Sep. 28, 2005 - Curriculum Choices
Pick up any hsing catalog and you are immediately inundated with more curriculum than 20 families could ever use in educating a multitude of children. One subject might all of a sudden become five. Those five grow into ten more. Completely overwhelming.
Then you ask, what is right? Which is best? Will it work? How do you know? Oh yeah, read the little description. Or not. In those descriptions every book is the best, every series accomplishes more than its counterpart, and every way is right...just ask them!
So how do you know what to use, or not use or use parts of, or, or, or? Well, most of us accomplish this in one of two ways. We either ask other hsers what they use and why? Or we go by trial and error. I've done both. Many times my trial and error was based on advise I'd gotten from other hsers, but that's not important. What works for our family and our lifestyle may not work for yours and visa versa! Even what worked for me with 3-4 young children, does not work for me now with nearly 7 from 0 - 14! My older children need something different from me and the younger just plain NEED me. They all also have different educational needs that have to be met. In order for me to do that, sometimes I have to change gears for awhile. And who knows...next year it may be a whole new ball game!
My biggest struggles come from the fact that I loathe and despise textbooks. Yuck. Comes from having to read way too many of them in gov't school and college. Dry, boring and time consuming. In the beginning I avoided all forms of textbooks, except math. I also loathed workbooks. Busy work and twaddle. Hated them! Avoided them like the plague as well. Eventually I began to change some of my thinking on these little nusances that kept cropping up in all my hs catalogs. Not that I like them any more now than I did then, but I did find they had their place in our home school.
Secondly, I struggle with desiring to do a lot of hands-on projects with my children. But in our current state, we just do not have the actual time to put into such projects. I absolutely adore Lap Booking! My children have made many lab books over the years and they are so much fun and the kids love working on them. I wish I could devote more time to them in some fashion, but have yet to figure out just how to do so. We still do them on ocassion, but not nearly as much as I'd like to.
And my last struggle is streamlining our educational plan amongst the children. With varying levels of reading, writing and 'rithmatic, it becomes difficult. I have strong feelings on certain things and though we've done tons of unit studies in the past, they are getting more difficult for me to incorporate. Why I have no idea. Maybe I need to look at it all again. Biggest struggle is my personal time allotment.
So, where does this leave me and the duty of educating my children? Some things will never change, they are the cores I love and will not depart with! Others, well, we may have to re-think some of them over the next few months.
Math is an easy given for me. Math-U-See is our choice and it's always my first recommendation. I cannot fathom a child not succeeding with MUS! I currently have 4 different levels of MUS going on in my home. My kids love it, I love it and Mr. Demme is a hoot!
Grammar has also been easy. I picked up Easy Grammar and Daily Grams and never looked back. That was my workbook give in. Basic, thorough and DONE!
Science, we've done a lot of things in the past, but decided especially for our older children that Apologia was the answer. I also have incorporated their elementary science for my younger crew and am very happy with it so far. I adore Jeanne Fulbright!
Literature, literature, literature! We love it here and I have my kids read tons of it!! We use this as a cross over with History, science and geography studies.
Other things have fluctuated for us. Namely history, geography, and other electives. We had been using (and intend to use again) Around the World in 180 Days. This notebooking approach to history and geography is put out by Apologia. I like it and will eventually finish it, but we decided to take a detour and read through the Holling C Holling books using the Beautiful Feet study guide this year. I also hope someday to return to the Prairie Primer and really enjoy it with my kids. We've done Five In A Row in the past but that is probably not something we will return to as we've moved on to other things. Unit studies...I have several on the shelf I'd love to get into...again some day!
History is just a plain struggle for me! I get most of my history guidance from www.lovetolearnplace.com. I don't know what I'd do without that site!! I just ordered All Through the Ages and hope that will help me line up our literature a bit better. My dd is also going through Streams of Civilization. I was hoping to start creating timeline notebooks as well, but it hasn't happened yet. Just another of those "I want to do this" things. I have the little ones reading History Stories for Children from CLP together right now. Hoping that springboards for me.
We were also supposed to start etymology with my older three this year, but again, something else that hasn't taken shape yet. I am basing it loosely on the book Roots and Fruits. I had it all set up at the end of our last school year, but have not incorporated it this fall yet. That is a goal for January. (Just a note, we started school in August, so we've been at it awhile now this fall.)
We also started journaling this year. That's been comical. The kids have no real concept of what journaling is. I'll have to post some of their pieces of work. We do other writing but I thought this would help with some creative things, take a few minutes a day and maybe give them some groundwork to write more. It hasn't done any of those things. Not sure how long we'll continue. I'm already down to about 2-3 days a week verses 5!
In general, I don't feel like we are doing enough EVER. But I don't know where I'd ever find more hours in my day to do more. Some days I wish there weren't so many choices or ways of doing things. But most days I'm glad we have those choices and can choose what is right for our family. Today is a day of indecision, feeling like I'm not doing enough and wondering where tomorrow will lead. Next week I may feel differently. Let's hope!
Comments
Sep. 28, 2005 - and she owns a buisness!!!
Posted by hippiechyck
DillyDawn, RELAX!!!! just reading your post made me tired ;-)
it does get overwhelming...the best piece of advice i ever got was whatever you have, if it's working, STICK WITH IT! stop perusingthe catalogs and web sites...that just adds discontent, just like surfing the local realator sites do (do you NEED to ask how i know that??? ROFL!!!)
great post...maybe Old SchoolHouse needs a curriculum reviewer???
