Ligia, Author at Journal of a Busy Mom

Review of Curriculum Choices 2015-16

May 30, 2016 By Ligia

In my post Spring Forward: 2016-17 I wrote about looking forward to a new school year. However, before I can do that I need to look back at this year’s curriculum choices to see what did or did not work. This was step one in the Planning Process. I wrote about our 2015-16 choices for curriculum here and here. And as I look at my lists, I am very surprised at how many things we kind of ditched along the way, some intentionally and some not so intentionally.

For my son:

We ended up switching from our from Essentials in Writing back to Writeshop. I don’t remember when I made the switch but I know we only did a handful of lessons. For the past three years we have done Writeshop and I felt I needed something hands off. I thought the video series would provide that. Since my son has dyslexia, I ended up needing to be involved. He tolerated Writeshop so I went back. I found something that has really helped, though, a website that provides online videos to teach Writeshop. It is not free, but fairly inexpensive. Here is the link: Play With Education.

We also dropped Apologia’s Who is God? It was in no way a reflection of the curriculum. We returned to CBS and decided to do that again so it was nearly impossible to do two Bible curriculums.

Finally, the big change, was I decided to delay his entry into online learning and dropped both of his online course with Landry. I feel I made the right choice. He would have been overwhelmed. So we are planning to do some next year, but more on that later.

So what are our keepers?

Definitely, will continue with Teaching Textbooks, Hewitt Lightning Literature, Barton Reading and Spelling, Apologia and Writeshop.

For my daughter:

Her big change was we did not stick to Jensen’s Grammar. I don’t know what is up with her and grammar! This is curriculum number 3. We discussed it at length and decided we might do an online college class for grammar. She really needs it if she plans to be an editor. Yikes!

For her that was really the only change.

What we are keeping?

For next year she will be doing completely different curriculum only because her classes are mostly on Landry Academy and co-op classes. At this point, the only thing I am still “teacher” is math. She will do Math U See Geometry. Everything else that I do is elective type like Home Ec, PE, and her Clep studies.

21 Days of Discipline Wrap up

April 21, 2016 By Ligia

I finally finished the 21 Days of Discipline that i mentioned in this post. Obviously from the discrepancy in dates, it took me more than 21 days!

I really enjoyed the following things:

Working on a Mega Project (which I didn’t finish)-I really liked having ONE big project that I am working on. It helped me to focus my attention on one thing. Each day I worked on that one project. Unfortunately, my project didn’t get finished, but I am very pleased with how much did get done. I probably need two good solid days of working on it and I will be done.

Getting things done now-the last day she had us write 10 things that take 2 minutes to do. And then she said “go do it”. It was hard to come up with my 10 things but I did and what a relief to get those done and out of the way. I plan to continue to do that. Maybe not daily but maybe once a week. I wrote it on an index card that i can carry around as I complete things and then toss it away (or save it to use the other side).

I am happy that I completed it. I didn’t do it perfectly, but I took away two gems.

My next project will be 10 Day Unstuffed Challenge by Ruth Soukup. She is a blogger at www.livingwellspendingless.com based on her book Unstuffed.

And while I am at it, I will probably be doing Crystals next series called Makeover Your Evenings.

Homeschool Calendar 2016-17

April 5, 2016 By Ligia

I wish I was able to create my own dazzling calendar but I am not as talented on the computer as some other bloggers. So I will share with you the homeschool calendars that I have found for next school year that I love:

www.fivejs.com:printable school calendar with different start dates. It has 14 month which I really like.

www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com: printable calendar has an area for writing the number of days of school per month and a key at the bottom. You have to go to 3B on her list of 7 Steps to find the specific one I use here.

Here is the picture of my 2015-16 Calendar. I went with Tina’s.

She also has a nifty holidays list, which is very helpful when planning.

My first step is blocking off the holidays from this list.
Next, I mark off my husband’s work holidays.
Third, I mark off weeks off from our online school Landry Academy. I also mark start and end dates for each semester.
Fourth I add in any other weeks off or days off we might take off.
Finally, I look at the local district calendar and my nieces and nephew’s school calendars to see if we can arrange our schedule so we have days/weeks off with them.
In California, we have to school 180 days. So I also add up each week and month to make sure we hit 180. I school through the summer so I am pretty sure I will surpass that goal, but if next year is anything like this year (lots of sick days) I might just squeak by.

I am already hard at work with our schedule. So excited for the possibilities.

Ligia