Homeschooling – Momma's Musings

Homeschool 2021-2022

Posted on August 24, 2021 by Crystal

What we’re doing this year, what we’ve changed, and what we’ve added

This year’s plan…

This year, I have a sophomore, freshman, 7th grader, and 2nd grader (excuse me a minute, while I go cry into my coffee. When did my babies get so big??).

I feel like we had a pretty good groove last year, despite letting some of our electives (music, art, & typing) slide in the spring. So for the most part, I wanted to stick with the curriculum I’ve been using the last two years.

Sophomore

Language Arts: The Good & the Beautiful High School Level 2

Math: Saxon Algebra 2

Science: Lifepac Grade 10

Bible: Lifepac Grade 10

Spanish: Lifepac Spanish 2

History: Dual Credit with University of the Cumberlands

Art: Dual Credit with University of the Cumberlands

Public Speaking: Dual Credit with University of the Cumberlands

Freshman

Language Arts: The Good & the Beautiful High School Level 1

Math: Saxon Geometry

Science: Lifepac Grade 9

Bible: Lifepac Grade 9

Latin: Memoria Press First Forme Latin

History: The Good & the Beautiful History Year 3

Art: Vincent’s Starry Night & Other Stories

Logic: Classical Academic Press’ Everyday Debate & Logic

7th Grade

Language Arts: The Good & the Beautiful Level 6

Math: Saxon 8/7

Science: The Good & the Beautiful Science Units (Ecosystems, Geology, Chemistry, & Water and Our World)

Bible: Lifepac Grade 7

History: The Good & the Beautiful History Year 3

Art: Vincent’s Starry Night & Other Stories

Logic: Classical Academic Press’ Everyday Debate & Logic

2nd Grade

Language Arts: The Good & the Beautiful Level 2

Math: The Good & the Beautiful Level 2 (this is their old version)

Science: The Good & the Beautiful Science Units (Ecosystems, Geology, Chemistry, & Water and Our World)

Bible: Lifepac Grade 2

History: The Good & the Beautiful History Year 3

Art: Vincent’s Starry Night & Other Stories

Logic: Critical Thinking Co.’s Thinking Skills & Key Concepts, Grade 2

Music: Classic Tunes & Tales

Spanish: Me Gusto!

What we’ve changed…

If you’ve watched closely to what we had done last year, you’ll notice we didn’t change much, just leveled up in each subject. The two main changes are that I’m using a hand-me-down teacher’s book for music and that my oldest is now enrolled in dual credit classes with the local college. This is terrifying, by the way, but I’m assured that he can handle it.

The biggest change will come next year. I’ve decided to walk away from The Good and the Beautiful’s history curriculum. We’ve been supplementing with Oh Freedom for the last two years to make our history approach more diverse, but I’ve decided it’s not a good fit anymore. We’ll complete this year and then switch over to Notgrass. I had been debating on continuing on and at least doing year 4, but with two children doing history as a dual credit, I decided to find something that would work better for my other two children. So the plan, for now, is to start Notgrass Our 50 States with my then 3rd grader and Notgrass Uncle Sam & You with my then 8th grader.

What we’ve added…

The main addition has been Latin for my Freshman an Dual Credit for my sophomore. I have also added a Spanish curriculum from Teachers Pay Teachers, but I honestly don’t know how long I’ll keep up with that.

With my 2nd oldest hitting high school, we wanted to add a foreign language to his schedule. He initially wanted Japanese, but we couldn’t find a good curriculum that wasn’t just Rosetta Stone. So we went with his second choice – Latin. We’re only two weeks in, but I’m really loving Memoria Press’s First Forme Latin. It comes with CD’s, flashcards, a teacher’s manual, & answer key — everything we need for this to be successful! Plus they have 4 levels of Latin, so we can continue for at least 2 years and go beyond that if he chooses.

My oldest student is also probably my most difficult student. Not because he’s not a quick learner, not because he’s not good at his subjects, but because he’s a procrastinator and not a fan of studying. Ha. Typical teenager, right? My hope is that dual credit classes will kick his butt, just a little bit. He’s smart, so I know he can handle the classes. My hope is that they’ll challenge him to buckle down and complete his work on time.

Our closest university offers both online and on-campus classes for high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors. They run on a bi-term schedule, meaning classes only last 8 weeks but still count for a full 3 credit hours. My son will be taking one class per bi-term so he will end the year with 12 credit hours completed. Assuming we do this again for his junior & senior years, he’ll graduate high school with 36 college credit hours. That’s pretty exciting.

The other addition to our week has been adding an elementary Spanish lesson for my 2nd grader. He has been been begging to learn Spanish for awhile, but especially since visiting his great grandparents over the summer (they’re Mexican and speak fluent Spanish & English). Unfortunately, there are not a lot of great elementary foreign language programs. I found something on Teachers Pay Teachers, but I don’t love it, mainly because it’s written by a Spanish teacher for other Spanish teachers and it doesn’t work well for a homeschool mama with only un poco Español under her belt. I have since found a cute looking Spanish curriculum, but it’s currently way outside my budget (especially since adding dual credit classes!), but maybe we’ll give it a try next year.

What does your homeschool look like this year? What are you favorite choices for this school year? Share below in the comments!

Links:

The Good and Beautiful
Saxon
Lifepac
Memoria Press
Critical Thinking Co
Classical Academic Press

Homeschooling

Must-Have Items for a Great Homeschool

Posted on April 16, 2021April 8, 2021 by Crystal

Today’s post is just a list of items that I think every homeschool classroom needs to function well.

Basics

Everything from planners to paper…

A good master planner (Plum Paper is my favorite)
Student planners for middle school and high school students
Pencils
Pens for grading/correcting work
Notebooks (buy at least 5 more than you think you will need)
Folders
Binders
Graph paper (for algebra and higher maths)
Calculator

Art Supplies

From paints to crayons and everything in between… Note: for younger students, crayola brand is best. For older, more serious artists consider Fabercastle colored pencils, liquitex acrylic paint, or arteza for all your art needs.)

Acrylic paint
water colors
pastels (chalk or oil)
crayons
colored pencils
markers
construction paper
cardstock
mixed media paper
tracing paper

Organization

You need places to put everything!

Storage boxes
bookshelves
pencil organizer

Books

I’m not going to include a list of books, but rather some resources for choosing good books.

Homeschooling

Planning and Organizing Your Homeschool

Posted on April 9, 2021March 31, 2021 by Crystal

The best way to have a successful homeschool year is to plan it out and then organize it well so you can execute the plan.

That’s easier said than done, though, right?

By nature, I’m pretty organized and I’m a planner. A few years ago, my husband and I took the Myers-Brigg personality tests for a marriage retreat we went on. Long story short, I’m an ISFJ which means I’m introverted, sensing, feeling, and judging. That means I’m really good and gathering data from the world around me and making fast decisions based on that data. I plan and I organize well. And I get really upset when things don’t go according to plan.

So when it comes to homeschool, I try to tap into those strengths of planning and organizing without allowing myself to get too upset when plans change.

Make a Plan

I have always loved planners. My favorite day of school was always day #1 because that’s when you got a shiny new planner to schedule out your whole year. As an adult, I have tried many different types of planners and have settled on Plum Paper Designs. They are hands down my favorite. When I was not homeschooling, I used they’re regular daily planner. As a librarian, I used the teacher planner to keep track of all the programs I ran. Now, as a homeschooler, I use the homeschool planner to keep track of lesson & field trip plans.

Whatever planner you use, you need a place to keep the plan you’ve made. I don’t even bother to plan anything out until my planner arrives.

When I sit down to plan out our homeschool year, the first thing I do is plan which curriculum to use. This takes time and research. If a curriculum doesn’t provide free samples to look at, I won’t even consider it. I need to see what I’m getting into before I buy.

Once I’ve chosen and ordered my curriculum, I look at how many lessons or units there are. I’m still in the middle of planning our next school year, so I haven’t done this for everything. But here are a few examples.

2nd grade Language arts has 120 lessons. That’s 60 lessons in the fall and 60 in the spring. That’s about 4 lessons a week, leaving me a couple of weeks to either fill in with fun holiday-related worksheets or as wiggle room for sick days or snow days.
History has 60 lessons. That’s 30 in the fall and 30 in the spring, meaning about 2 lessons each week. We can use a third day for history games, documentaries, or other enrichment activities. Or, if we need a sick day or snow day, we have some wiggle room.
Bible has 10 units. We’ll do 5 in the fall and 5 in the spring. That’s about 3 weeks per unit and we’ll do Bible three times a week. Each unit, my children will take the number of pages in the unit and divide that by the number of days they have to work on it (usually 8). They’ll do that number of pages each day they do Bible.

Once I have that figured out, I create a spreadsheet on Word that shows which lessons we’ll do which day for each subject. Then I will go back and fill in major assignments associated with those lessons – assessments, papers, stories, quizzes, etc. so we all know when things are due and what needs graded. Each month, that info will be updated based on our pace and then added to my physical planner. I write everything in pencil, because plans change sometimes.

Organize

I keep all my homeschool files on a jump drive and they are organized by subject. Additionally, each child has their own shelf of curriculum, also organized by subject. Supplements and supplies are also organized in totes or baskets and neatly stored on a bookshelf or in a cabinet. I have one master binder that stores everyone’s lesson plan, their reading lists, test forms, grading rubrics, and more. Everyone knows where everything is so the kids can all be self sufficient. Which makes my life so. much. easier.

Organizing is important so you can pull out what you need when you need it, but also so that when you need to make adjustments, you can do so easily with very little fuss.

What are your tips for a great school year? Let me know in the comments!

Homeschooling

April Homeschooling

Posted on March 26, 2021March 15, 2021 by Crystal

There are a couple big things going on in April this year that I wanted to be sure to incorporate in my homeschool. [SIDE NOTE: We did Holy Week in March, you can check that post here and get access to the Holy Week packet I made for my kiddos!]

April is National Poetry Month and Earth Day is April 22. So I thought these would be great things to add to our homeschool schedule.

National Poetry Month

I created a poetry packet that explains lots of different types of poems and provides guided writing prompts so children can create their own. My older kids are already exposed to writing poetry in their language arts curriculum, so a lot of this is refresher for them, but it will be all new for my 5 year old. In addition to this packet, we will be reading LOTS of poetry during our reading breaks throughout the day. Again, my older kids get a lot of poetry exposure in their language arts curriculum, so instead, I will focus on having them read novels told in verse.

Poetry Books for Primary Grades

Falling Up by Shel Silverstein
I’m Just No Good at Rhyming by Chris Harris
Science Verse by Jon Scieszka
National Geographic: The Poetry of US
Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem by Amanda Gorman

Middle Grade Verse Novels

Moo by Sharon Creech
Crossover by Kwame Alexander
For Everyone by Jason Reynolds
Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga
Before the Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson

Young Adult Verse Novels

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
Solo by Kwame Alexander
Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson
Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur (parental guidance on this one)

I’ll link the poetry pack below, but first, let’s talk poetry. Why is it so important for children to learn about poetry? According to Scholastic, poetry is vital to teaching young children to read. The rhyme, rhythm, and sound all increase early literacy skills in preschool age children. It also helps boost memory and brain power! Have you ever taught your child to memorize something (like a phone number or address) by teaching it to them in song? Poems are just songs without music and help kids memorize things they need to know.

Because poems are often short and sweet, they are not as intimidating for emergent and reluctant readers. This is true for young children just beginning to read and for reluctant middle grade and high school readers! In my previous job as a children & youth librarian, I would often give reluctant or struggling readers verse novels. They could read these much better thanks to the easy verse and rhythm.

An even more important reason to expose children and teens to poetry is that it gives them outlet to express their feelings. Poems can range from hilariously silly to dark and depressing and everything in between. Each of those emotions are so important for children to be able to understand in themselves and in the world around them. Poetry can give them that.

Earth Day

As a girl who grew up in the 90s and watched Captain Planet every Saturday morning, Earth Day is something I care a lot about. I remember buying t-shirts at a school event meant to promote Earth Day. When I worked as a children’s librarian, we would read books about recycling, conservation, and pollution and create various projects in my story times for little kids and elementary aged children. So, I knew that I wanted to do something to teach my son about Earth Day.

I created this packet that includes art, STEM, writing, and scripture reading to help teach children about caring for our planet. I add in suggestions for read alouds and movies as well as ways you can celebrate Earth Day at home.

Caring for our planet is at the core of this packet. From my worldview, caring for planet is a Biblical commandment that we must carry out. There are a variety of ways to do this and if we all work towards making our planet a better place, it will last for generations to come.

Download the Poetry Pack & Earth Day Unit

My poetry pack & Earth Day unit are not meant to be all-encompassing, but they are a great introduction to each topic. As with all worksheets and curriculum, it is meant as a tool for you to use as you see fit and discard what you don’t need. I don’t mind file sharing with friends, but please link back to me!

Notes:
1. Scholastic. “Why Poetry Matters”. https://www.scholastic.com/parents/books-and-reading/raise-a-reader-blog/why-poetry-matters.html

Homeschooling

Homeschool Week #28

Posted on March 19, 2021March 19, 2021 by Crystal

We’re wrapping up our 3rd quarter which means a lot of reviews, tests, and assessments are happening. That doesn’t mean we aren’t having fun, too! And though we are having fun while learning, we are also feeling pretty tired and ready for a break so it’s gotten harder to get started in the morning and harder to keep going in the afternoons. Can we add a naptime to our schedule?

Ha. I wish.

Language Arts

We do daily dictation with the big kids and my 1st grader does it occasionally. This helps with grammar and spelling and it is cool to see how well they’ve progressed this year. Though my two oldest are still not great at spelling. I blame my husband, who also cannot spell. Is this something that could be hereditary?

My 1st grader learned how to add -ed and -ing to words ending in a silent e. He picked it up pretty quickly, but some words are hard to read without that bossy “e” there to remind him that the vowel says its name.

Math

My 1st grader has declared himself a “Math Wizard” and no longer needs me to teach him. I’ve officially been fired. LOL! In all seriousness, though, he is learning at a crazy fast pace and more often than not prefers to read the lessons to himself these days. He also completed his 100th math lessons, which kills me. He’s almost done with math! The big kids all had math tests this week. The work is getting more difficult, so the tests are, too. My daughter was unhappy with her grade this week, despite it still being good. She’s hit the point where studying is now essential.

History

We’re running behind in history, thanks to some lazy afternoons and illness over the last couple weeks, but we picked it back up this week. We’ve been learning about explorers, early settlers, and colonists, so the kids each chose a key figure from this time frame to present an oral report on. Let the research begin!

We also learned about Benjamin Franklin this week. It was really interesting! I don’t remember learning a lot about him in school, like how many sibling he had or who he worked for or that he improved the postal system.

Science

The three younger kids haven’t done science in a week while I recovered from getting my vaccine. We hit the books again this week and dove back into our unit on energy. We had several fun experiments to learn how to use a thermometer, including creating a homemade version!

Meanwhile, my high schooler started his 9th unit. Which means this school year truly is almost over. Wow.

Our homemade thermometer measured the temperature of the water in the bowl. It was hot!

Books We’re Reading this week

The Landing of the Pilgrims by James Daughtery
The Story of God, the Story of Us by Sean Gladding
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
I am Jax, Protector of the Ranch by Catherine Stier
Diary of an Early American Boy by Eric Sloan
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Homeschooling, Parenting

Discipline & Homeschool

Posted on March 12, 2021March 2, 2021 by Crystal

One of the hardest parts about transitioning from public school to homeschool was learning to be both mom and teacher. This means the way I discipline had to suddenly included discipline for school performance (I don’t necessarily mean grades, but attitude & behavior). Unlike public school, I couldn’t just send the kid to the principal’s office, though. So, how do you discipline your children now that you’re a homeschool family?

For those who have always homeschooled, their journey is going to be different. The way the discipline and structure their day is likely to be different, too. As always, I can only tell you about how we do things in our house.

Set clear expectations

As with all relationships, make your expectations known. Public school teachers do this by displaying posters in their classrooms and going over the rules of the class during the first weeks of school. As a homeschool mom, I don’t want those posters up in my home. I’m not above using things like that if I need to and in fact, I have made my daughter create her own poster. She has trouble remembering to think before she speaks so she created a poster that still hangs in her room to help her remember.

Our expectations are pretty basic, so I don’t think they need constant review. I am not trying to maintain control of a classroom of 30 kids, thankfully. It is just my four and they already know the rules of the house. That homeschool rules don’t veer away from those by much, if at all.

Our expectaions:

Be honest – don’t cheat (this includes plagiarizing) , don’t lie to get out of trouble
Be kind – don’t interrupt, don’t yell or snap at your siblings
Be respectful – obey your parents, let mom know if/why you’re leaving the classroom, pay attention during lessons
Be timely – complete your work on time & turn it in, work hard during the school day, learn to plan & manage out your day

Set clear boundaries

This is pretty similar to setting clear expectations, but there’s more to it. I’m both mom and teacher and that’s hard to separate out. I am always mom. Which means as their teacher, I have to bear in mind that my children will feel disciplined by mom and not by teacher. If you’ve ever had kids in public school, then you probably understand what I’m saying. When I talk to my children about their schoolwork or their behavior in school, they don’t react to me as if I’m just their teacher. Because I’m not. I’m their mom. So their feelings of hurt and regret for disappointing mom can be overwhelming. I remind my children often that their performance or behavior at school does not change how much I love them. I don’t think less of them or love them any less just because ___________ happened at school today.

Rewards & Punishments

Rewards and punishments are an important part of any discipline plan. For the most part, children should know the expected reward for good behavior or punishment for bad behavior. However, sometimes it is necessary to come up with something on the fly.

Rewards should match the good behavior you want to encourage

Any behavior you want a child to continue needs to be rewarded. This is not the same as bribing (though I am not above bribing an obstinate child when needed). Bribing is when you say, “If you do this, then I will give you that.” A reward encourages growing good behaviors and creates good habits. But in order for that to really work, it has to match the behavior. A good reward for eating dinner is having dessert. However, offering dessert (like a trip to the ice cream parlor) is not a good reward for good academic performance. It’s a nice treat to celebrate good grades, but it’s not the same as a reward. (Let me be clear, food is not a good tool for rewards and punishments, in general. If a picky child needs encouragement trying new food, the promise of dessert helps. But food should never be withheld from a hungry child. If a child wants to eat, feed them.)

If you are wanting to reward good academic performance or good work ethic during the school day, offering a fun activity in lieu of a boring lesson is a good reward. For example, say your children worked really hard during the times for math, language arts, and history. So for science, you allow them to watch Emily’s Wonder Lab on Netflix. They’re still learning, but it’s in a different, more exciting way.

Punishments should match the bad behavior you want to discourage

This is important. We tend to dish out the punishments our parents gave us – being sent to our rooms, timeouts, spankings, or removal of privileges were common punishments when my husband and I were kids. We tend to rely on these as well, but they don’t actually make for good deterrents and they teach nothing to the child. Now, sometimes, you and your kid need a break from the situation so a time out (1 minute per year of age) or being sent to their room can be helpful so both you and your kid can calm down. But that doesn’t deter from the behavior that you want to curb.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to remove the privilege of screen time because a child threw their pencil in frustration, (unless the child is reenacting something they’ve learned from watching TV). A better deterrent would be to have the child retrieve the pencil and use it to write sentences or to clean the room that they were in.

Creative Rewards/Punishments that have worked for us

Punishments

Writing lines or a short paper explaining their behavior and why it was wrong (this works especially well for my middle schoolers)
Losing screen time when the child was using screens to avoid chores or schoolwork
More chores when the child refused to do their assigned chore
An attitude jar – this works like a swear jar: when a child gives a bad attitude, throws a temper tantrum, or uses foul language, they pay me a dollar which goes in the jar.

Rewards

Movie night during the week when the kids have worked hard in school
Praise – this sounds simple and maybe a little too obvious, but I think we forget how far praising a child can go.
Empty the attitude jar – after a month of good behavior, the money from the attitude jar is used to treat the kids – ice cream, a movie night, etc.

Discipline & School Performance

Should you discipline for poor academic performance?

I think the short answer is no. But it is nuanced. If your child doesn’t do well in school, despite their effort, then do not punish them. Work to find their hang up and help them as much as you can. Do they need to learn to plan their time better? Do they not understand a concept? Are they struggling with putting knowledge into practice? Those are all things that need your help, not your punishment.

However, a child who does poorly because they aren’t doing the work, now that’s a fish of a different color. Again, try to identify an underlying problem before punishing, but if your child doesn’t do well on their math test because they haven’t completed the last 10 lessons because they were watching tv or playing instead, then they need to be punished. That sort of behavior needs to be discouraged. But then, you have to encourage the behavior of completing the work on time. That can be done with sticker charts (for young kids) or extra privileges for older kids.

Be merciful, but discerning

My teen tends to be pretty lax in his schoolwork. He’s more than capable of completing his assignments and he has no gaps in understanding the lessons, but he tends to be lackadaisical about actually doing it. It’s partially procrastinating papers, but he also tends to do less work at the beginning of each quarter and then he struggles to complete things on time. The last weeks of each quarter fill him with stress trying to get everything done. A public school teacher has to keep hard deadlines. I don’t. I can move things around to help him if I feel he needs it. Sometimes, his curriculum includes too much extra work (one science unit had him writing 3 research papers in 3 weeks!) other times, he’s just procrastinated too much.

I can discern which is the case with him and proceed accordingly. If he’s just procrastinated, I have little sympathy for him. I will help devise a plan to get his work done and gently remind him that late work loses 5 points everyday it’s late. On the other hand, if he’s been really overloaded, I can and do extend due dates or eliminate extra work for him. This is the blessing of homeschool.

Homeschooling

Overcoming the Mid-Semester Slump

Posted on March 5, 2021February 24, 2021 by Crystal

Honestly, I wish I truly had the answer to this. Every year, we encounter the same problem – mid to late February and early March just drag. We all want a break. The cold weather gets us down. The fresh, warm weather makes us want to play. We haven’t had a break since Christmas. Our next break isn’t until Easter. Getting to the homeschool room on time gets harder and harder.

Guilt over missing days makes it almost impossible for me to allow us to take a day off. But we hit a point where a break becomes vital if we want to have peace in the home. So we give in and take a day or two off. Which inevitable sets us back. So how do we fix this?

Scheduling

For the next school year, I plan on adding in an extra week long break. That means we’ll go longer in the May, but it also means we’ll survive February and March a little better. I am also restructuring our days so that we have more time for some of our core classes. The biggest reason I hate taking days off is because I don’t want to leave any of our curriculum unfinished. If we structure our weeks to have more time for history or science, we’ll have more free time to take some days off when needed.

Take it Easy

February and March are when your curriculum really needs to work for you. I find myself feeling a lot more willing to get to the classroom and teach when I have a good solid easy plan. This is the time of year that the work needs to be as open-and-go as possible. If I have too much prep, too many science experiments, or too many craft projects, then I will be entirely too overwhelmed to do anything.

Be Kind to Yourself

Some days are just plain harder than others. It’s ok if the day starts late or if you watch a documentary for history. It’s ok if language arts is just cuddling and reading and if math is measuring ingredients for cookies. My biggest hang up during this part of the year is my own personal guilt or feelings of failure if we don’t do what we’re “supposed” to do. This is so silly because part of the reason we homeschool is so that no one tells us what we’re supposed to do! Of course, we follow state guidelines for attendance and core subjects, but other than that, we decide what we do for each subject and how much time we spend on them. So be kind to yourself when you need a break or an easy day.

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Homeschooling, Parenting

March Homeschooling

Posted on February 26, 2021March 4, 2021 by Crystal

March is about the time when homeschooling really begins to drag. I’ll talk more about the mid-semester slump next week, because today I want to talk about planning. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a planner. I completely believe that nearly every problem can be avoided or solved by a good plan. So when it comes to homeschooling through March, the longest month of the school year, I need to have a good plan in place.

First of all, we take off for spring break sometime in March. This year, we’re taking off the week that straddles March & April which also happens to be Holy Week. My husband is still in seminary and this will be the week he’ll be out of class as well, so it just makes sense to be off when he is. But that still means we have four long uninterrupted weeks of school to plan out.

For many of our subjects, we’ll just continue to complete one lesson in a day in our curriculum. There is not a lot of extra planning involved when you use an open & go curriculum. So that takes care of math, language arts, Bible, science, and history. When it comes to the extras we throw in (like civics and physical education), there’s a little bit more that goes into it. We do not use a set curriculum for civics, but because it is required by Kentucky law, we teach it as it comes up. The biggest ways we do that is through studying holidays, reading literature, and listening to NPR podcasts. We also do not use a curriculum for PE and because we are no longer a part of a co-op and don’t have access to a gym, this one is heavily dependent on the weather. And let’s face it, March weather is terrible. So we need to have a good plan for both of these subjects.

For physical education, my husband takes the lead. He is also not a planner. Ha! So as a backup in case of foul weather, we will have this playlist of Yoga videos to keep us busy learning to use our bodies in a healthy way.

For civics, will listening NPR’s daily podcast Up First. This program gives a quick rundown of the daily news and provides a great jumping off point for interesting conversations amongst my pre-teens and teen.

Additionally, I want to focus on some specifics of Scripture. After all, it is Lent! We already use a Bible curriculum but it isn’t tied to the liturgical calendar and I want to have something more to go through with my children as we approach Holy Week. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really find what I was looking for on Pinterest or on Teachers Pay Teachers. But, as they say, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” so I made a packet that we will use during the last week of March.

I’ve made these packets available for you to download as a PDF. I made one for younger children that includes scriptures to read. The other is for older children and includes scriptures to write out.

I’m looking forward to going through these with my children and hearing their insight about the passages of Scripture leading up to the Resurrection!

As always, I will work on being flexible so that when we need to more slower, we can or if we need to move faster, we can. Flexibility is so important when it comes to homeschool! This isn’t public school. You do not have to be on a set schedule. You have the freedom to learn at any pace you choose. Even better, if your children are like mine, you can take extra breaks throughout the day when they finish quickly!

Another thing I’m leaning into this month is finding ways to nurture my children’s natural curiosity. When we can put the curriculum down and watch a documentary or read a book that will help my children dig more deeply into their interests? This is a question I’m beginning to ask myself as we go throughout our days. I’m looking forward to finding ways to incorporate these interests.

What are your plans for March? Do you do anything special in your homeschool this month? Let me know in the comments!

Homeschooling

Homeschool Week #24

Posted on February 19, 2021February 19, 2021 by Crystal

This week started with a major case of “I don’t wanna”. Blame it on the cold or the ice and snow or the mid-February blues. Either way, no one wanted to do any kind of learning this week. But we hit the books anyway.

President’s Day

We’re continuing with the plan in this post. All four children began working on packets to help them understand the office of the president. They also began researching specific presidents.