With the 1st Term and most of the 2nd Term of 1st grade under our belts, I’ve been looking back and reevaluating what has worked and what hasn’t; what I like and what I don’t.
What I Like:
Ambleside Online curriculum has been a huge blessing and has eased my fears and uncertainties during this first year. With few exceptions every book and idea has been wonderful and we have truly enjoyed ourselves. That being said I did make the decision to not read through “Trial and Triumph”. While I found it fascinating the kids were a bit bored and I feel the need to pre-read this one in its entirety before reading to the kids.
Ray’s Arithmetic is awesome. Easy, concise and cheapJ I felt the need to go with a more hands-on oral math program partly from Charlotte’s direction but mostly from seeing where my son Thomas needed help. Thomas has a very sharp and quick memory and after going through much of the CLP Math K I didn’t feel that he had a real grasp on what he was doing so by making him do the majority of his work orally I am in no doubt as to what he does know and what he needs work on. I have also added Math-It to our daily arithmetic lessons and have seen great results from it as well. I used Math-it as a child and loved it and so far my kids have had the same response. My mom has been giving away most all of her homeschooling books since she has graduated the last child so I was blessed to receive her Math-it program!
Reading Reflex, I really can’t say enough about this book and program. I love it, the kids love it and their progress has been very rapid. I can’t wait to test them at the end of the year and see what grade level they are reading at! I have also started Emily on it and she is able to read a few of the first Bob Books.
Language Lessons for Little Ones from Queen Homeschool has been a blessing to us as well. I was initially skeptical of this series because after all wasn’t it just “bookwork” and possible “twaddle”? It most definitely is not! I am using for Emily since I felt she needed school just for her and have found it to be a perfect fit. Emily is 5.5 but in preschool because of a summer birthday even though academically she could be in Kindergarten I do not feel a need to rush things with her. Her favorite lessons in the book so far are the picture studies, but we did enjoy the poem from last lesson and the ensuing discussion. At first I was going to “save” this book and not let her write in it so that I could use it for Wesley next year as well, but he is such a different learning style and personality than her that I don’t know if he would care for it anyway.
Harmony Fine Arts-at first I was a bit disappointed that I had paid $20 for a few printed off sheets of paper for this “program” but the actual doing of it has been anything but disappointing. The layout is easy and precise and you know exactly what to do when, which in my world is a HUGE deal. We have not done this as consistently as I had planned and even though I bought the material needed for Option 2 of the 1st grade program we have mostly just done Option 1. But the kids have learned so much! And I will be able to use this for each child to come. Their favorite is the composer study and listening to the music. So far Beethoven has won hands down as the best composer and Alissa is very upset to be moving on to a new composer and in retaliation for the offense puts on the Beethoven cd programs it to Fur Elise and refuses to admit there is another song that can compete, lol. They are able to recognize about 1 or 2 songs from each composer study and when possible I dig out some of my old music and play them a few pieces from that particular composer. For the art study we view the pictures online and then after narrating about them I set that picture for the wallpaper background on our computer so that everyone can enjoy it a bit longer.
What I Don’t Like:
Structured preschool programs! I’ve tried a few and after a few weeks throw it out because it simply is not pleasurable. Maybe it’s my type A personality or maybe it’s the amount of littles to teach but I have not found anything that fits our family well. And then when I’m feeling guilty about not doing anything “structured” I open up volume 1 of Home Education and all my fears and distresses are relieved! I know from the depths of my being that what Charlotte speaks is true and it works. I have given up the fight and I am going to “let my children alone to just be children”.
Now I would say that is a pretty good start on Year 1 when the Likes outweigh the Dislikes.
We have settled into a fairly decent and attainable schooling routine although some days do go better than others:)
Wendy and Peter Pan are in Kindergarten this year even though they are six. They have a summer birthday and I felt it was better to wait that extra time and am very, very glad that I did. Wendy was ready to jump in last year but Peter Pan was not, so they are both tracking along very well and for the most part enjoying the journey.
Since it's always fun to see what others use and find helpful I thought I'd share what we are using with you.
My main curriculum and guide is Little Hearts For His Glory by Carrie Austin. I have really enjoyed and appreciated the ease this brings to my life at this point. Everything is very well laid out and I can glance over the page each day and move through our school time knowing that I'm covering everything.
Her focus is always biblically based and so we start our school with a bible story and bible focus time. I use the Family-Time Bible for this because although she provides the scripture reference I found it was very distracting and difficult to skip around reading the verses whereas the Family-Time bible gives the kids a picture illustration and detailed, accurate yet pointed script.
We move on to scripture memorization with a different verse every week.
For science we reference CLP's World God Made, for math we are using CLP's Kindergarten book, for reading we are using Thornton Burgess books (Peter Cottontail, Reddy Fox, etc), for handwriting we use Handwriting Without Tears which is absolutely excellent and all of my kids LOVE!. And then for Phonics we are using Phonics Pathways.
The World God Made, and Kindergarten Math by CLP are o.k. but I'd say there are better things out there. What is nice about these books though is that they are very affordable.
The Thornton Burgess animal stories are hilarious! We all love to read them and with just one short story a day it allows for good narrating practice.
The jury is still out on Phonics Pathways. It is very thorough and detailed but fairly dry and moves very, very slowly. I plan on using it in conjunction with Charlotte Mason's reading approach and see if that adds some excitement.
So yesterday I browsed through Rainbow Resource catalog and I feel good about what we will be doing this next year.
I've really like "Little hands to heaven" so I'm going to go with "Little hearts to his glory" and use the supplemental books they recommend. We'll finish the Liberty K math books and then go with Miquon math for 1st grade for the twins and I think I'll try preschool singapore math for DD4. I'm hoping to get the Charlotte Mason books tomorrow on ebay and then start reading through those and implementing them. We are doing nature walks now and I'm hoping to start a Nature notebook for the kids soon.
We will continue to read "good" books such as the Little house series, Winnie the pooh series and others.
I'm planning on continuing through the summer to get through the "little hands to heaven" book before we start the official school year in September. Hopefully we'll also get a garden in soon here and they will get to experience planting and harvesting first hand. Oh, and I also really like "Harmony fine arts at home" art & music appreciation series so I'm going to get the 1st grade book to go through as well.
I think that about covers everything. I'm doing my shopping on ebay right now and watching other used curriculum sights but will probably get the bulk of what I need from Rainbow Resource.
Ha! It took awhile but I finally found myself again.
So things have changed and baby number 5 is here and already 4 months old.
I'm just now getting back into the swing of things with schooling and am doing research and lots of reading to figure out the direction we should go. As soon as I can get hubby to stay awake long enough then we'll chat about his goals for the kids in schooling.
I'm really interested in following the Charlotte Mason approach so am reading her articles and looking into Ambleside Online for this next year.
We've finished "Little house in the Big Woods" and are working our way through "Little house on the Prairie", I think we might try to take a field trip to the location since we aren't far from it and the kids would enjoy the trip.
The twins are really eager to learn to read so I've been using Pathways to Phonics (?) and they are doing well although we haven't moved past learning the vowel sounds. They are also doing Horizons K Math and do well although again we haven't been diligent with that lately.
And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.
Psalms 90:17
