homeschoolcurriculum

Homeschool Curriculum Keepers Part 1

July 27, 2014 | Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

It’s true. The longer you homeschool the more picky you become about what your homeschool curriculum keepers are for a year. I find that sometimes I need less and other years I want an abundance.

This year will be the less is more motto. Knowing that we will be moving by the end of August (yikes) from place to place, room to room, country to country and hotel room to hotel room, I tried to narrow down what I was going use this year for Tiny.

One thing I did was to go ahead and bite the bullet and put Mr. Awesome in an online high school program. He will not be doing all online but it helps me to focus on Tiny because I need to take more physical books for him. I have tried to reduce to as many eBooks as I can too, but I don’t want to be floundering around trying to find a printer either when we need a lesson plan.

I will be taking physical books in our suitcases. Here are two things for my minimalist plan so far and I am thinking it may be my only list this year.

My first curriculum keeper is Horizons Math. I linked to one grade level so you can see it.

I have used many different math programs. Here are some that I can remember: Calvert Math, Teaching Textbooks, Rod and Staff math, Modern Curriculum Press math, Key to . . . Series, Saxon, Math U See and Singapore Math. Guess what? I have loved each one of them because they each had a purpose matched with a need for one of my sons.

Horizons is my choice of math medicine for Tiny. It has been a good fit for him. As I have learned, math does not have to have boring black and white pages to be rigorous. Horizons has colorful pages along with detailed boxes that explains each lesson. The lesson explanations in the student workbook are very helpful and the teacher’s manual contains not only the answer but some helpful tips. It is not a comprehensive teacher’s manual though which I don’t need now. I prefer programs to be comprehensive in the student’s book though as they grow older because it promotes more independent learning. Horizons Math does this, which I like because it gives the helpful explanations built into the workbook instead of relying on the teacher’s manual. Because the workbook has good detail along with the worksheets, there is no hard back or large bulky textbook either. It is a 2 book series and soft bound. It has been a delight to teach math with this series and I don’t say that lightly because you know I run from math.

However, my boys love math so I stick around to teach it.

I have used lots of wonderful language arts programs too. Classical writing, Bob Jones, Calvert, Rod and Staff, Write Shop, Five in a Row, Institute for Excellence in Writing, English for the Thoughtful Child, Jump In, Writing With Ease and Learning Language Arts Through Literature are some I can remember. Again, I have loved just about everyone because they each had an option matched to a need at the time.

My next choice for this year, which is Growing with Grammar, I have to thank my close sweet friend Cynthia for a gentle nudge in that direction. I linked to one grade level for you too.

Cynthia is one of my dearest friends and she always understands the way I enjoying teaching and knows what a change it has been as we have been getting ready to move. Sometimes you need a nudge from a friend to get that moment of clarity as to which program will be beneficial at a certain time. Using Growing with Grammar this coming year is a return to one of my previous luvs in my early years of homeschooling.

This past year has been a struggle for us because some days as I was packing, I needed Tiny to be more independent in doing his work. When a lesson plan is all tied together, it’s hard to move ahead on the lesson plan until you have it all done. Most years, I have wanted curriculum that is more tied together or related because it does make sense. We love Bob Jones and it worked good for us up to this time. This past year it was not an advantage for us though because Tiny could not scoot ahead when I needed him to or when he needed to.

Also, learning can come in waves and trickles at time. There is a time when your child spikes in some areas and wants to stay on grade level in other parts of language arts. We had one of those years. Because I need something that he can work on more independently without holding up the whole lesson plan waiting on me and more importantly so he can move on when needed and stay on one level when he needs more review, Growing with Grammar is the answer. It is just a fantastic program anyway.
Growing with Grammar allows you to separate the components of language arts to tailor make your curriculum. So you can pick the grade level of each component.

By the way, Growing with Grammar is secular and I never have a problem with secular curriculum as long as it doesn’t bash the Bible. Growing with Grammar is really just religiously neutral and that is a nice perk if you want to teach your worldview. Again, the most important reasons I have chosen it though are because the lessons are compact, short, straightforward, easy to understand and the writing process is broken down into manageable bites with review at each step. This is what Tiny needs this year.

I know these two key curriculum resources are going with us and I have a few more pieces to squeeze into the suitcase that we have to have. I’ll tell you about them in the next part.

Have you started narrowing down your curriculum choices for this next year?

Hugs and love ya,

**A Tisket, A Tasket, A Back to School Basket Giveaway **

Stop Switching Your Curriculum, Switch Your Course of Study

December 5, 2013 | 4 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Spending hours poring over catalogs and websites to find the perfect best curriculum resources for your children only to find out mid-year that some are more time wasters than teaching helps is a huge disappointment.

The truth of it is that I could have saved myself hundreds of dollars through the years if I had stopped switching curriculum and switched my course of study, my approach or even my mind-set.

Are You Doing these Mistakes on Planning A Course of Study?

Now, I spend more time focusing on objectives and a course of study for my children. Finding a curriculum or tool that matches my goals is secondary to the plans I have laid out.

Course of study by definition is not overly intimidating to understand either. An easy definition is “the route or direction for a path”, “the way something progresses” and a “series of lessons in a particular subject.”

Who decides that? In public school the system is different for each school, but they all have one common thread and that is the almighty textbook. This is not a blog post about dissing the textbooks, but it is about deciding who determines what is best for your family.

I have learned that using a preset curriculum and doing every assignment in the textbook is still not a guarantee that your children will learn and remember it. Not once have my sons said oh yes I remember that textbook or worksheet, but they have remembered moments or projects that I created following their desire to learn.

Fear of thinking that we have to plan all our lesson plans or not knowing what to cover next may keep us magnetically drawn to textbooks. It did for me for several years. It wasn’t until my 5th year of homeschooling that I did the big switch over to thinking more about my course of study and less on curriculum.

In reality any curriculum is just a tool and that includes textbooks. Instead of switching curriculum, I have learned that adding better resources to my home library is the key to building my own course of study for my children.

4 Shortcuts to Curriculum Planning

Look at some of these things I have done over the years as I switched from changing curriculum constantly to planning my course of study.

1.) Limit my number of workbooks each year. Everybody is different on which subjects they decide to use workbooks for. I don’t want to print out math worksheets all the time, so a consumable math workbook is just fine for us.

Too, this year I’ve been using the books by Sharon Watson for teaching high school writing, The Power In Your Hands and I love them so much that Tiny is using the lower grade writing program too. But, they are both consumable. That is the extent of my consumables for this year. Here is the link to my review Review of The Power in Your Hands: Writing Nonfiction in High School

2.). Choose Topical Helps. What I spend the most on each year are topical helps whether they are printed books, e-books or magazines. Investing in topical books like the Eyewitness Books gives you information to choose from through the years and it is an investment where you add to your collection and not get rid of them.

3.) Choose Reference Helps. The longer I homeschool, the more I also prefer reference books. Whether it is ideas on what to teach next or understanding curriculum, I’ve used these books below when I have needed them. They serve as a reference source through several years and it makes switching curriculum choices minimal when I use them.

4. Use Textbooks as Reference only. If you have budgeted your curriculum for the year, sometimes you don’t have the luxury of changing. But, you can change how you use it. When I made the switch to choosing more reference helps, I went through all my older text books and I tore out pages that I wanted to keep.

It was pretty liberating to tear the binding off and rip out sheets that I felt were worth keeping and pitch the rest of it in the trash.

I pick textbooks more carefully now.

Early this year, I purchased a textbook about teaching geography to use a reference. Too, I am not sure what type of library access I will have when we move to South America. Even if I have access to a library, sometimes I prefer to build our home library and so I may use textbooks for topical references.

Textbooks are good for putting a lot of different ideas into one small space. Those ideas serve as launching pads for our unit studies.

As homeschool teachers our job should be to think of what topics or concepts we are teaching and to view any type of curriculum as supplements to that study, not the other way around.

Time is in short supply when you are homeschooling, use it planning what YOU want to study by using topical references and helps and not switching curriculum all the time.

You won’t regret any of the purchases you make cost wise because you get several years worth of use out of each book.

Also, look at some of the links below to help you gauge some topics to study each year.

World Book’s Typical Course of Study

Scholastic has a site on what to know for each age.

Scholastic

Ambleside Online I have used several times to find good reading books for my sons. Too, it provides an outline for a rigorous curriculum through all the grade levels.

Ambleside on Line

Are you thinking about adding any new reference books soon to help you plan instead of switching curriculum?

Hugs and love ya,

8 Ways to Teach Homeschool History Other Than Chronologically

November 2, 2013 | Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

My homeschool roots are in classical education because so many things just chimed true and made complete sense to me like covering history in chronological order when I first started homeschooling. Too, my own education in high school mostly focused on American history with no real start in early civilizations or Bible. So when I answered part of Laura’s question on Should Homeschool History Be Covered in Chronological Order, I just had to expand on it.

I know my family has reaped many benefits for following an organized cycle, whether a curriculum provider does that in 3 or 4 years. On the other hand, after that history has to have life or you can lose interest in repeating the same story line.

History is an adventure to say the least because there are so many action packed stories and other side show events or people’s lives that are running parallel to each other that eventually you want to stray off that organized cycle to explore some of the sideshows.

Because children take in a lot more than we give them credit for at times, I don’t feel it confuses them but infuses them for a love of history when we take time to cover history in other ways.

Humdrum History

Before I list other ways to teach history, look below to understand how to maximize these other ways in your journey.

They work for families who have just taken their kids out of public or private school and are feeling overwhelmed and burned out.
They work for families too who have been homeschooling for a while and have hit the humdrum of history. Sometimes you just need a new bounce or spring to your history studies.
They work for families that savor history and want to cover it in more depth and for gifted learners who need more substance.
Some of the ways work for families who have special needs children who learn through different senses;
And depending on the resource, they work for families who have very young children and may not really get the benefit of understanding chronological ord
er or care how the Egyptians kept time before clocks were invented.

History Confusion or Infusion?

Look at the approaches below, all of which I have done at some time or another though new curriculum has come along.

(Source: Beautiful Feet)

1. Teach History Through The Lives of Characters. Though this may seem like a literature approach because you are using great literature, it is not. A literature approach uses many great books and focuses on many topics of a time period. Teaching history through the life of a person that lived in that time period focuses on events that affect your main character. It is more in line with taking a biography approach to history.

This is how we cover history presently. My very favorite set of books for older kids that we wallow in as much as we can are the books by Genevieve Foster by Beautiful Feet. These are keepers in my homeschool and ones we never tire of reading. When you learn that Daniel Boone was a little boy growing up at the same time as George Washington, then you appreciate the impac

t both made on American history.

For younger kids, it is very easy to find books or biographies on famous people like George Washington and for girls like Pocahontas. Another keeper for younger grades is the D’Aulaire collection by Beautiful Feet too.

The American Girl dolls are also a fun way to learn. I think about Native Americans with the Kaya doll. Look here at a Squidoo lens for crafting with dolls.

Make history meaningful by reading the lives of real people with lively literature. Too, this way is one I feel is better to teach real young kids because they remem

ber people easier than understanding what time period they lived in. There is not a lack of literature on most famous persons of history and enough to choose from for kindergarten to high school age.

(Source: Rainbow Resource)

2. Teach History Through Art. In classical education, art and science are tied into the time period you are studying. However, art does not have to be studied that way. When history can be learned along with something else that your child loves, it makes it more meaningful. One curriculum that does this is Visual Manna.

Another example is Mapping the World With Art. Geography and history are inextricably linked as it should be and you learn while you watercolor or make maps.

(Source Joy Hakim)

3. Teach History Through Science. For science lovers who need to learn a bit of history through a science brain, Joy Hakim has a series called The Story of Science that we are going to try next. I have seen rave reviews and talked to homeschoolers who used it. This is a secular source. Sometimes for me that is a good thing so I can add my own Bible content, but many times too it means they tout a no need to believe in God or an evolutionary belief which is contrary to what I want my children to learn. But as homeschoolers I don’t think any of us are not use to tweaking curriculum for our beliefs and worldview. So I will address our belief in creation and dependency on the Creator with my children. From what I have seen the story is so engaging that it is worth the time to tweak those parts. This is another way for us to sneak in some more science with history that we love. Since we haven’t read these yet, the jury is still out on this.

4. Teach History Through Drawing. Children have a natural disposition toward drawing and doodling. So encourage that. Some grow up to draw beautifully. Mr. Senior 2013 was like this and I used Draw Write Now for him when he was younger.

(Source:Rainbow Resource)

Then also came along Draw and Write Through History which we have used too and love.

The History in Scribe is another fun way to learn about historical events and writing and drawing about them too. This can be used for a child that you expect a little more writing from. There are a lot of free notebooking pages, mine included, where ample space is left for visual diagrams. As you can see, you don’t even have to have a curriculum, just an imagination. For example, a child can draw the flora and fauna that Lewis and Clark saw along their expedition. Then a love for history beyond boring dates that makes me yawn too is revived. They also have a beautiful nature journal to keep as well.

Too, if you have a child delayed in motor skills or a reluctant writer, then drawing is a fun way to engage them, build motor skills AND teach history.

Let go of ALL that thinking that history has to be taught a certain way when you need to and trust your mommy gut on what is best for your child. They will not forget it as they grow older or what you taught them.

5. Teach History By Topic. Though this may sound like a unit study it really is not because the emphasis isn’t on covering all subjects like science, math, and art, etc., but it is more about understanding the people and culture from the earliest civilization to present day. Our geography quest we did on Turkey was an example of this.

Though we covered some other topics, the focus was still on the main topic which was to explore the changes ancient to modern on Istanbul, Turkey. We covered it in a few short weeks from the time it was Constantinople until present day. No restraint on time periods, no control, no cycle 1 or 2, ju

st unequaled and sheer delight in reading and learning what my sons were fascinated with at the time.

6. Teach History Through No Ordinary Paper Dolls. Figures in Motion is geared toward younger children and could obviously be used to enrich your history too. But using something hands on and that is historically accurate, it will help your child to understand the characters of history and build a love of it too. Give these to your younger children to hold, play with and imagine the time period as the older children tell the story of history.

(Viking ice cream boat made with vanilla ice cream in a rectangle box and icing in a can with skewers for the sail.)

7. Teach and Learn History With Others. And no, I don’t mean a co-op unless you have the energy to do one. Keep it simple always and plan with just one other family that your children enjoy being around. That is kind of important. You still want to be friends afterwards so it helps if not only you and another homeschool mom are friends, but the children are too.

Buddy up with just one other family keeps history something to look forward to each week or every other week. This allows you an off week to cover something you want to about the subject.

One year we studied history with another family and decided what topics to cover each time. No rhyme, no reason to the order of it, just whatever delighted our children to learn together. Too, we met every other week and it was just perfect for us.

We made ice cream Viking ships (of course had to eat it too) and exploded volcanoes when learning about Crete.

8. Teach History By Watching Movies. Pop some popcorn and enjoy. Episodes of Liberty’s Kids can be found free on YouTube and there is a free series by John Green on YouTube too for American History. Movies like Alexander the Great, The Nightmare in Jamestown about the first colony and Lewis and Clark Journey West to name a few can be viewed on Netflix. Be sure to watch with your kids because some of the documentaries give the vivid facts of history that are not so necessary for younger children.

There is also Drive Through History which is on DVDS. Sit back and be entertained by Dave Stotts as you visit places both ancient and modern.

There are so many more ways to teach history other than chronologically.

I know I have said it before too but I am still totally delighted with Brimwood Press because it covers history chronologically in 14 lessons or big huge chunks and not in cycles. Up until this time, again, we had no choices if we wanted to cover it chronologically and move faster. Now, I can use Brimwood Press at anytime or if we lose our way chronologically and still include one of these other ways. I have a choice always too of covering it chronologically in depth by using one of the other providers like I mentioned in my earlier post: Should Homeschool History Be Covered in Chronological Order?

Choices, lots of choices! Give me choices anytime. What about you? Have you found one that fits your needs right now or that you might want to scoot into later?

Hugs and you know I love ya,

homeschoolcurriculum