New direction...
So it's been years. Literally!
I used to keep family and friends updated on our family goings on from this blog before I started using social media. Then, it became obsolete. In the last year I started feeling convicted about the "time sucking" and overall negative effect those had in my life, and gave them up. God took away the desire to always be "in the loop" and sharing every bit of what we do and it's been freeing, a real breath of fresh air for me.
I remembered this page recently...and today it occurred to me this would be a good outlet to share parts of our home school journey. I'm not worried about anyone reading this, if you happen across it and its helpful to you, wonderful, if not this is a good way for me to keep track in a fun way of what we are doing.
So here goes...To start with, my students are the best! I love them to pieces!
Brandon, Ben and Natalie are technically (and if you have ever home schooled you will know what that means) going into 8th grade, 5th grade and 3rd grade. They all have different strengths and weaknesses, and my goal is to bring them to accomplish their full potential and cater to their strengths as we learn together. I might expand a bit on the different challenges we face as time goes by.
I may also at a later date go over our whole home school journey, for now I am just excited about sharing all the different curriculum I have put together for the coming school year.
Another topic I may touch on later is the fact that this past year, I read about the Charlotte Mason way of homeschooling, and I fell in love! It renewed my excitement, passion and drive for educating my children. If you have never heard of it I would recommend the books A Charlotte Mason Companion, and When Children Love to Learn. I am mentioning it now, because it has really shaped a lot of my curriculum choices.
So let's jump in...
First unto Language Arts:
The curriculum I am probably most excited about right now is Total Language Plus. Both Brandon and Ben will be using it. It can be used as early as 3rd grade, but I feel it would be a bit heavy for Natalie so I decided to wait until next year to start it with her depending on how we like her curriculum this year. My boys both love reading and I believe they will really enjoy this.
The concept of this curriculum is reading with a purpose, it's focused on critical thinking and communication skills. Each week, the student reads chapters of a novel that comes with a study guide, and learns grammar, spelling, vocabulary, reading comprehension and composition. There is also lots of neat enrichment ideas based on the novel. There is no dawdling and pointless repetition, it is straight to the point and should take us about an hour a day. For more info check out their website www.totallanguageplus.com
Natalie will be using Language Lessons for a Living Education from Masterbooks. My sister-in-law introduced me to this one and after doing a bit of research I think it will be a wonderful fit. It is Charlotte Mason inspired, the lessons are short (approximately 20 minutes a day) and to the point. I opted on getting her level 2 for this one, and depending on how she progresses we may advance into level 3 as the year goes on. The levels are not grade levels, they are skill-based. Natalie is not particularly fond of reading, she is improving steadily but it is not a passion for her as of right now, so I don't want to overwhelm her, but still build a love of language arts. I also love love the pathway readers, they have been very instrumental in building her reading skills so far, and we will keep using them this year. We will also be using Simply Charlotte Mason Print to Cursive Proverbs to start her out learning how to write cursive. She is super excited about this one, because "it's so beautiful".
I think that's all I'll share for today... I'll write again soon to share the rest of our subjects.
I used to keep family and friends updated on our family goings on from this blog before I started using social media. Then, it became obsolete. In the last year I started feeling convicted about the "time sucking" and overall negative effect those had in my life, and gave them up. God took away the desire to always be "in the loop" and sharing every bit of what we do and it's been freeing, a real breath of fresh air for me.
I remembered this page recently...and today it occurred to me this would be a good outlet to share parts of our home school journey. I'm not worried about anyone reading this, if you happen across it and its helpful to you, wonderful, if not this is a good way for me to keep track in a fun way of what we are doing.
So here goes...To start with, my students are the best! I love them to pieces!
Brandon, Ben and Natalie are technically (and if you have ever home schooled you will know what that means) going into 8th grade, 5th grade and 3rd grade. They all have different strengths and weaknesses, and my goal is to bring them to accomplish their full potential and cater to their strengths as we learn together. I might expand a bit on the different challenges we face as time goes by.
I may also at a later date go over our whole home school journey, for now I am just excited about sharing all the different curriculum I have put together for the coming school year.
Another topic I may touch on later is the fact that this past year, I read about the Charlotte Mason way of homeschooling, and I fell in love! It renewed my excitement, passion and drive for educating my children. If you have never heard of it I would recommend the books A Charlotte Mason Companion, and When Children Love to Learn. I am mentioning it now, because it has really shaped a lot of my curriculum choices.
So let's jump in...
First unto Language Arts:
The curriculum I am probably most excited about right now is Total Language Plus. Both Brandon and Ben will be using it. It can be used as early as 3rd grade, but I feel it would be a bit heavy for Natalie so I decided to wait until next year to start it with her depending on how we like her curriculum this year. My boys both love reading and I believe they will really enjoy this.
The concept of this curriculum is reading with a purpose, it's focused on critical thinking and communication skills. Each week, the student reads chapters of a novel that comes with a study guide, and learns grammar, spelling, vocabulary, reading comprehension and composition. There is also lots of neat enrichment ideas based on the novel. There is no dawdling and pointless repetition, it is straight to the point and should take us about an hour a day. For more info check out their website www.totallanguageplus.com
Natalie will be using Language Lessons for a Living Education from Masterbooks. My sister-in-law introduced me to this one and after doing a bit of research I think it will be a wonderful fit. It is Charlotte Mason inspired, the lessons are short (approximately 20 minutes a day) and to the point. I opted on getting her level 2 for this one, and depending on how she progresses we may advance into level 3 as the year goes on. The levels are not grade levels, they are skill-based. Natalie is not particularly fond of reading, she is improving steadily but it is not a passion for her as of right now, so I don't want to overwhelm her, but still build a love of language arts. I also love love the pathway readers, they have been very instrumental in building her reading skills so far, and we will keep using them this year. We will also be using Simply Charlotte Mason Print to Cursive Proverbs to start her out learning how to write cursive. She is super excited about this one, because "it's so beautiful".
I think that's all I'll share for today... I'll write again soon to share the rest of our subjects.
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