Our Curriculum for this year

Kris at Weird, Unsocialized, Homeschoolers is doing a Share your Curriculum Edition of the Weekly Wrap-up. This is my first time doing Weekly Wrap-up and I am pretty excited about it.

I don't have the curriculum for this year 100% ironed out yet, but I do know what some of it is going to be.

Right now what we are thinking is

• Math on the Level


• Janice Van Cleve books for science although I am not sure which


• Handbook of Nature Study


• Bible study we are just using the Bible and one of those lists of the Harmony of the Gospels


• Tatras for our phonics


• We are thinking of Story of the World for History


• Literature will be various books throughout the year. Right now we are going through Treasure Island and Wizard of Oz. After that, I don't know exactly.

We might be adding or changing, I am not 100% sure. We will also be participating in our local co-op which meets every other week.

Without a plan(er)

I am a genius at making lists and charts to keep me organized. Unfortunately, I am also a perfectionist and so I tend to get the chart or whatever the way I want it, and then keep tweaking it. Ad Nauseum.

Last year I made myself a lovely planner. It was basically everything I could possibly need.

After about 6 weeks, I stopped using it because the lesson plan pages didn't work as well as I thought they would. I don't remember now what was wrong with them, I think maybe schedule envy - you know when you see someone else's schedule system and suddenly yours is . . . lacking.

Anyway, I am trying to make my planner for the upcoming year. Why can't I use a ready made one? Because that would be entirely too simple. I apparently can't do simple.

This year though, I am making a mini version (only 6 weeks or so of weekly scheduling but with the calendars and such) and I will see how it works in the light school that we are doing now.

Right now, we are doing math and reading. Partially to keep them from forgetting anything, and to make some progress but also to keep us in the habit of schooling. It is so stinking hot outside now that we might as well do school in the heat of the day.

Plus this lets me try out my planner. My planner comes from various sources, some from Donna Young, some from the Tanglewood and some from the Old Schoolhouse Planner. Most of them I almost liked but ended up retyping so I could customize. Now obviously I can't share the pages I didn't retype and customize but I will try to give you an idea of where I got various things.

After I get the planner designed, I am going to print out a good portion of it (except for the weekly pages and just a few of those) and then take it and have it spiral bound. Taking the spiral out and having the new pages added won't be a big deal once I get the pages I will use.

I also made Daisy her own so she can check off what she has done each day and can keep track herself. With hers, we are also doing the small version with two completely different weekly pages so she can see what works for her.

I will try to keep you updated on how it goes.

Math on the Level

After a year of Saxon - which I hated, ok maybe not but if we did it all we would hate it - I thought I would try something else. Actually a month ago I was going to do Saxon again.

Instead I found Math on the Level. First I had gotten one of their 9's Down Math facts ebooks (also available in print).

Daisy is a bit shaky on her math facts - like her mom did for years, she counts with her fingers - and this offers drills but in an unusual way. The first worksheet is full of problems 9+1, 9+0 and 9+9 and your child does this one daily until he/she can do the whole worksheet in a short amount of time, and then moves to the next one that adds 9+8 to the mix. By the time your child gets to the smaller numbers (and easier) they have had alot of practice with the larger numbers. Most books start out with 1's and then 2's and so on and have very little (comparative) practice with the larger ones. They offer 9's down addition, subtraction, multiplication and division each separate if you do the ebook version where you just print out the worksheets you need.

So after thinking about it some more I ordered the Starter pack with the Math on the Level. In some ways, this will be more challenging than Saxon because I actually have to teach it instead of just reading the book and pointing out the math problems in the book. Yet in others it will be much easier to do.

Today for instance - the first day we have used it - we discussed Roman numerals. I first made up a story about how Roman numerals were invented - to rivaling farmers with the same names as my kids, fighting over who had more sheep. There were hand motions involved and so I think it will make V, X, and L easier to remember. Then we discussed the other numbers and some mnemonic devices to help remember the larger ones - we settled on "Learning Causes Dad Migranes", or maybe it was "Lucky Cat Dines on Mice." Anyway, it was actually fun. We didn't spend very long with it and will do some more with it tomorrow.

Then to keep it in her mind, I put it on her 5-A-Day sheet.

What is a 5-A-Day? Well it is 5 math problems on different things to see if she remembers how to do a math concept. That way I can know if she "gets it" or if she has forgotten it. If she misses Roman numerals for a few days I know she needs it reviewed or retaught.

Since this is the first day we have actually used it, I will review the curriculum again for you after we have used it more.

What we think we know

Ok, I really love these TED talks. What is TED? According to their website

TED started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.

The talks on their website (and on youtube) are short 10-15 minute things and are usually something that will make you think but not something boring. Here is one I just listened to What we think we know where he asks 4 questions that most people think they know the answer to, but might completely be wrong.

What is the hardest part of homeschooling?

What I love about homeschooling is the flexibility.

It's a pretty day today and tomorrow is supposed to be awful. I think we should stop early today and do a little extra tomorrow.

What I hate about homeschooling is the guilt. I think every mom deals with some level of "Mommy guilt." We seem to see every bad thing that our kids do as a reflection on ourselves as mothers. "My kid eats crayons-I am a horrible mother. My kid won't eat her veggies - I am a horrible mother. My child wasn't the first to be potty-trained in her class - I am a horrible mother. My kid said a bad word in front of the pastor - I am a horrible mother." And on and on and on . . . .

As a homeschooling mom, there is all the normal guilt plus the added guilt. If Daisy's friend doesn't know how to read in 4th grade than all her teachers have failed her. If Daisy is a struggling reader and her only teacher is me . . . .

So we are afraid to admit our struggles as teachers because then it feel like we have a scarlet letter "F" on our chest.

A year and a half ago Daisy's reading level was about at 1st grade and she was going into the 4th. I felt horrible, like a failure, and I only told 2 people about it. If I said anything it was more just that she was "struggling." Now she is 4th grade 4th month level. While I have given her props for her improvement, I still see the F on my chest.

So what are we doing now with her reading? She is reading a chapter (or so) a day from her choice of chapter books (she just finished a Magic Treehouse and is starting Beezus and Ramona). In addition to that, we spend time with her reading aloud to me, and going over the phonic rules.

She doesn't do well with pressure and it is still fairly easy to get her in deer-in-headlights mode. While she no longer says "I can't read" she doesn't have as much fluency as I would like for her to have. But she is attempting so much more on her own. A few months ago she would hand me her fortune from the cookie, now she tries to read it all and only asks for help with the big words.

Why do I think she has had such a hard time? I think that the first reading program that we purchased was too hard and I pushed too hard. She was left with feeling that reading was too hard and she wasn't smart enough. We tried program after program and didn't have very much success with those either. She was bored with the part she knew (or felt like I thought she was stupid because it kept being re-taught). She would make progress and I would think "yeah! a breakthrough" but then the progress would be gone. We have finally made progress and are no longer seeing the progress disappearing. It just took a long time to knock down the walls she had built up.

Our Homeschool experience

I suppose first I should say that not everyone should homeschool - which is completely different from the "anyone can homeschool" that is usually proclaimed.

Anyone can homeschool - although the barely literate may need some outside help.

But I am not one of those that thinks that only horrible parents send their kids to public school. My thought is, if a parent isn't committed to homeschooling then they shouldn't bother. More on that later but I completely respect people knowing their limitations.

I also think that there are some excellent public school teachers out there (including my sister), there are some that make the classroom fun and kids learn alot. I just don't know that those teachers are the majority. I am afraid that many teachers are overworked, underpaid, under-appreciated and under-supported. We throw them in a class of 20-30 kids, some who belong in reform school, and expect them to work with a largely apathetic group of kids.

That said: Why do we homeschool?

I could give you a laundry list of reasons but the main one is that I feel like this is something God called me to do. Before I got pregnant, I was already getting books to share with the children I would have. Hubby and I were discussing homeschooling even while I was pregnant. Ten years later, I am still pulled to homeschooling in a way I can't describe other than I feel like this is what I am supposed to be doing.

Those of you that know me, know that I have never stuck to anything else that long (other than my marriage). My usual modus operandi is to immerse myself in learning about something (knitting, crocheting, CSS, HTML, etc) until I get bored and move on to something else.

I can give you statisics and studies - many of which reinforce that I am doing the right thing for my children - but I don't think that you are here for that. If you homeschool, I am preaching to the choir; if you don't homeschool they mean very little.

I wouldn't say it is a "religious reason." In fact if I was filling out a survey on why we homeschool, I would check the box marked "academic." Because of being in classes of 20-30, I was either bored (in the classes I was good at) or confused (math). I left school with the idea that I was pretty stupid and then proceeded to prove it the next several years.

My goal with my kids is that they don't feel stupid because of getting behind in a subject (not that I do that perfectly). Also for them to able to research and learn something that they don't know about. For example if I somehow manage to completely miss teaching them anything about WWII, they would know how to find out about it in the library.

Why is this one different from my other blogs?

Well, I am once again going to try to have a blog that is just homeschooling and then one that is personal/family. The difficulty is so much of the family stuff has homeschool applications and visa-versa. Many of my other blog followers are not homeschoolers so a discussion of curriculum or my latest planner design will not interest them. On the other hand, I haven't been posting very much about homeschooling so homeschoolers don't have as much to interest them.

I have been wanting to post more of the info I am finding about homeschooling but as I said, many of my followers are not homeschooling.

So we shall see how this experiment of (yet another) blog goes.

Do schools kill creativity?

I just thought this was interesting and thought provoking. Ok, and this guy is also pretty funny.