Other curriculum thoughts: We have also used “
Sing, Spell, Read, and Write” and “
Prima Latina.” SSRW is very cute and very thorough. In theory, I think it’s great. In practice, I found it hard to fully implement because of my ongoing struggle to have enough one-on-one time for each child. We’re now about halfway through, and many days KLD says she hates it. (Perhaps it's a bit too hard, as it's a 1st grade program for my young-for-grade kindergartener?!) We’ll continue with it, but have been taking a break and using CHC’s “
Little Stories for Little Folks.” I also like this program, which is much simpler and MUCH less expensive. As for Prima Latina, maybe I started it too young, but WWD and MRD both hate it quite a bit. It’s totally workbooky, with a pronunciation CD that we all pretty much hate (but I certainly need!). I’m excited to learn Latin with the kids and convinced that it’s the sure way to an 800 on the verbal SAT. I’m planning to take a break from Prima Latina and start playing around with “
English from the Roots Up” this summer, which covers both Latin and Greek roots.
Things I will do differently next year:
1) The following curriculum changes:
- “
Learning Language Arts through Literature” instead of the CHC language arts books. I am just on fire to try this program, because it is so nicely integrated and suits me theory-wise. At least for the older two. For KLD I’m not sure—I think LLATL at her level may be somewhat redundant with the learn-to-read things I already have. I like the looks of “
Five in a Row” and may do that with KLD (and probably everyone else too). I also like
Wordly Wise—but maybe it overlaps too much with LLATL.
-
R.E.A.L. Science Level 1 - Life, which looks really great.
-
Building Thinking Skills logic books, for WWD and perhaps also MRD.
- A mini unit study (does everyone do lots of mini unit studies?) on presidential elections. Of course. (And one in the summer on the Olympics. Of course.)
2) Try waking up early with WWD to have a half-hour or so of one-on-one time w/him each day. He’s the earliest riser in our family anyway, and I expect that some focused time with me first thing in the morning will really get our day off to a good start. (Now if I can just extract myself from that warm bed with the cuddly nursing baby!)
3) Schedule a specific half-hour for each child, each day. I want to try for a bit more structure in our schedule. Maybe this is a new TOW, but I’d love to hear from anyone who schedules their days in specific time windows for each subject and each child—how does this work and how do you stick to it? We have just used a daily checklist, so far.
4) Sign JPD up for preschool 2 mornings a week. I think.
5) Begin
Book-of-Centuries with each child.
6) Try again to integrate poetry memorization into our curriculum. Use this for handwriting practice. Make poetry journals.
7) Make daily Mass more regularly! (See #4 above.)
8) More structured and specific narration exercises about our readings.
9) Stay home more. The more extracurricular activities I discontinue, the more smoothly things seem to go. It's hard, because I do love all those fun activities.
10) Try to record our antics in a blog—here goes!
11) Always have a clean house, make balanced meals from exclusively whole foods—locally grown whenever possible, exercise for 30 minutes 3x/week or more, keep in better touch with old friends, get the laundry folded promptly upon removal from the dryer, always keep my kids’ nails neatly trimmed, and find a solution to world hunger.
TA DA!!!
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