Journal of a Busy Mom

living one day at a time

Review of Curriculum Choices 2015-16

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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.

More on that next time.

Ligia

 

 

Homeschool Calendar 2016-17

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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.

IMG_1186

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

Spring Forward: Planning for 2016-17

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I feel like I just recently wrote about planning my homeschool year for 2015-16 and now I am focusing on 2016-17. Where does the time go?

It might seem early to start thinking about curriculum for next year, but I have to be honest, by February I am pretty done with the current school year!!! I need something to look forward to.  I read an article in Home School Enrichment called “It’s a Wrap” by Jennifer Pepito, at Homeschooling for the Whole Family. In the article, she says “Curriculum is something I approach prayerfully and early. Although it may seem backwards to plan next year’s schooling before I have finished up the current year, doing so has been a great tool to allow my family some breathing room during the summer.” This is so true. It definitely allows me to feel like I can enjoy the summer. Although we homeschool year round, I usually don’t start anything new until August. The summer is more for catch up.

So here are some small steps that I started taking in February and now into March:

  1. Look at what has worked and what didn’t work (or isn’t working).
  2. Talk to my kids about what they would like to study the following year.
  3. Start researching curriculums, online classes, and homeschool classifieds.
  4. Build my list of possible curriculums and prices to get an idea of what my cost will be for the following year.
  5. 5. Start selling curriculum as we finish. (Really important since I recycle that money for the following year).

I will post on each of these steps as I go through them. Hopefully, by the end I will be ready for our new school year.