All Things Homeschool (our 16th year!)
this year's curriculum, organization and what's working for us
First of all, I never planned to homeschool. But here we are, SIXTEEN years in. It feels absolutely bonkers and also just right. Homeschooling these children of ours has been one of the huge joys of my life (though of course not every single second of it is joyful).
Our oldest has graduated, so I have three remaining homeschoolers: 2nd, 5th and 10th graders.
One of the things I love most about homeschooling is being able to tailor my children’s education to their interests and also to help and encourage their shortcomings. As a parent, I’m able to notice areas they need more help in, and choose learning opportunities and curriculum in order to fill those needs.
Case in point: I noticed my 10th grader needed help with cursive so we’ve been using Cursive for Teens this year to make sure he understands everything and is able to practice and improve his skills.
I spend a lot of time thinking and researching curricula and I am so delighted with where we’ve settled this year.
The curriculum we’re using this year:
10th Grade:
Math: Teaching Textbooks
Institute for Excellence in Writing
Ancient History from Beautiful Feet Books
Chemistry: Crash Course
Fix-It Grammar
Cursive for Teens
drivers education (we will most likely use a private driving school like we did with our oldest)
coding
welding classes at the local trade school
5th Grade:
Math: Teaching Textbooks
The Good & The Beautiful Language Arts
Explode the Code (for days we need a quick lesson before co-op, etc)
Science and History: Simple Unit Studies using the Magic Treehouse Series and all the Fact Tracker Books
2nd Grade:
Math: The Ultimate Second Grade Math Workbook
(We started off with a different plan for math, but had so many issues with the bookseller sending incomplete books —pages missing!— that I ended up switching to this.)
The Good & The Beautiful Language Arts
Explode the Code (for days we need a quick lesson before co-op, etc)
Science and History: Simple Unit Studies using the Magic Treehouse Series and all the Fact Tracker Books
What our homeschool days look like:
After years and years of doing Morning Time all together, last year I felt the need to change tactics a bit. I now do two separate Morning Times: one with my 2nd and 5th grader together and one with the 10th grader.
This has allowed me to cover topics more deeply with my older son without losing the interest of the younger kids. It also means that I’m spending about twice as long reading aloud and “doing school” than I used to each day. But for us this has worked really well and I think we’ll continue to do it until my sophomore graduates.
Morning Time for the younger kids consists of a devotional, uplifting books, nature/character/art/poetry study, history, and science. This year we’re working our way through this set of adapted Shakespeare stories. My kids are LOVING these stories and always beg for more when I stop reading.
We are doing simple unit studies using the Magic Treehouse Series and the companion Fact Tracker books with some added enrichment videos and coloring/notebooking pages. This has been SUCH a hit!
When the younger kids switch to their independent work and instrument practice, I switch to Morning Time with the high schooler. I do remain available to help younger kids if they have questions, so we are interrupted fairly frequently.
The High Schooler and I do devotional, history, and science together and then I stick around nearby to help with writing, math, grammar, etc. as needed.
Generally this takes us about 3 hours. I keep my knitting or another project nearby in order to help me feel less antsy during this time and I’m usually able to make a little bit of progress each day.
Organization
The bulk of what we use every day goes into these rolling carts. I pull them out next to me so I have everything within arms reach when we sit down at our large dining table to start the school day. They tuck away into the corner when not in use.
White cart: 5th and 2nd graders’ individual work; pencils, markers, scissors, bookmarks and gluesticks on top
Blue cart: Top shelf is Morning Time books for the younger kids; middle shelf holds a basket with all of the high schooler’s books. Bottom shelf holds a couple of books we’ll get to next and my current knitting project.
The rest of the books that we’ll get to later in the year are in the wooden cupboard. Art supplies, puzzles, games, etc. are in the wooden drawers.
Extracurriculars
Because someone always asks about socialization, I’ll include some details here. Not all of my kids are involved in all of these activities, but here’s a sampling of the weekly opportunities we love to participate in:
music lessons (individual and group)
choir
PE co-op
chess club
church youth activities and classes
hiking group
weekly co-op
swimming lessons
soccer team
jumprope team
Almost every afternoon we have a club, friend meet-up, sport or music lesson or combination of all of the above.
I’d love to answer any homeschooling questions you have! Reply to this email and it will come to me directly.
On My Desk:
I just released my Halloween Blackwork hand embroidery kit, which was such a joy to design and create. I’m so delighted with how it turned out! The latest in my Stick and Stitch series: Halloween Collection is also now available.
Around Here
Reading: The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osmun. This was a fun follow up to the first in the Thursday Murder Club series. Though I did find that I had to suspend disbelief a bit, because the way the delightful septuagenarians go about solving cases also involves a lot of rule-breaking and tampering with the justice system. It did take me out of the story when I started thinking about it too much.
Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang which was such a heartbreaking and beautiful memoir of immigration. This will probably be on my list of favorites for the year.
Watching: Our whole family watch and LOVED The Young Woman and the Sea. It is a little long so we had to split it up between two nights, but it was absolutely fantastic and led to some great discussions.
Listening: I’ve been listening to the Heavyweight podcast with my 15 year old while we drive back and forth to soccer and other times we’re in the car alone together. I forgot how much I loved this podcast when I listed to the first season several years ago, and it’s been such a joy to share it with Ethan. (Note: as always, you may want to screen before you listen with a teenager. I’m not as concerned about content/language as others might be, so do what you’re comfortable with!)
On Instagram: Paint Scraping with my kids and my current favorite spot in the garden.
Dabbling in: I set the goal to finish quilting my Lake Powell quilt over the next couple of weeks as we watch the Paralympics, and I’m excited to be working on that pretty much exclusively, except for some prep for upcoming markets.
In the Shop: Halloween Blackwork Kits and Halloween Stick and Stitch
Here’s to making time for the things we love to do!
Heidi
