I don’t know if many are interested, but I thought I would share what we use for our schooling. I am A LOT more organized this year. Last year we just kind of went with it and then our house sold and the ciaos of moving ensued. I wanted things to be a little more structured this year (shocker, I know). I love the blogs Chocolate on my Cranium and Homeschool Creations. Even if homeschool isn’t something you are interested in, you should check these blogs out. I refer to each of them often and not always for school stuff. Chocolate on my Cranium has some great FHE lessons.
Each child has a color, it helps keep things straight. More for me then them really. Evelyn is purple, Sam is orange and Max is green. Last year I found file boxes in their assigned color. It makes keeping track of everyone’s workbooks and fold
ers much easier.
Here is a list of the workbooks and programs we are using this year. Some are ones I have always used and like, others are new to us this year. I am always tweaking things to fit us better. They each work at their own level in Math and Phonics/Spelling/Reading. Everything else, we do together.
Evelyn
These are each done every day.
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Horizons Math level 2 (We are more then half way through this book and will be going on to level 3 around the first of the year. Math is something that has changed every year for us. It isn’t something that Evelyn really enjoys, so it’s been hard to keep her motivated. I really like this program and hopefully we can stick with it.) -
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Handwriting (I have made my own handwriting pages for each of the kids, using quotes from church leaders for Evelyn and the alphabet and small church related phrases for Sam, using Start Write. I like to use the Handwriting without Tears font for Sam and the Italic Cursive font for Evelyn.)
Sam
These are each done every day.
Things we do together
FLL is done daily, the others are done 2x a week.
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We have been using Story of the World volume 2 for History, but will be changing to the Mystery of History volume 1 starting next week. I haven’t minded Story of the World, we read the first book last year, but I wanted something more Bible based. We will give Mystery of History a good and see what we think.
We start school around 9:30 in the morning. We do scripture study and family prayer with dad before he leaves for work, have breakfast, get dressed and do morning jobs. We recite the Pledge of Allegiance before we pull out our school work. Even Max is getting the hang of it. We always start with math. This seems to take Evelyn the longest (because everything under the sun is a distraction to her when she is working on it), so that gives me time to do things one on one with Sam. He and I are usually done in about 1 1/2 hours. Then he has free time and I can do one on one things with Evelyn. Once we finish with that, if she isn’t finished with her math, she finishes that up before lunch. After lunch we do our together work.
I made a schedule for us to follow were we go on and off track, for lack of a better way to put it. This is our first week off. We had done 6 weeks. This week gives the kids time to play and unwind and I can make copies, reorder, reorganize as needed. We will go 6 more weeks and then it will be Thanksgiving break. We go 3 weeks on and then Christmas. I think after Christmas we go on for 5 weeks before our next break. I think 5 weeks on is a better way to go, but with holidays, we had to do 6 week stretches at the start of the school year. Everyone is doing well with their school work, for the most part. Some days are better then others, but don’t we all have days like that?
