Thursday, July 12, 2018

A (Homeschool) Year in Review...Learning Aid Review to the 2017-18 School Year


I recently finished reading Rethinking School: How to Take Charge of Your Child's Education which is influencing how I write up my reviews for the past year. I highly recommend it!

This year was the most challenging homeschooling year I have had so far, and next year promises to be even scarier. I'm just now finishing up this post (that I do every year, as a sort of road map for myself to review as I plan the same grade level for the next child) in July, because I'm still finishing up the grading from last year. Confirmation that I only want to teach my children. Grading all the work of a whole classroom leaves me mentally limp on the floor. For anyone else interested, here is what the past year looked like.

Everleigh (2nd grade-roughly)

Reading: Evie is slower to read than my other two kids. I tried to teach her too soon and I realized this year that her early struggles gave her a lack of confidence that is unfounded. I questioned if I needed to change curricula but found that The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading was really the best because it allowed us to make slow, sustainable progress with only 5-10 minutes a day. Interestingly, while feeling like she couldn't read, she could spell and write more easily. Asking her to compose a sentence, she would demonstrate a pretty strong grasp of phonics. She and I will sit down with a library book of interest and I will let her read to me. For her, the key is keeping it short and simple for now. Her comprehension when I read to her is outstanding, and I feel fairly certain she will enjoy reading in the future. (5 days/wk)

Math: Evie loves math, and works above grade level. We kept with Horizons, because as with all of my kids, the spiral-method and colorful graphics held their interest and they all keep asking to do it again. My only complaint is that I wish it were a little shorter. It is hard to complete in 36 weeks and I have a hard time stopping when there are still lessons in the book. Next year, I will! Ha! (5 days/wk)

Handwriting: I did something new with Evie and started cursive with her in 2nd grade. Cursive has never been terribly important to me, but she is the most artistic and seems to learn better through writing. She loves cursive and is fairly good at it. I like Zaner-Bloser's program, but I'm sure others work well too. (4 days/wk)

Spelling and Grammar: Few programs make me as excited as Language Lessons. Evie was in Level 2. The book is cheap, the lessons are quick, easy and thorough, and grammar is largely auditory at this stage. (3 days/wk)  We used Spelling Workout A and B which really helped her get a handle on reading. She enjoyed the topics and having a list of words, and I was encouraged that she was easily spotting spelling mistakes. (2 days/wk)

Evie jumped in on physics experiments, participated in History (that I did with the other two), and we learned about artists matching the period in History we were studying (Modern 1789-2000). She loves art projects so I gave her some ideas and others she came up with. She also kept going with Logic exercises once a week, in the form of Mind Benders.

Kyrie (5th grade) 

Bible-All grades studied the Apostle's Creed in detail, breaking it apart and unpacking the theology contained in each phrase. We also spent more time praying for the needs of others at the start of our day and this was a really beautiful time. (5 times/wk)

History-Not surprisingly, we stuck with Story of the World. This year we were in Vol. 4-The Modern Age, which is the period of history I know and love best, and also very disturbing and takes more time to process emotionally, as well as just studying. It is also the most poorly organized and a little scattered at times. When I was on my game, I taught a lot of lessons in a different order, following a particular country/region instead of splitting them up and having to revisit the previous events to make sense of the new material. I appreciate the way the Activity book helps develop building an outline and then writing from an outline as the year progresses. I am hopeful this book will be updated and re-written to accommodate later events and also add to the book suggestions.(4 times/wk)

Editor in Chief® Level 1Grammar- Kyrie loved the combination of Editor in Chief and Sentence Diagramming. I was most impressed with Editor in Chief which had brief teachings on grammar errors and then the student had to locate and correct grammar mistakes (like an editor). It was practical, succinct, and we had very short lessons 2-4 times a week.

Writing and Rhetoric- I love this series because it is thorough, interesting, and not encumbered with busy work. It is sometimes hard because it doesn't divide neatly into a scheduled time frame for lessons. (E.g. A lesson could take a couple of weeks, or a couple of days. Each book has a slightly different number of lessons, 10-13.) I like the inclusion of rhetoric and the different writing topics focus on a particular kind/purpose and the student practices that writing until he/she is comfortable with it. The series teaches formulaic writing, so that students are quick to think, "I need a quote here," and "I need to sum things up here." Ultimately, it will free them to write with a certain sense of what they need to accomplish. The series is a little advanced for the recommended grade levels, but I just noticed those were adjusted to be more true on the website. Kyrie completed Chreia & Proverb and Book 5: Refutation & Confirmation this year. There was a definite step up between these two books, and in retrospect, I should have held off on having her do a second one. Next year, we will only do one book, slow it down, take more time and allow her to focus on some other writing projects. (3-5 times/wk)

Math- Just this week Kyrie told me she had looked at some friends math books and determined that her math, Horizons, was much harder. Since math was harder, took longer this year, and presented more challenges, I was happy that she took pride in having completed a tough curriculum. She is right. I've read estimates that Horizon runs as much as a whole grade level ahead.  It is a 5-day/week, 36+ weeks complete curriculum.  The intensity is helped by use of the spiral method, so you can move on and then circle back. I don't get excited about math, but at the end of the day, my kids all have strong math skills. So I have to be happy with Horizons.

Latin-I have determined that each of my children should have at least a year of Latin. This is based on my past career in college admissions and reviewing a lot of perfect  and near-perfect verbal SAT scores that in nearly every case matched up to Latin on a transcript. But embarking on Latin with Kyrie was a little scary because I thought it would be exasperatingly challenging for her, and she wouldn't understand the point. It turns out that I seriously misread her. She loved Latin for Children, Primer A. Some of this is because she values independent learning a lot, and she would watch a video-we streamed-and then complete the exercises independently. However, the revised text and program is so engaging and colorful and taught so well, that she may have loved this simply because it is so well-done. I only intended her to do one year, but she requested to do year 2 next year. (4 days/wk)

We continued with Spelling Workout F to cover spelling and handwriting practice; again, she works independently so she loves it. For Science, she did Physics with Ben. This year she jumped in and started doing the folders and quizzes and not just lesson and labs. She did great. She did Typing Instructor once a week. For Art, we did some Art History, learning about artists and famous paintings. Usborne has excellent materials to use. She took piano for her music education.

Ben (8th grade)

Ben has been down on formal education and so this year we just engaged him on how he was using what he learned in his own interests and how continuing that learning would help him be a better movie-maker. He is enthralled by history, and put together a movie explaining the Pakistan-India split using pets. We also started some research on film studies and when we learned he could go to college to study film (not math), he was excited.

His Bible/Faith was the same as Kyrie's (and Ev's) and so was History. I encourage him to think in terms of ideas more and he was quick to recognize how one bad idea (or good idea) could affect world history for generations as it spawns other ideas and reactions. I added in a lot of independent reading and writing on ideas.

Math- In the higher grades there are less and less options for math. We stuck with Horizons for Algebra I. In addition to the text, there are worksheets that are useful for use as "homework" or as quizzes. They are slightly easier than the text, and go quickly. This was an excruciating subject for both us in the beginning of the year. Then something clicked and Ben just got it, and did well after that. I took Algebra in college and yet, I was a little lost, quickly. So he worked independently and did fine. But I did determine that he is moving to an online, real-time instructor next year. 😀  This is a great curriculum, but it is advanced and does require teacher-knowledge. (5 days/wk)

Physics-I love RealScience4Kids Focus On and we use the Study Bundle which includes lesson plans, text, lab book, teacher's manual, research sheets that you make into a folder, and quizzes. Colorful and bright, with repetition in developing hypotheses, this develops interest, helps with understanding basic concepts, and is manageable. (10 Lessons, that we covered with four science periods each.) I could use it with the all the kids and just adjust to their learning level. (2 days/wk but we only needed 21 weeks to cover it)

Writing & Rhetoric-Again, we use the Classical Academic Press series and Ben covered the Comparison and Description & Impersonation books. He particularly liked the latter, which taught him to write as someone else; he was challenged writing as a female, but loved impersonating Winston Churchill.  He was at the perfect level for these courses; challenging, but not overwhelming.  (3-4 days/wk)

Grammar-It was a relatively easy year for Grammar. Like Kyrie, I opted to go practical and Ben did the higher level of Editor in Chief, fine tuning his copy-editing skills. (1-2 days/wk)

Spelling-Ben celebrated his LAST year of Spelling as a subject and completed Spelling Workout H. His handwriting leaves a lot to be desired, but he did get a little practice. (1 day/wk)

Latin-Ben went back to Latin after a couple of years off. We had him take it online through Schole Academy. I wish it weren't so expensive, but it is a very high-quality program, from the instructor, to the small class size, to the software that helped track his project and allowed me to see his quiz, test, homework scores....(when I wanted to). He also was able to learn a lot about giving your attention to something and not multi-tasking in a class situation. Not a bad lesson to learn. (Class 2 days/wk; homework we did 2 days/wk but it was challenging)

Logic-We finished up The Argument Builder, which focused on constructing arguments. We did this as a family and this book is my least favorite of the three Logic books that Classical Academic Press offers. It isn't quite as engaging and easy to follow as the other two. We started on The Discovery of Deduction, An Introduction to Formal Logic. We took it really slow when I realized this would look nice on a high school transcript. (1 evening class/wk and one homework day/wk, when we got to it.)

Art and Music-Ben continued with drawing one-day-a-week with Feed My Sheep. He is really good at drawing, so I have continued to encourage him to keep learning. But his passion this year was piano. He picked up lessons again, and started working on composing his own music to accompany his movies.

As Ben moves into high school, I have started thinking about what electives look like. He tried fencing and enjoyed doing it for a year, but has lost interest. He has been volunteering at the library this summer which he has really enjoyed. We are in a new phase here, and I'm still wrapping my head around it.

2 comments:

Darren said...

Thanks for posting this!

Can you send me Ben's movie on the India/Pakistan split? I just listened to an audiobook about that last year, and found it tragically fascinating.

Rachelle said...

I will have him send it to you! :)