I can’t believe that it’s this time of year already! I feel like this past year, insane and limited as it was, flew by. I’ve had a hard time choosing curriculum for this coming year: I want it to be rigorous since my older two are in middle school, but I still want them to enjoy learning. Add to that the fact that I’m not sure what extracurriculars are going to be available to us because of the ever-changing nature of this pandemic, and I’m not sure how much at-home vs. on-the-go time to plan on. But I’ve done my best, and here’s what I’ve come up with:
- Math
- Pookie has continued to be my math mystery: he’s amazing at puzzles and will burst out with casual math tidbits that tell me that he understands the concepts just fine, but he seems to struggle with the presentation of standard problems. So while I’m waiting to have him evaluated to help me know how best to teach him, I had to go with my gut. He does best with bite-sized tasks and hands-on activities, so I have what feels like a million and one bits to make up his math. Here’s what we’re doing:
- I purchased a Time4MathFacts annual subscription this spring because his lack of fact fluency was having a detrimental impact on his ability to do more complex math. He’s made a lot of progress with that, but I want to have him continue to practice at least a couple days each week. (This subscription is totally worth it, in my opinion, because the program tests your child’s response time/typing speed at the beginning of every session and adjusts the timer accordingly. That makes it doable for the child no matter how slowly they process: it’s the only timed program my anxious kids haven’t flipped out over. There are also a variety of games to choose from. It makes fact practice not abhorrent or stressful.)
- On days when he’s not doing fact practice, I’ll have him spend some time on ST Math, which is a website that touts itself as providing very visual, manipulative-heavy math activities that can be used as a full curriculum. It’s free through June 2022. (Update: He hated this. It had a long image-based password to get in, and every problem you did was accompanied by animations that made everything take forever. Alas! I gave up because the animations were annoying even to me, and there was no way to skip them or speed them up.)
- An Evan-Moor Daily Math Practice book (Grade 5) will provide a quick 5-minute review of various topics throughout the week to keep everything fresh in his mind. (Update: I liked the variety of things they reviewed. This worked well for us all year!)
- Lakeshore Learning Mastering Multi-Step Problem Solving cards (Grade 4 & 5) will be our one-a-day word problem practice. Each set has 60 cards of varying difficulty levels. (Update: I LOVE these cards! They have a variety of problem types that get progressively harder over the course of the set. He enjoys having just one card each day, and the challenge level is such that he feels good about his correct answers because the problems make him work for it.)
- I have a few topical resources that I’ll spend some time on, though how we work these may depend on how he’s faring with the rest. We may use these to take a break from everything else, or we may use these as 10-15 minute daily work. I bought Fractions Sense C (since I purchased and used level B this spring with great success), and I have an Advanced Pattern Block Book for fun work on different math concepts and Time Travel Math which is a story-based geometry program.
- Goober has wrapped up all that Math Mammoth has to offer and said a bittersweet farewell. We’re going with the Math Mammoth recommendation to try Foerster’s Algebra I. We’ll start on our own with just the book, but I know there are online lessons available if we need more instruction. (Update: Math Mammoth prepared her well for this, since she breezed through most of the book. The few places where she ran stuck, either I was able to help her figure things out or I found a Khan video to explain the concept for me.)
- Peatie was going in fits and starts this past year with his AoPS Algebra: some units/chapters he had no trouble, and others just didn’t click for him. Rather than spin our wheels, I went in search of alternatives. He did a Thinkwell Algebra I Review course and practiced on Khan Academy to be sure he had the Algebra I concepts down well this spring, and I had him try an Elements of Mathematics: Foundations class. He LOVED it, so we’ll try EMF this year for our math. It’s an online program run by the Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science, so it’s definitely rigorous, just a different flavor than AoPS. We’ll see how long we continue with it.
- Pookie has continued to be my math mystery: he’s amazing at puzzles and will burst out with casual math tidbits that tell me that he understands the concepts just fine, but he seems to struggle with the presentation of standard problems. So while I’m waiting to have him evaluated to help me know how best to teach him, I had to go with my gut. He does best with bite-sized tasks and hands-on activities, so I have what feels like a million and one bits to make up his math. Here’s what we’re doing:
- Language Arts
- Our Family Book Club was a success last year, and we found some new favorite books as a family. We’ll continue reading and discussing books together this year. While last year we read a variety of books set in the U.S. throughout its history, this year we’re going with a world history theme to match our social studies again.
- Last year we worked hard on crafting good paragraphs and then putting them together to make essays; this year we’ll continue to work on our writing together using Jump In! Middle School Composition. This is supposed to be a fun book that helps kids to hone their writing for different purposes.
- Pookie did just fine with his language arts workbooks last year, but he didn’t retain as much as I’d like. This year I’m going to have him work through Jr. Analytical Grammar with me. The reviews I’ve read seem to indicate that it works well for very visual, logical kids. I’m going to minimize the writing by typing and printing the sentences so he can cut-and-paste when it gets to diagramming. We’ll see how it goes… (Update: He and I didn’t like how it started with whole sentences and asked you to pick out one part of speech without knowing what other parts of speech were to help you narrow things down. I switched to using Drawing Sentences with him, too. First I typed out the sentences and had him cut them apart and arrange them to diagram, but he preferred just to dictate the diagram to me. He actually loved it!)
- The older two kids made it through the first half of Drawing Sentences last year. It wasn’t their favorite thing to do, but they didn’t hate it, and it definitely allowed us to talk about the jobs of different parts of speech and why you would or wouldn’t use a particular word or word order in speaking or writing, so this year I’ll have them finish the book.
- On the other hand, they absolutely loved the Aunt Ruth grammar, so they’ll also be working through Aunt Ruth: The Queen of English and Her Reign of Error. It’s a good complement to Drawing Sentences: while Drawing Sentences is strictly grammar and sentence structure, Aunt Ruth is limited to usage.
- Social Studies
- The kids requested more variety for their social studies work this year, since last year was strictly reading and answering questions. Since I stumbled across a link to materials for Crash Course World History, I decided to use that. It pairs short videos with response questions, primary source materials, and other exercises. I thought it looked interesting; we’ll see if my kids agree.
- Science
- Despite the fact that fully 1/3 of our science last year was lab time, the kids still felt like it was too boring. There’s nothing worse than boring science, so this year I’m trying to mix it up a little. Using CPO Life Science as our spine, I’m pulling some hands-on work from Ellen McHenry’s Botany, Cells, and Protozoa and some videos from the Amoeba Sisters on YouTube. I really want to firm up exactly how this is going to work, but I’m trying to stay flexible so I can easily adjust based on what appeals to them.
- Everything Else
- I’ve hit the limit of what I can teach in Spanish, and our weekly conversation tutor wasn’t up for doing more, so the older two kids are going to try out Homeschool Spanish Academy. I hope they don’t hate it. Pookie has been stalling on Duolingo–repeating the lessons in the first level over and over–so I think I may have him work with me at least a couple days a week now that I’m not swamped with what the older two are doing.
- We got tired of virtual martial arts (and the instructor kept forgetting to record and post lessons) so we’ve switched to what the kids call “Mom-shal Arts.” I let each child pick an exercise (one upper body, one core, one lower body) and they roll three dice to see how many we have to do (doubling any time we get 10 or fewer). We add in twenty of one type of kick (with each leg) and 20 of one type of punch (with each arm) and at least 30 jumping jacks, and then we do the whole thing a second time. We do this twice a week, and it provides us about 20 minutes of near-constant motion.
- We’re still outsourcing music, and will have the kids continue lessons until they want to stop (with a stated minimum of 3 years). Peatie and Goober continue to enjoy piano lessons, so they’ll keep up with their current teacher. Pookie really wanted to switch to electric guitar, so we let him transition at the start of this year after he had learned to read all the notes on the staff in his classical guitar lessons. He’s now happily blasting out our eardrums.
- It worked well for us to use a variety of lesson plans from KinderArt.com this past year, so I’ll once again make a list of weekly projects for us to do during our Fun Fridays. I tried to choose varied activities that would gradually build our skills of observation and representation, and I think we made some progress.
- Love and I felt like the kids could use some work on mindfulness (staying in the moment, understanding how you feel), so I picked up the MindUp curriculum for grades 5-8. I had used the K-2 version with them years ago and appreciated its content, so I’m hoping this is equally solid stuff. We’ll spend a few minutes on it at the start of every work day.
butmostlymommy 