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…
I love every aspect of homeschooling. Not just the teaching, but planning the year of curriculum, researching the curriculum and then learning with my kiddos. It’s surprises me how much I didn’t know and was never taught in public school. It’s a very eye opening experience that I will cherish always.
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.
Ok I’m a crappy blogger 😔 It happens… I’m going to try and do better for the upcoming homeschool year. As it stands we only have a few weeks left. So I’ll keep you posted as I plan for the 2023-2024 homeschool year.
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 🤷🏻♀️
There’s a wonderful book we read this week that is quite interesting. It’s called The Librarian Who Measured The Earthby 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.
I will be slowly moving and making more homeschool resources for a small price. Please be patient as I do have other priorities as well. Please take a look at the new homeschool planner I have available at Dae-dae Teaches. If you have any suggestions please let me know in the comments below ☺️
Interesting conversation with my 10 year old this morning…
My 10 year old was telling me how he would like to find a way to harvest the molecular energy of trees or plants in general. Then figure a way to transfer and store it in batteries to produce another self-reliant power.
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.
Homeschool Aunt Chaos 