Sy-la-dot is a newer curriculum that I just came across. It was created to help children with disabilities such as autism and dyslexia. This curriculum is in progress of being created or added to the site.
Well this is our last week for the 2022-2023 homeschool year. Five whole days left! Then it will be summer break until July 10th when we once again begin. It seems like such a long time ago when we first started this journey, and now it seems to be just a blink of an eye some days.
I’ve been stressing myself out over next year’s curriculum and have come to the conclusion. That I need to branch out and take control by creating what my kiddos need instead of trying to bend curriculum schedules and materials for the boys. So in June I am doing a full overhaul of the curriculum and schedule.
Not only will I be rearranging our curriculum, well the only curriculum technically being used for next year will be for language arts and math. For the rest of the subjects, I will be using a mixture of old or vintage educational books along with newer up to date books as well to give the boys more well rounded lessons. I’ve done a lot of research working all this out. One thing I plan on implementing more of is the Charlotte Mason method of notebooking. We did it for a short time about a year ago. I’m hoping this coming year will be different as we use it for more than one subject.
Anyways look forward to the next post about what I will be using and some alternatives I have for backup.
Ugh… Planning! There are roughly 228 days excluding weekends and holidays between July 10, 2023 and June 7, 2024. Minus the holidays we take off for which gives us about 210 to 215 days depending. Which gives me leeway to make 40 to 44 weeks of lessons. So that means I need to roughly print out about 30 double sided sheets of my week planner and 120 double sided of my day planner. Printing extra for wiggle room if needed. I don’t do monthly or yearly because that makes it way too complicated for 4 schedules. I’m going to be busy tomorrow 😏
Well I’m not really sure I can call them fails, but more of they just didn’t work out for my kiddos.
Minecraft Math with Fun-school Journals
This one simply didn’t work out do to how long I had to divide game time in order for each kiddo to have a turn. Then while the others waited I tried to work on something else.
Unfortunately, my main focus was when they could have their game time. So this just was more of a distraction then anything else. Maybe it would work if you only have one kiddo instead of four.
Wild Math
While I loved the concept and thought it would be wonderful to try. It was hard to implement especially to four kiddos with various forms of learning disabilities and ADHD. It just wasn’t a good fit for them.
The Good and The Beautiful Math
Beautiful and well structured. We used it for the first half of the year before it was get way to advanced for their ability. I was going to just drop them a level and then start again this coming year. It unfortunately didn’t go as planned. So I had to try something different…
Grammar Galaxy
While it was a hit and works for my eldest, it fell flat with my other three. They loved the story, but the work was too confusing for them.
I hated to have to change and find something so late in the year, but I rather have them understand what they are doing then having them confused. So off researching I went…
Plain and not so plain
It should be called plain and simple! Lightly structured and easy to use. There was only two down falls I can say with this curriculum.
One is that it’s a loop curriculum that doesn’t focus on one thing before mastery. Which is fine if your kiddos learn better that way. Unfortunately, mine don’t so…
The other issue is as it progresses through especially in the upper grades, if you don’t know your language arts or math terminology it’s going to give you a headache 😅 No, seriously you just need to make sure you brush up with a YouTube video or something in order to help your kiddos understand the material.
Overall it was great in a pinch, but we will be changing for the upcoming year.
Curriculum wins will be coming up in a future post. So stay tuned…
Ok got everything minus about 25 books I just need to mesh things together. I decided to create a more well round language arts and math curriculum by piecing a mixture of modern secular and late 19th century/early 20th century (modernized) text and living books. The same will be going for literature, poetry, art, geography, history, government, science and health. I’m also creating a speech class for the kiddos to help them with their pronunciation of words and letters. All I need to do is finish creating my lesson plan 🥴
The reason I’m going this route is simple. The newer curriculum likes bounce around or loop instead of focusing on mastering the skills. So I found some wonderful old education books for elementary through highschool when the education was rigorous and straight to the point. Later, I will update on how I piece everything together and give links to material if anyone is interested.
Thank you Sherry, Marissa, and Emily for all your help and direction.