Category: Curriculum

Curriculum, Homeschool, My Thoughts

Late Night Thinking

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Let’s just say my homeschool brain is working overtime. Like I have everything lined up, I’m still tweaking it. Why? Because I’m not sure it’s going to be a good fit or unsure if it will work for the kiddos. Gah! I’m going crazy here😅 No seriously 😒 Ok, so I know I said I had everything worked out. Here’s my thing… I found some new curriculum so I’m researching and now questioning whether this would be a better fit. I don’t know maybe I’ll just stick with what I have planned and use these as back ups. There are so many possibilities! Better yet I just tested the kiddos to see what level I could put them in with what I had planned. Someone tell the curriculum fairies to quit dangling new sources of curricula for me to go crazy. Anyways, I’ll probably update sometime around June if not before for my final picks for the 2023/2024 homeschool year’s curriculum. I might even break it down into levels not sure yet 🤷🏻‍♀️

History Quest, Homeschool, Homeschool Library

Eratosthenes: A history genius

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There’s a wonderful book we read this week that is quite interesting. It’s called The Librarian Who Measured The Earth by Kathryn Lasky. My kiddos loved this book! Even though this book is short, it’s packed with lots of history, geography and math. It amazed the kiddos that this man from the third century was only off by 200 miles in his calculations. That’s pretty spectacular in my kiddos’ eyes. If you’re interested, you can always read more about Eratosthenes.

Curriculum, Homeschool, My Thoughts

People and Their Opinions… Part Two

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Today I will be printing off new material for three of my kiddos 🙂 Here’s the rundown on how this occurred…

This past week my kiddos admitted they overheard conversations of other adults saying they need to get back into public school. So two of them decided they wanted to return to school. Not because they really wanted to, but because they thought other people’s opinions mattered. They thought longer hours of education would help them catch up and close the gap at where they’re supposed to be at. Instead of taking the time to master the material at their pace and understanding.

So we’ve been discussing this all week and not just with the two that thought this. I have also discovered that another kiddo along with the other two would like to move up a level because it was becoming too easy. I don’t have a problem with it at all. That’s the whole point of homeschooling! To meet the kiddos where they’re at and encourage them to learn more and set them up for their career and life.

I’m so glad my kiddos can come to me and express their opinions and open discussions. So thanks for giving my kiddos the initiative to approach me with the conversation so we can level up and continue to move forward with our homeschool journey and life.

Build Your Library, Curriculum, Curriculum Picks, Grammar Galaxy, My Thoughts, The Good and The Beautiful

Gearing Up for the New Homeschool Year

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Lawd, I’ve been dragging my feet in getting ready for this coming homeschool year. I’m fully ready now! I’ve made lots of switches trying to find things that will enrich and brighten these kiddos minds and encourage their curiosity of learning.

Our main curriculum we will be using BYL(Build Your Library) for literature, geography, science, poetry, music, art and writing. For language arts we will be using Grammar Galaxy. Also I will be combining TL(Torchlight) with BYL to expand on their writing, spelling and vocabulary. Math we will be using TGTB(The Good and The Beautiful) and alternate with WM(Wild Math) which is an outdoor based curriculum. Now for history we will continue with History Quest. We also have Fun-Schooling Journals for extra language arts, math, life skills and cooking to help break up the monotony of school. Which I believe played a part last homeschool year as to why it was so bad. Thankfully we can put that behind us and learn from it.

Super excited to dive into this year’s curriculum! To start out we are going to be learning about the world around us which has such amazing books. I can’t wait for them to arrive 😁 Anyways this will give us a good start with BYL before dive further in to different levels of BYL with a combination of TL in a few months. So I will post more as books arrive 😃 Unfortunately I need to get my butt in gear and start printing the rest 🤣

Build Your Library, Curriculum, Curriculum Picks, Fun-School Journals, Homeschool, My Thoughts, Planning Next Year, Wild Math

Curriculum Nightmare!

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Curriculum nightmare! Have you ever looked at how much curriculum is out there? It’s even harder to sift through to find a secular curriculum.

Thought I had everything figured out 😂 Wrong! Have to make a few changes since certain curriculum doesn’t coincide with the main curriculum I will be teaching 🤦🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️ Certain curriculum picks were either to advanced or I had already covered it this year. So it’s been back to the drawing board 😩

I’m still sticking with BYL(Build Your Library) and some Fun-schooling Journals (some additional outdoor and extra curricular curriculum). I’m not going to do the TGTB(The Good and The Beautiful) for math or language arts (at least not right now) 😩 What I will be doing is adding TL(Torchlight) and Beowulf Grammar (not completely sure on the Beowulf Grammar or use something else) to expand on their language arts for spelling and grammar. So far I’m excited with my picks and so are the kiddos!

As for math, I’m still planning on getting WM(Wild Math) for their outdoor curriculum. Then the kiddos told me they would like to continue with EP Math(Easy Peasy All in One Homeschool) 🙄 I on the other hand, is thinking of using IXL Math for when the weather is not cooperating. So I’m undecided there so far 🤷🏻‍♀️😅

Scooter, step-mom asked is if my teacher brain ever stops for a moment 🤣 Apparently it’s a side effect of homeschooling that my brain doesn’t shut down so.

Build Your Library, Curriculum, Easy Peasy All in One Homeschool, Fun-School Journals, History Quest, Wild Math

Curriculum so NOT working…

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How I originally started teaching my kiddos was very eclectic. A lot of Unit Studies and child lead curriculum. For the 2021-2022 school year I went the more traditional route. Which you can read about in an earlier post. It worked for the first several months, but now unfortunately has run out of steam.

We are going to change things up and start fresh.

We have decided to go with Wild Math, Fun-schooling Journals(Core Journals, Math, Language Arts and and an elective journal) and Build Your Library (BYL) along with History Quest and R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey (RSO) for our new learning material.

It’s goes along line of how I first started homeschooling them. Which is more of a Charlotte Mason/Unschooling Secular way of homeschooling I used, which was more hands-on and I myself even enjoyed it. I don’t know why I decided to change it! WHAT WAS I THINKING?!

The beginning of 2021-2022 school year I decided to go a traditional route using Easy Peasy All-In-One Homeschool as our main curriculum along with other workbooks I thought they might learn a little more with. I was right, but also wrong at the same time.

The reason for this big change is… My kiddos have recently told me the curriculum is too boring and too easy. It’s basically not a good fit. Especially if they they’re not getting any benefits from it.

So I’m doing a major overhaul of our curriculum and will be reverting back to how I started since they enjoyed(so did I) and seemed to learn better and even more that way.

Curriculum, Curriculum Review, Homeschool, Tuttle Twins

The Golden Rule

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This is book 6 in The Tuttle Twins series.

This is a cute little series that brings to life old morals and so much more. Today, we dived into The Golden Rule. Going over the pdf workbook the kiddos today had to make up a team chant. This is what they came up with…

We are the Lava Kids,
Using our smarts to stay strong,
Homeschooling is our way,
Learning, laughing and playing all day long.

The Tuttle Twins books are definitely worth it. They teach a wide variety of lessons that most don’t get in school nowadays

Carson-Dellosa, Curriculum, Easy Peasy All in One Homeschool, Homeschool

Gearing up for Our First Official Year of Homeschooling

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Well I’ve narrowed down my curriculum choices. This coming school year we will be using a combination of School Zone, Carson-Dellosa, Story of the World, and Easy Peasy All in One Homeschool for different subjects.

We tried 180 Days curriculum for math this last go around and it just didn’t work out for the boys. Ended up every two weeks buying unit studies and downloading curriculum from TpT, Moby Max, Pinterest and random homeschooling websites, which I’ll still be using for certain assignments and special projects. I think it’s time to buckle down and try a more traditional route.

Regardless this time around I will have back up material in case something doesn’t work out. Now these are just the workbooks and some books. I’m still in the process of gather more books and additional material. My Amazon cart is already filled for next purchase 🤦🏻‍♀️☺️ Can’t wait for July!😍