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My Homeschooling Curriculum Review

26 May 2010 by

Well, we’re about finished with two years of schooling in this home school adventure. There are certainly lots of things I’m still learning. Here’s what we did for 1st grade and what I have planned for 2nd grade.

Math: Singapore Level 1A and 1B–I like that it is a colorful textbook and the examples are real-life examples. I found that it lacked ‘reviews’. Singapore doesn’t do drill at all so any extra practice we did had to come from some where else. I bought the Extra Practice book, but it still wasn’t enough. This was felt most in addition and subtraction facts. Therese still doesn’t have them “memorized” and I’m not sure that’s necessarily a bad thing. The last two months, I’ve been playing more Family Math games with her and she gets the concepts even if she’s still counting on her fingers. For Fulton’s kindergarten and Therese’s 2nd grade we are moving to Right Start Math. It’s another Asian based curriculum and I’ve heard some good things about it. I’m excited to try something new.

English Grammar: I started with Seton English and we did it first semester. It was ok, but nothing stuck. It was workbook style and it was certainly something I could give Therese and she could do on her own. I probably went too fast and I didn’t have the full Seton lesson plans. So in February, we switched to First Language Lessons (Well Trained Mind recommendation). I like it a lot and we’re still using it successfully. The lessons are short. The teacher text is given and it’s something we do 4-5 days a week for the whole school year. I plan to stick with it to finish out 1st grade and then through 2nd grade. It is one book for 1st-2nd grade which is very nice.

Spelling: We started with Zaner Bloser. It was fine but too easy for Therese. As far as I had taught with Phonics Pathways last year, the spelling in the 1st grade spelling book was too easy. So when we were done, we went to 2nd grade Spelling Workout. I like it and one lesson gets us through a 4 day work week. We shall continue on and we’ll probably be on the 3rd grade level by the fall.

Handwriting: I’m staying with Zaner-Bloser. It works for us. I still love that it gives the language on how to make the letter. That’s my favorite part. Kindergarten and 2nd grade cursive is already on the shelf waiting to be opened!

History: Story of the World: Book 1 Ancient History. I like it a lot. It has plenty of activities to choose from after you’ve read the lesson. I didn’t necessarily do them all, but it was nice to have choices.  I like Therese narrating for me and I think she has made a tremendous improvement from the beginning of the year. I loved the map work with each lesson. It’s NOT written by a Catholic so of course, the important Catholic stuff is missing. For example, at the end of the book we have chapters on the early Christians. Sure it talks about the catacombs, and writes, “it was a place for religious meetings.” True, but many of those meeting were the Holy Mass! And when we learned about Atilla the Hun, it completely leaves out the role of Pope St. Leo the Great. We have Story of the World: Book 2 Middle Ages lined up for 2nd grade, but I know I’m going to have to do a little bit of Catholic history research on the side. (I would love to have EPIC: A Journey Through Church History for my own knowledge to fill in the gaps to the kids.)

Religion: We are using the Faith and Life Series. I have been please with it. We get so much religious formation from celebrating the liturgical year, the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, the religious ed class that Adam taught. We’ll use Faith and Life for 2nd grade. We’ll also continue to read the wonderful Devotional Stories for Little Folks from Catholic Heritage Curriculum. I also bought a wonderful book for the entire liturgical year from CHC called A Year with God.I love it. It has many wonderful multi-age things to do with the children. This summer I’m going to do a review of our ancient history in the context of salvation history using the Great Adventure kids pack that we bought when we went to the Jeff Cavins Great Bible Adventure Timeline seminar in April. I’m am SO excited about this. I rearranged my school room just for this!

Latin: We used Prima Latina this year. It is labeled for 1st -3rd grade. I think it would be better around 2nd grade but we got through it. We learned lots of prayers in Latin: Doxology, Hail Mary, Our Father, Table Blessing, the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei. I think I lost Therese when conjugation and declensions were introduced near the end. It introduces many grammar concept immediately and not in great detail which is why I think it would be better in 2nd grade. For 2nd grade I purchased a Latin reader from Catholic Heritage Curriculum. We’ll see how that goes.

Science:  We haven’t done a whole lot of science. This spring I started a science club (with the guidance of my kindred spirit in Houston) with a friend and her 3 kids. We met every other week and each child gave a presentation on an animal they learned about to the other children. Then the other mom and I would lead a short investigation with the kids based on what we were learning.  I just purchased a whole series of K-6 books from Apologia Science. I’m very excited about these as well because they are multilevel books. So Therese and Fulton can both be learning the same subject.

Writing: Therese is getting better every week with her writing and coming up with original work. We’ve been mostly doing a lot of dictation. Since January she’s been doing book reports on the chapter books we read either narrated to me or written on her own. The first two levels of Writing with Ease has arrived. These are more of the Well Trained Mind book recommendations. We’ll begin using those for 2nd grade.

Now our writing, science, grammar, and history will follow a common teaching/learning style. This will be nice for the sake of consistency with reading and narrating. I’m looking forward to that. They do also take more one -on-one time. So part of this summer is going to be spent doing some serious streamlining.

We’ll be having a light month in June so the kids can take swim lesson and go to VBS. Swimming is a big goal of mine for our children this year.

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Family Updates

26 May 2010 by

It’s been a while since I’ve written any thorough updates on anyone. Life has been saturated. Thanks be to God. As our family grows through different seasons, we also grow through our challenges and joys.

Next to kitchen duty, homeschooling takes up most of my day and mental capacity. Therese is almost done with 1st grade. We still have a little math to finish up or rather properly master before moving on. It’s been a busy whirlwind adventure. Therese has really started to settle into school. She is such a great writer. I especially love all the notes and letters she writes me. She recently had a pen pal request. This is so perfect for her. She is an avid reader. She wakes up and almost immediately finds a book to read. When life is not-so-crazy around here, we love to settle down, cuddle and read chapter books. She has also quite liked out history. This year we studied ancient history using the Story of the World. We both thoroughly enjoyed it and learned so much, and the last couple of months it was one of the first things she asked to do each day. Fulton has done a sprinkle of handwriting and phonics here and there. He’s doing quite well actually. I won’t push him to do any considerable amount of work until the fall probably. We started doing more Family Math games to reinforce some concepts and both Fulton and Therese can do many of the activities together which has been very nice. I spent most of the Easter season researching and ordering all our materials for Therese’s 2nd grade and Fulton’s kindergarten year. And just this past week, I received the last of our curriculum in the mail. Details to come on that in another post.

Muffin is still sweet as can be with a mix of a little sassy. Many times at the end of the day, I feel she’s fallen into the ‘middle child’ crack and I try to make a resolution to do more with her the next day. Potty training has been a roller coaster lately especially on days when we have too much going on. She is a superstar at puzzles and has claimed the right to be Cecilia’s best friend for life. (This was after one time I made a side comment like, “Muffin you are so blessed because one day you and Cecilia are going to be best friends.) She plays so well with both older siblings–dolls with Therese and Cars with Fulton!

Cecilia is 8 months now and the happiest child on the planet. She is truly a blessing to everyone who meets her. She greets everyone and anyone with the most loving smile. Her gift in life will be to bring people joy. This past month her sleeping has been less than optimal. Most of that is my fault with lack of consistent naps and such. So last week, I re-read for the third time, “The No Cry Sleep Solution.” The first day I implemented the techniques, she slept 9 hours! Of course she didn’t do that again, but she has been sleeping much better–which means that I’ve been sleeping much better. She’s been on solids for a couple of months. I’ve been making my own baby food. And she has a hollow leg! Those bottom teeth she cut a couple of weeks ago have helped.  Now that she’s eating real food, of course this adds another half an hour to our meal times. I’m still nursing her but her formula supplement has gone up a little as well. She’s growing and happy and that’s all that matters.

Our mornings in June are already booked with swim lessons and vacation bible school. Of course Gianna is too young for VBS; so if any of you have any suggestion of something special I can do with her to make up for that, let me know.

I’m still trying to figure out this whole gardening thing. We had a nice early spring garden…lots of lettuce and peas. The carrots are almost ready to be harvested. Although, they still look a little small to me. My greatest frustration is that we have the big bushy plants and no vegetables on them! Uggh! I probably need to add compost or fertilizer or something to the soil or maybe just repent of any ill I ever did to bees and hope they come back to my yard to pollinate all the blooms! I did harvest my first zucchini today. It was picture perfect.

I’ve also been working on getting my health back in order. At the beginning of Easter I was diagnosed with subclinical hyperthyroidism. For those of you who are versed in your thyroid lingo, that means that I don’t have any symptoms of hyperthyroidism, and my T3 and T4 are in normal ranged but my TSH is low. This was the same issue I had shortly after Cecilia was born. It’s no longer postpartum thyroiditis since Cecilia is already 8 months old. The doctor said there’s nothing we can do about it. I’ll have it checked every 6 months until my TSH is below certain cutoff that requires medical intervention. In the meantime, I also get to work on lowering my cholesterol and exercising a bit more.

I’m so thankful that Muffin has Fulton to play with when I’m engrossed in schooling Therese. Actually I’m thankful all the children have each other. Being wife, mother, teacher, housekeeper, cook, accountant, gardener, and volunteer is really a full time job six times over! We had some friends over for dinner last week and one asked, “So what did you guys learn today?” I honestly couldn’t remember! I fly from one thing to another that many times the only thing that exists in my mind is the present. It has made planning all that more necessary.  I can’t tell you how happy I am that many of our August-May commitments are done. One of my summer goals is to streamline our lives where we can and discern what needs to be cut out.

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Happy Anniversary!

26 May 2010 by

“…I will go to the altar of God: to God who giveth joy to my youth.” Ps 42.:2, Douay-Rheims

Fr. Tim celebrated his 25th Anniversary of his ordination yesterday!

God Bless you Fr. Tim and my our Bless Mother wrap you in her loving mantle and keep her close to her Immaculate heart.

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