4 hours ago
(Donut picture because that's how we started off our school year - with donuts! Also note that there are some affiliate links in this post.)
Well, this has definitely been my most requested post as of late, so I thought I better get a move on and share our 2018-2019 curriculum picks! If you would like to see our first grade curriculum picks, check out this post. If you would like to see how that went, read this. If you want a little more about my homeschool philosophy (and homeschool philosophies in general, which I'll be referencing), click here.
All my friends who have considered jumping into homeschooling in recent years have mentioned to me how overwhelming it is to choose curriculum, so I think people are naturally curious about what other people are using. I love reading curriculum posts! My love of talking curriculum has more to do with being a nerd about this sort of thing. I haven't found myself too overwhelmed because I have my vision for homeschooling and my educational philosophy figured out pretty well at this point (I credit being a homeschool student and reading way too many books about homeschooling). The trick for me is just learning how to pick things that fit with my homeschooling philosophy, but that also fit with my kids' learning styles. I think we've hit on some good ones for our family (for the most part - there are still kinks to be ironed out, as you'll see below)! Here is what we are using this year.
First, who is in school?
This year Wyatt will be entering the second grade, and Gwen will be entering kindergarten.
Wyatt has to meet our umbrella school's requirements for days and subjects, so I have curricula picked for these different subjects and we will work through it all together and include the little ones where possible.
In our family we're more casual about kindergarten, so Gwen will start reading and math instruction, and join in other subjects wherever she wants. We do not technically even have to start doing school instruction, or keep records, or have her registered anywhere until next year. So we'll just make it fun, because my main goal for teaching younger elementary kids is that they are enjoying what we are learning!
We do not do formal preschool at all, so if Clyde or Clarice want to join in with a subject, I have workbook pages and a few crafts at the ready, but nothing planned out. I personally think preschool-age kids should mostly learn through play and just join in when they're interested.
Reading
What We're Using: All About Reading
How I'm Teaching It: Separate levels for Wyatt and Gwen.
Halfway through our last school year we switched reading programs. We started with Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons, which I think was excellent for teaching blending - however, the end of that book gets a little redundant, and Wyatt and I were both hating it by Christmas break. So I ordered All About Reading to continue on from there, and we are definitely sticking with it this year! I have both of my kids on it now. I am a little torn with how to start off with Gwen though - the thing is, Wyatt had a really solid start with 100 Easy Lessons, and honestly a lot of the All About Reading curriculum is really easy for him because he had a whole different reading curriculum under his belt already. I'm curious to see how we like All About Reading when we start with it from the very beginning.
Writing
What We're Using: Institute For Excellence In Writing
How I'm Teaching It: We're doing this subject for the older two together.
Last year was mostly handwriting practice and copywork for us - this year I wanted to start getting into different writing concepts with Wyatt, but also to fit in some handwriting and copywork with Gwen. Enter IEW! I looked up their K-2 curriculum online and was so impressed. I really like Andrew Pudawa and his approach for teaching writing, and this curriculum is going to work really well for us this year. It starts with the basics, like learning to properly form letters, and moves into writing short paragraphs by the end of the year. The first part of the year is going to be brand-new for Gwen and review for Wyatt, and then the second part of the year will be more stretching for Wyatt and maybe just a preview for Gwen.
Math
What We're Using: Rightstart Math
How I'm Teaching It: Separate levels for Wyatt and Gwen.
I completely loved Rightstart last year, and we are continuing with it this year! It is a math curriculum that uses manipulatives, but also has a heavy emphasis on learning to do math problems in your head, and learning through games. I think to teach math, it is important for you to find a curriculum that approaches numbers in a way that feels natural to you, and that's how I feel about Rightstart - it teaches math the way I already think about math. I also love that it's a spiral curriculum, meaning it circles back to concepts throughout the curriculum and approaches them in different ways.
History
What We're Using: Beautiful Feet Books - Early American History
How I'm Teaching It: All together, including little kids.
We used Beautiful Feet Books for history last year, and I love it. To me it is the perfect curriculum for elementary history for several reasons - first, it teaches through real books ("living" books, which is a Charlotte Mason concept), and many of the books for this grade are colorful picture books, which even the little ones enjoy. It's important to me to let my kids learn history through reading actual books, instead of slogging through dry textbooks.
Second, I love how flexible this curriculum is - it comes with the books and a study guide. Last year we needed school to be really gentle (hello, I had a baby in the middle of the year!), and BFB was perfect for that. We went through half the curriculum last year, and will finish the other half this year (this particular level can be used over one year or two). Since I don't expect to be having a baby this year (ha!), I'm excited to put a little more effort into history and find more supplementary resources, maybe even squeeze in a couple for-fun projects. This curriculum is totally conducive to that - you can do as much as you want, or the bare minimum, and your kids are still going to learn something!
On the side, we'll be reading/listening to Story of The World: Middle Ages, because that is what our co-op is covering this year. We will just listen to this in the car or read it in the margins to keep up with co-op, at least until we figure out if we should be doing more co-op prep work. We may be picking up more living books from the library that coordinate with this time period to read during morning time as well.
Science
What We're Using: Who The Heck Knows! (not a real curriculum)
How I'm Teaching It: It will be all together, when I choose which of the four (yes, FOUR) curricula will take priority.
Guys, I am hanging my head in shame right now for how overboard I go on science. There are so many good curricula out there! I love all science topics and don't know how to choose! Part of the problem is that I have a hard time picking because I love it all, and part of the problem is that we joined a homeschool co-op this year (more about that later), and the co-op is doing two, count 'em, TWO science curricula in one year. What is going on???
Okay, sorry for my little freakout; this is what I'm working with. Get ready for a long section.
Our co-op usually uses Apologia elementary science books, which I am all for because I absolutely love Apologia for science. Apologia approaches each scientific subject from a young earth, biblical perspective, the books are written with a Charlotte Mason style, they are fun to read, and they emphasize giving kids practice in the scientific method. I love them. What I don't love is that the co-op is doing Apologia Physics and Chemistry and Apologia Human Anatomy for science this year.
Now, the reason for this is that they like to pick the same science subjects for all the grade levels in the co-op, so people with large families can work on science together. Which is great. Just maybe not so great when your oldest is only in second grade, because I think Chemistry and Physics and Human Anatomy are pretty intense subjects for a kindergartener and a second grader. Especially with Chemistry and Physics, it requires a level of abstract thinking that kids at this age literally do not have the mental capacity to understand yet. The author of these two books even said in a Instagram TV video recently that these two subjects are not going to be geared toward the younger elementary ages as much, and we'll have to take these courses slower. Except that the co-op decided to do both in one year.
I have no idea how in-depth our co-op is going to go on these subjects (it's our first year), but I decided myself that we are not going to go that in depth. We're going to pick up some fun books at the library related to Chemistry/Physics/Human Anatomy, touch on some of the topics so we sort of keep up, and then just have fun with whatever they do at co-op. Then we'll do our own science curriculum at home.
For our science at home, as of right now I have a multitude of curricula and resources to choose from, so we may be switching it up mid-year if what we are doing isn't working. But I decided to go with Building Foundations Of Scientific Understanding. This isn't so much a curriculum as a guide book for teachers and parents on teaching different science subjects to K-2 grade. I really love how the method in this book emphasizes teaching kids to observe and ask questions, and for this year, I like that it covers a variety of subjects. I wanted to cast a little wider science net for my kids this year to see where their interests lie, and to give them some foundational knowledge in different scientific fields, before we go back to a more focused subject with Apologia next year (but not Chemistry And Physics).
The only thing I don't love about this science guide is that it's not written from a Christian perspective. From what I've read, any problematic lessons about evolution/Big Bang theory don't come into play in this particular volume, but the author certainly is coming from a secular humanist worldview. I feel fairly comfortable with using it for this year because as I said, this book isn't a curriculum so much as a guide book for teaching science concepts to young children. All the information is filtered through me, so I will certainly be pointing my kids back to their Creator through every subject we touch on.
We also picked up Exploring Nature With Children, which is our fourth science curriculum. This is a nature study guide. I struggle with knowing what to look for on our nature walks, and I love how this guide lays out everything for you - we just grab the pages for that day's lesson, and off we go. This will be more of an enrichment subject, so we'll do it only once per week. We did the first week's lesson already, and it only took about 15 minutes in the outdoors, so it's completely doable, and it was so fun!
Bible
What We're Using: Community Bible Study (group meetings once per week) and daily Bible time.
How I'll Teach It: Only Wyatt will have homework this year from our Bible study meetings. The little kids just love learning while we're there! We're doing a short daily study each day during morning time all together.
Last year we joined the CBS I went to as a child, and we loved it. It was really refreshing to me to get together with women my age as well as women who are older and wiser than me and really dig into different books of the Bible. I was also really impressed with how much even my little, tiny kids picked up from their classes, and we all love the time to get out and fellowship with other believers mid-week! Our CBS has a homeschool program, so the older kids do the same study as the adults. Wyatt and I will be studying the same books this year, which is really cool. I love it.
Geography/Social Studies
What We're Using: My Story (Master Books)
How I'm Teaching It: Only Wyatt will go through the workbook this year.
This is a miscellaneous subject I threw in here. I flipped through this book at a homeschool conference and decided I liked it for an intro to different cultures around the world. The lessons are really short, it's written from a Christian perspective, and I just wanted to cover our bases since Geography is not my strongest subject. I am hoping to add in the Beautiful Feet Books Geography study when I have enough money saved for it!
I'm going to write another post about the resources I'm planning on using for our Loop Schedule and Morning Time, which is a catch-all for all the things that I want to do but that we can't fit in every day. Stay tuned for that! But the curriculum above is our core, and overall (with the exception of science) I'm feeling really settled and happy about it! If you have any other questions about anything I mentioned, or you want a more in-depth look at something, speak up and I'll add it to the queue of posts to write!
This week we started school! You know those yearly surveys that parents give their kids at the beginning of school years or on birthdays? I've never been organized enough to do one of those, and to be honest, I'm kind of regretting that now. I think those surveys are not only an opportunity for watching how your kids grow over the years, but also seeing who they are in the right now. With a big family and the busyness of life, it takes more planning to sit down and ask my kids questions that matter, to intentionally learn more about their personalities, preferences, worries and joys.
I have been asked a few times to share my curriculum choices for this school year, and that post is coming as soon as I have a minute to sit down and write it! But I wanted to share a quick post about a resource that I'm hoping to add to our morning basket routine, just for fun, but also to take that time to intentionally learn more about the inner workings of my sweet kids.
I had the opportunity to be a part of the launch team for this book, and I jumped on it, because this book is the type of thing I've been looking for to help me slow down and take time to ask my kids about what makes them tick. I obviously haven't read the whole book since there are 365 entries, but there are some fun questions, and some more serious questions. There is space enough to write one child's answer for three years. I plan on using it more as a book of prompts and recording my kids' answers elsewhere, or splitting the questions up between kids and doing two a day. It's meant to be used with just one child, but I think it can be easily adapted for multiple kids, and I am excited to try it out!
Stay tuned next week for more on my curriculum choices for the year, and what else is in our Morning Time basket!
Note: I am on the launch team for this book and received a free copy from the publisher. This is my honest opinion.
Note: I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
This year I have been working on getting my monthly budget ironed out, so I've been looking for more books on how to save money. I had read halfway through Odom's other book on finances, and then I saw You Can Stay Home With Your Kids for review and snagged it!
This book is just how it sounds, 100 tips for saving and earning money for the purpose of helping moms stay home with their kids. If you do everything in this book, will you absolutely be able to stay home with your kids? I don't know. But there is a ton of good advice here.
Personally, I especially appreciated Odom's tips on saving money on groceries. I struggle with our grocery shopping, and this book had a lot of good tips for how to make my grocery money stretch.
I thought some of the suggestions on creating an income stream on the side were a little overly-optimistic. While lots of moms do quite well with side businesses, suggestions like "create a blog" or "join a direct sales company" don't reflect that it is much more difficult to establish these as money-making businesses than it sounds, and the people who are successful at it often put in a full-time job effort to make them profitable. Just because she made her blog profitable doesn't mean it would be easy for you to do it.
I also didn't necessarily agree with her assessment of whether to buy or rent a home. Maybe if you are trying to save money for a season to stay home with your kids, renting could be a good suggestion, but in the end you still have nothing to show for all those payments (unlike when you buy a house). Odom suggests that maybe the classic view of a house as an investment isn't always a great idea. She is drawing from her own experience of having an underwater mortgage after the crash in 2008, so I can understand why she would be a little gun-shy after that. However, I'm not sure her advice to rent is necessarily up-to-date with the current economy, or applicable to every area of the country. But I do agree that it's smart to save up a good-size down payment, and rent until then.
Overall, I enjoyed this book and got some good ideas from it, so I think it's definitely worth the time if you are trying to find more wiggle room in your budget!
Before I started, I got inspiration to do a camping/mountains/outdoor/adventure themed room for the boys, and it just so happened, that after I decided to do that, I realized that Target had come out with a line that fit with my vision perfectly! Can't get better than that.
I painted the walls a Behr color called "Campfire Ash" - a very appropriate name for a room with this theme. It's a very pale, neutral gray. The boys' room is one of the only rooms in the house that gets warm light, so the gray actually worked in there without being too cool (I'm not a fan of grays in rooms that already get cool light).
In the pictures below, you might also notice that one side of the boys' bookshelf looks funny - that's because when I was almost done painting this room, I let Wyatt take a nap in there. There was a can of paint with the lid on, and a brush in there with him. I honestly didn't even think about it since the can was sealed, but I went in there later to find my little boy covered in paint, paint on the carpet, and paint covering one side of his bookshelf. I had to scrub to get it looking this good! We had a lot of paint mishaps during our remodel. I was not happy at the time, but it's a funny memory now! Look at how little my babies were in the last pictures!
---
Here's the linkup - share a post with photos of your house, and add it below!
If you haven't heard of Katie Davis Majors, she is a young missionary who went to Uganda when she was 18, ended up staying and starting a ministry, and adopted 13 girls. I remember reading her first book way back when I was first married. I don't remember that much about it, but I remember flying through it and being inspired by Katie's devotion to serving the Lord. So I obviously wanted to pick up her second book that came out this year.
I had mixed feelings about this one. There were things I liked, and things I didn't.
Things I Liked
First, let me just say, it took me forever to finish this book because for the first half, nearly every chapter left me in a puddle of tears. Katie picks up the book by telling of her life in a house with her 13 adopted daughters, and how they came to open up their home to people who were injured, dying, or just trying to get on their feet. The rest of the book is her story of her own struggle to trust in God's goodness while living and personally witnessing so much suffering under her own roof. It took a lot of vulnerability for her to discuss her doubts in a book like this, and she always comes back to the right conclusions - that God is sovereign, He is good, and even when people are not healed and there are no happy endings, He is working all of it out for the good of those who love Him, and for His own glory. I think this book could certainly be encouraging to anyone who is struggling with similar suffering or doubts. It was inspiring to read Katie's thoughts on this subject.
What I Didn't Love
Throughout this book Katie not only shares stories from her life, but she delves into different Bible accounts and relates them back to her own life, and she almost seems to allegorize the biblical accounts in the process. I'm just not sure I like that - sometimes it worked, and sometimes it sat wrong. She takes certain biblical passages that were meant for a certain people group at a certain time, and applies them to herself, so the hermeneutics here are questionable. It also bothered me that her writing in this book is similar to Voskamp's (who also wrote the foreword) in that it sometimes sacrifices clarity for poetry.
Another thing she does frequently is speak about Jesus as if He were standing next to her, whispering in her ear, and she uses phrases like "I heard God say..." followed by a quote. I don't like it when Christian authors do this. 1) Even if you are intending to use this in a non-literal sense, when you say you heard God speak...well, it sounds like you are saying you heard Him audibly speak those exact words to you. I assumed Katie was speaking metaphorically, but I think it's a serious thing to claim to be speaking for God (which is what you are doing when you "quote" Him extra biblically), and I think Christians in general should take this a little more seriously. 2) The thing is, God HAS spoken to us, through Scripture, which should be sufficient for us. I don't like to see authors putting words in God's mouth.
Finally, there were a few cringe-y moments for me when Katie said things like "In the darkest night, I was having a love affair with Jesus" (pg. 121), "I had all but given up on any notion of romantic love in my life outside of my relationship with Jesus" (pg. 164). I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Jesus is God, the all-powerful Creator and Sustainer of the Universe - JESUS IS NOT YOUR BOYFRIEND. Yes, we are the COLLECTIVE, figurative bride of Christ, but to reduce His love for us individually to romantic terms is to diminish the greatness of the fact that God Himself chose to love us and die for us. His love is so much bigger and grander than the "Jesus is my boyfriend" love that Christian women authors often portray. It's just weird, and I wish Christian women would stop doing it.
There were a couple other little things, but I'll just stop there.
Conclusion
Overall, I liked reading a little more of Katie's story, but her story was definitely buried beneath her own analyzing of biblical accounts and musings on her struggles. I think reading about her struggles and conclusions could be encouraging for a lot of Christians, so there is value in that. However, I'd just say to read with your discernment antenna up. This book is mostly grounded in her personal experiences, which like anyone's experiences, are fallible.
Note: I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
I have to say, I remember having the most fun decorating the kids' rooms a couple years ago.
For the girl's room I was going for a colorful, summery vibe. I didn't want to stick to any one color scheme, because I have figured out through decorating and re-decorating the nursery over the years, that there is always something in the room that doesn't match the color scheme.
I painted the walls a Behr color called "Mayfair White", which is a pale mint green. I picked a colorful floral bedspread, and scented with pink, but the beauty of this scheme is that the girls can bring in toys, blankets, pillows, or stuffed animals in pretty much any color and it still looks like it fits in the room.
Obviously these pictures were taken a couple years ago (look how little Clarice and Gwen were!), so what's changed?
Clarice is now in the room too - we found out we were expecting Georgie and moved Clarice upstairs with Gwen sooner than we thought! Her toddler bed is in the place where the reading nook is in these pictures. The canopy over the area has been taken down, since it didn't seem like a smart idea to have it hanging above my one year old's bed. The gallery wall is also not the same in all these pictures since the girls broke a one of the pictures when they were jumping on Gwen's bed (the room is for living in, not just for show, after all).
Funny story (actually, not funny so much as cringeworthy) - when I was painting the girls' room, I took a quick break and left the lid off the can of paint. A minute later I hear a ruckus coming from the room, and my heart sinks. I went back in there and the kids had spilled an entire can of paint, all over the carpet.
There was a brief pause, as Derek and I stared in horror, and then the entire thing blew up. We were both shouting, I hustled the kids out of the room while he grabbed towels to sop up the mess, everyone was crying. I sat the kids down in front of the TV, and wailed to Derek. "Now we have to replace the carpet! That was not in the budget!"
While the rest of us were freaking out, Derek patiently sopped up the paint. He worked on it the rest of the night, used up an entire can of carpet cleaner, and he got that stain out. Honestly, the floor looks like new! I'm still not sure how he did it, but I was very impressed with his determination.
Did I mention all this happened on Easter?
I'm happy to say we can officially laugh about it now.
---
Here's the linkup - share a post with photos of your house, and add it below!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
