[nm]

I am so so sorry.  I am praying for peace for all of you!

I know your pain. My first died at a young age. But I didn't have others yet, so I only had myself to get back on track after losing my own child. But I have a little experience. Six years ago I lost 3 siblings in a six month period while pregnant with my last. It was just boom boom boom, by the way, now it's time for the baby to be born. That year was a mess for all of us. 

How we kept up some routine: I tried to keep the kids in their outside activities. They had dance classes and co-op. At co-op they were in Latin classes and art and science and PE. I helped them keep up with Latin and to do any homework for the other classes. It was a welcome relief to help a kiddo paint a zebra for a presentation on animals. 🙂  They were both in girl scouts. My oldest was in 6th grade, and she chose some girl scout badges that she wanted to do on her own that year when I was busy at hospitals and other places. So she kind of unschooled English by doing a screenwriter's badge and other things. 

And I tried to keep them up in math a few times a week. We didn't finish the math books that year. But we didn't lose all our skills. They kept up reading by reading for those science classes at co-op and on their own. We read books to go with topics that came up in scouts or that they were interested in. 

After a couple of months, we did some big, fun history projects in a couple of months so that we also got history in. It was not a typical year for us, but in the end we covered everything absolutely necessary. My mom is a PS teacher. She was obviously going through all of the pain that we were. She will be he first to tell you that it wasn't her best year either, but she got through it. 

[Most parent intensive grades]

I found junior and senior year of homeschooling to be the most intensive. I had to learn how to set up to take all of the exams through the schools or online. I had to figure out the requirements and set up appointments for driver's ed and all of the related tests. And for us, it involves driving quite far. Our city is always completely booked, and you have to go around the state to get in anywhere. Higher requirements and all of their appointments for higher awards in scouts, helping kids get jobs and get them there, plan college and all of that research, doing applications with them, the FAFSA paperwork, the online college application stuff. 

Yes, the first grader needs me for everything school related, but I don't find it particularly intensive. We both enjoy it. The upper years are much more intensive for me, even if it isn't all one on one with the teen. I just had to constantly be learning new skills and going down endless to do lists. 

[Beginning Literature for a family new to Homeschooling]

For my first grader we visit the library A TON. We get all SOTW Activity Guide suggestions, both history and literature. I read from What Your First Grader Needs to Know for poetry, nursery rhymes, common sayings, songs, etc. And then just whatever she wants from our personal book collections or that she picks at the library. Currently she is having me read a lot from a big Children's Literature Anthology that we got as a hand me down from our church's library. We read the readers from Rod and Staff that cover Bible as well as from our Children's Bible. 

For science, we are doing WTM style animals study right now. But while at the library, I pick out books with animal characters to go along with her science animals. There are just so many great children's picture books out there. So I try to include those. (Frog and Toad books when on amphibians, The Very Hungry Caterpillar when on butterflies, etc. 

The What Your First Grader Needs to Know is nice because it has a little of everything- aesop's fables, stories from around the world, nursery rhymes and fairy tales, history, songs, etc. If I had to have one book alongside my SOTW selections that is definitely it. 

[high school..with a kid who doesn’t know how to do hs level work]

On 10/1/2020 at 1:06 PM, Susan in TX said:

Also, just because she does 8th grade work this year doesn't mean that she can't graduate on time. Unless you are in a state with strict requirements for homeschoolers or you are trying to get accepted to a 4 year university with specific requirements, you have a lot of freedom to plan her course of study. She doesn't have to cover everything in the same way that it is done in public school. 

Susan in TX

I agree with this. My dyslexic child at this point still plans on college. She may need to start in junior college. Our state has a scholarship program that pays for instate tuition for students that qualify based on income and basic curriculum requirements and ACT score. She has prequalified based on our income. She has to get through Alg. 2 in math to qualify among other things. She is a junior and is still finishing up her Alg. 1. She still has to get through geometry and Alg. 2 by their requirements to qualify for the program. But it took us this long to solidify the basics, and I am ok with that. She will score better on that ACT with the solid grounding that she now has in basic preAlgebra skills  that took us a long time to cement. And she has through her senior year to get the score they require. So we just keep working slowly and surely at her pace.  We will start her geometry after Christmas and work through the summer to finish it and get her into Alg.2 her senior year.  I think she is finally getting it and moving at a regular pace in math, even though it has taken us 9th, 10th, and half of 11th grade to get that foundation of a preAlgebra and an Algebra course fully accomplished.  

As for the rest- mine has trouble with spelling. That also carries over into her grammar not being the best, but we have always focused on that, so it is not as bad as I have seen coming from public schools. If she is hand writing, she still forgets capital letters at the beginning of sentences and such, just part of the dyslexia. But her typing is pretty good, and spellcheck helps a lot. 

Studying for tests isn't her best thing either. We haven't used anything formal. But I do have her take notes from each chapter and go over them to help her learn as others have said. It is just an ongoing project with her. Lots of review.  She is getting ready for her driver's permit test. That is important to her, so it is a good place to work on those skills. 

And like others said with the carrot- we do a lot of her curriculum through things she loves. She is an artist, loves history, big projects, etc. We found a unit study fully planned out around the History of Fashion last year. It was amazing. It combined teaching computer skills in 'Word which she needed, history projects around each decade as they studied the fashion and the reasons behind fashion changes. We took this one semester unit study and made a full year out of it. She read a history textbook alongside it for her history, doing the mapwork and projects from the unit study for her written work. I bought her a Thinking Tree fashion journal for her final projec.t. For each decade it had her research a first lady's gown, do a written paper on a something that happened in that decade, and design her own gowns and to watch a movie from each decade to see the fashion. We chose movies by decade that were from famous literature or about important historical events.  I included a book on historical costuming for her to read alongside as well. It included some historical handicrafts and had them plan a tea party and do recipes from the time periods. So she got some English projects from this, all of her history, lots of art and hands on, lots of exposure to literature and stories from the watching the movies. 

I try to have at least one class going at a time like this that she really enjoys and that includes things she loves, but that also covers necessary subjects, This year she wanted to do another play. The community theater group she danced with in the past isn't doing much because of COVID, so we joined a co-op that is doing a play. I signed her up for some Master Classes on theater and speech to go along with it. 

 

[Do you totally outsource HS, and if not, what do you use?]

We are very homegrown here. I use textbooks, library books, the online site Schoolhouseteachers dot com, a mish mash of literature books, funschooling journals and dyslexia games books, the internet, girl scout projects etc. Right now my junior in high school is having almost nothing outsourced except PE (dance classes and a PE class at co-op once a week) and an elective course that falls under health called human development at a co-op using a textbook that teacher picked out. We joined this particular co-op because they have theater, and she wanted to be in a play. So she is doing a couple of classes while we are there too. One hour they just play Oregon Trail, so theater, human development, Oregon Trail, human development, and PE while there half a day once a week.  She and I are doing fine doing maths and sciences together.  We do some labs at home alone, and we do some with people from our homeschool group or friends. 

In the past with my now graduated dd we did move her into Mrdmath dot com after algebra I.  She did a lot of high school science classes at co-op since she liked the teacher and the group. She did Biology, Chemistry, and Anatomy and Physiology at co-op with textbooks picked out from the teacher there and did all tests, labs, and everything there. She and I did Astronomy at home using sources recommended in the Well Trained Mind and she joined two Astronomy clubs for labs. Then her senior year she did some concurrent enrollment courses at the community college: English comp 1 and a Computers Applications course.  She did lots of art classes at a co-op and did dance classes her whole life, some of the hours I counted towards a 1/2 credit of PE each year, some hours went as extra curricular hours, and she took piano lessons for a 1/2 credit of piano for three years of high school. 

I did all Latin, history, English, most art, economics, speech, etc. etc. on our own with books or combining resources from opportunities in our community with books and lessons, etc.  I used the book, The Well Trained Mind a lot for putting together our overall plan for credits and other books about homeschooling high school. I don't use a lot of laid out curriculum, but do appreciate it in some courses. The Schoolhouseteachers dot com is giving me the laid out lesson plans for now in things that I don't want to do it myself. Other things we just read a lot and write and research and do on our own.

Example: our government class last year. I assigned each a textbook to read from the library. Each chose the one they wanted. I assigned three projects: give one poster/speech presentation at homeschool group's presentation night on a topic from their book. Complete one girl scout badge on government. Each badge has five steps that include a lot of research and reaching out in the community. And to enter the bar association's art/essay contest. Then we did field trips throughout the year: we sat through small claims court. We listened to a speech by a state supreme court judge and met him. We toured our state capitol building and met our state representative. We toured our state's first state capitol in another city, etc.  With co-op we also did a once a month group activity like act out a debate, or did a constitution themed escape room, mapwork projects, etc.  Their only output for this class was the three projects. But those projects were meaningful and self led and took a lot of research. I didn't make them answer the questions from each chapter as they read them or anything. 

 

 

 

 

[Nature Study during SIP]

I used the Claire Walker Leslie book, Keeping a Nature Journal, one year, many years ago to set up nature journals with each of my kids like she does. It did give us a guideline, included a lot of drawing which is part that I and one of my kids enjoy a lot outdoors, and helped us all enjoy nature topics a lot. We have done a lot of the suggestions above over the years.  It was more about the noticing the environment and drawing than about studying the topics. We added that in sometimes with CM style or other curriculum or books. Sometimes we just did the Leslie style journaling.

One thing I have is a "nature bag." I keep it by the door or in the car. It has our individual journals (composition books!) and a bag of colored pencils and pens and pencils plus a stash of field guides.  We do take these out just for drawing sometimes to a local park and have done so a few times a year for years. We also often go to the park just to walk and look at butterflies, fish, birds, turtles, flowers, etc. 

Like others, we have done citizen science over the years. One year we joined the Audobon Society for their Christmas Bird Count which was great because we had experts showing us birds in our own neighborhoods we never would have noticed. From there, we have done the Backyard Bird Count many times. Because of year focused on birds something like eight years ago (in which we used the Memoria Press Bird Science unit and the Apologia Flying Creatures curriculum," and we raised and hatched two sets of birds that year, quail and chickens, and learned how to identify birds and sounds, we have just kept up the love.  Now wherever we are on vacation, we notice birds. We were at a pumpkin patch with a lake yesterday and noticed a heron flying by, which got my two dds to leave the homeschool group and go around the shore to look quietly for more. When we are out of town anywhere, we spend time noticing the birds, the difference, theones we know, etc. We might look up the type. We may just enjoy them. And sometimes we take field trips just to bird watch. We went in January to two different parks across our  state to look for nesting Bald Eagles, as it is the only time they are here. It took us two full days and a LOT of driving, but we finally spotted some, and it was amazing. For fall break, soon, we are going to go to a nature reserve where whooping cranes flocks migrate through. It will be a little early, but we are hoping to see some starting to come through. It may take us a few years to time it just right and find them, just as it did the eagles. 

We have just made this part of our family culture. We don't force the drawing/journaling. One of my dds thoroughly did not like the drawing part. We did it that one year as part of our school to try it out. and even then, only occasionally did I require it. But eventually she learned she like photography and instead later I would instruct her to bring her camera. She enjoyed that. The other and I enjoyed drawing. The little one has just always been around for these adventures and loves spotting stuff, learning about stuff, and being outside, and looking at field guides. Now that she is in first grade we are using a Thinking Tree Nature journal for her science this year. It is really just a  big book of notebooking type pages with brief instructions for drawing and reading and writing with a nature theme. Perfect for a 1st grader. She sometimes takes it to the park to draw and look at nature. Sometimes we use it to have her document what we are reading about from library books. She generally right now gets to pick books on any type of animal she wants to learn about or draw. If I see an animal interesting her, I will pick up books and videos for us to learn more about it. 

We are loving watching squirrels this time of year. We just notice what is going on around us and work on identification mostly for now.  So for my 1st grader right now, because she is so young and life science is our focus,  Nature studies are her main topics of science study for the next couple of years, even following the WTM science cycles like I try to.  I like Memoria Press science too if you want actual curriculum. Their astronomy, trees, bugs, birds, etc. are all good for some guidance. We have used a few of them, and I would love to use the others at some point that I haven't. I am not as big a fan of Apologia for elementary, but our co-ops always liked them when my olders were little. So we sometimes used their journals which I did like to guide us through their topics, focusing less on the textbooks which I don't love. 

[First grade planning help esp Lang Arts]

My current first grader is doing what my past first graders did for the most part:

Rod and Staff 1st grade reading and phonics- covers Bible and spelling and writing and copywork, everything L.A. all in one if you get the additional worksheets. I spread 1st grade materials over a year and a half, starting in K whenever they are ready for it.  Then when 1st grade is complete, in the past I dropped all of this except the 2nd grade phonics. We completed the 2nd grade phonics and picked up the 2nd grade R&S english, but dropped the reading and all of the worksheets.

Rod and Staff math- wherever they are. A couple of mine did the 1st grade math in K, one started it in 1st. They just move forward in this all the way through to Algebra. 

Story of the World vol. 1 with Activity Guide- reading book, the extra books from AG, coloring sheets, mapwork, extra activities as they fit in to our weeks, and occasional written narrations. 

Life Science ala WTM: animals, human body, and plants. But we really spend most of the time on animals and human body, because we garden and do a lot of plant stuff over the summers. This year I am using a Thinking Tree Nature journal with her animal study which dd6 loves. I have the human body resources from the 2nd or 3rd version of WTM which is what we will likely use after Christmas: The Usborne 1st Encyclopedia of Human Body, a Human Body coloring book, online links from the encyclopedia, and library books and videos. 

What Your First Grader Needs to Know to supplement everything. We generally read from it once a week or so doing a poem, a saying, a story, and some history that relates to other things we are learning about from SOTW or other places. I use it to supplement music. I have used the art and music sections in the past to completely design art and music for first grade, picking up library books and CDs and such to go along with each topic and doing projects. 

Drawing with Children for drawing instruction. One of my favorite books. 

This year for music I am using lesson from the 1st grade curriculum box from Schoolhouseteachers dot com. It is very basic, but put together with learning songs from What Your First Grader Needs to Know it is enough. 

My dd gets hand on science with her girl scout troop and at homeschool co-op on top of our nature-y studies and journaling and reading. 

She takes a PE class and a dance class. So I have never really planned a lot for that. 

[What do you think about Mr. D. Math? Rigorous enough?]

My non math loving kid did it for geometry and Algebra 2 and Trig/preCalc. I don't know about engineers. We are into the humanities here, but it served her well.  My dd in particular was not a fan of math. It was her lowest score on her PSAT and ACT and at one point she wanted to get that score up to get closer to her scores in the other areas. She went back through Alg 2 in one month, redoing every quiz with intentionality and brought her ACT math score up 7 points. So I don't know if she wasn't trying her hardest to understand before, quite possible, or what. But she never used anything else besides KAHN academy occasionally.  So the material is there and it worked for us.  We will use it again. 

[Grading Algebra 1]

We take the same approach as 8fillstheheart. I don't keep grades and percentages. At the end of the course, I know how much effort was put into it and what they are capable of. My odd took a year and a half on an Algebra text. I still only gave her a B. It was mostly due to effort. We went back over things and she could still never do a quiz at the end of a chapter and get above a B because she had a mindset against it.  So she was a B student in math for our homeschool. Her standardized tests reflected what I gave in every subject when we began taking them. She didn't enjoy it, and didn't put her full effort into it. When she began taking ACTs and other national exams and got really amazing (perfect) scores in language related subjects, she knew she had a chance at some real scholarships. So it was important to her to get that math score up so that she was competitive. So she redid an entire Algebra 2 course, redoing every quiz in the course on her own to study for her next round of ACTs. She upped that math score by 7 points which put her in an amazing spot. She got some national honors, interviewed with some very selective colleges, and went to our state school as an honors student with almost full scholarships. Because she had goals of what she wanted to do, she worked even in that subject that she liked the least to get her where she wanted to go. So our approach has worked well. And I did have to write up very detailed course descriptions and grade explanations for her college applications. (She was waitlisted at a national top ten school, and was a Questbridge National College Match finalist so we did ok.) All accepted our very nontraditional way of doing school because of the results it produced. I have always had confidence in the way we school, even though others around me are shocked that we don't do everything in a text and on a timeline as a course. I have had people around me question our methods even in the homeschool world and assume we are unschoolers or not interested in higher education. But it is quite the opposite. I see education very differently than the traditional approach. And it works.  She is making an A in her first college math course this semester. She made As and the president's list during her senior year as a concurrent enrollment student too. 

We taught how to prepare for exams and timelines differently than replicating the same process over and over, year in and year out. We did big projects with scouts where they had to present before a board of alumnae and had timelines and goals and sometimes got turned down and not approved. They did outside competitions and had jobs and volunteer positions in the "real" world. So there was plenty of learning responsibility and planning. 

 

[What does"learn through play" mean to you?]

On 9/21/2020 at 4:47 PM, xahm said:

All this is interesting. My kids are little, eight and under, and are fantastic about playing. They play deep, immersive, complicated games, they mess with stuff, they invent things (that generally don't work very well, but that's part of it). I've been focusing on getting school done quickly and well to give them lots of time for this play. I feel like adding in "fun" elements that slow down the process would generally lead to less overall fun as well as less overall learning. It's been interesting to me that as we've gone through BFSU (Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding), almost all the demonstrations are old news to them, things they'd already discovered through their own play. Our brief lessons help give them vocabulary to describe what they already knew.

When I was in college taking education classes(middle and high school level), we were encouraged to make things "project based" and gamified, while also being told we'd need to make sure to hit a whole list of standards, do test prep, stay on top of paperwork, etc. To me, this sounded essentially impossible to do in the time constraints, and I'd seen young teachers at my middle and high schools try that sort of thing with us and completely burn out. I think that's part of why I'm suspicious about "gamified lessons."

I'm confident with how things are working with my children, but I don't know that what is typical for them is typical for all children, so I'm curious to hear about other people's experiences and what they've learned by reading and studying. I'd hate to advise a new homeschooler at the park, for example, based only on my experience if it turns out my experience is particularly unusual.

I think what they encouraged you to do, hard to put into words, but exactly what I did for high school. I never could just do a straight textbook course. We incorporated projects into everything and created our own courses or used projects and field work we were already doing for parts of our courses. We also incorporated test prep by doing some national exams, studying for ACTs, and in subjects.  Hitting standards? whenever I looked at them, I figured we were hitting most of them. If I was developing a course for a co-op or completely from scratch without any prewritten curriculum I would look through the state standards for some ideas of typical things covered. But a teacher friend of mine showed me how my eclectic way of studying English hit all of the standards at one point when I was writing up my class descriptions for college applications. 

My almost haphazard way of doing things would be really hard to replicate in a set amount of months in a classroom setting though. I can see that. 

OP, learning through play, I put a mix of kid led and parent/teacher set up activities. I like curriculum that incorporates some game feeling things for littles. I can throw in some games on the fly to work on skills. But I also try to take advantage of play with very young kids to use those teachable moments as they come up. But a lot of my learning through play is intentional. Does my little get open ended time? Yes. But I don't count that as her learning time most of the time. I'm not there in her head, so I am not thinking about her learning at that moment. When I am there, observing it, I may take advantage of it, by putting ideas into my plans of things she would enjoy that we could expand on like picking up library books on things she was interested in or sharing knowledge with her that I have as it pertains to what she is doing. I think it is all important.

[Interactive History and Science]

If she likes art too, I LOVE the Arty Facts series. It has science topics with art projects that are amazing. I believe they are out of print, but can sometimes be found used. 

Story of the World has amazing projects for history. I have adapted them for high school even. We had a great middle ages based year for 8th and 10th grades with vol 2 activity guide. We just added in more library books and online "trips" to see the places. 

A Christian science book series that worked well up to 7th grade for one of mine to do mostly on her own was the Science in the Beginning Series. Even though the book says for up to 6th grade, one of mine used it in 7th grade. She used the Science in the Age of Reason book, did the readings and hands on herself that year. 

 

[Skipping math problems?]

I assigned odd problems only all of the way through R&S arithmetic from 1st through 8th grade. It isn't the completing of a page that means a lesson is complete, it is the learning of the concept. 

I didn't like the textbooks I had for Algebra 1 (used PS ones,) because I wasn't sure how much was needed for daily work, and I had to spend a lot of time working each lesson to figure out what I thought was absolutely necessary for my odd to complete each lesson, otherwise if she tried to do every problem, the books would have taken years to complete. 

When I switched her to Mr. Ds online I loved it because of how few problems there are each day, and she finally started mastering upper math. My mdd is now doing a course from SHT for Alg. that I like because someone else has gone through the book and selected how many problems for each day to achieve mastery in the text they are using. It helps me so much. 

So yes, break down the amount of problems. They are all there so you can do the lesson over multiple days or have other problems to pull from for practice, board work, or examples. If my kids bombed a quiz, I would have them go back and do the evens we had skipped to redo a few lessons before retaking a quiz to make sure they had it, things like that. 

 

[How Do You Plan and Implement Labs?]

My odd did almost all science labs through co-op. She attended with the same teacher from 3rd-10th grade. In 11th grade we did our first complete year of high school science at home, and she joined two astronomy clubs, so most labs were done there. One was a high school girl scouts club with a high school Astronomy teacher, and they did SO much there, plus they joined the city Astronomy club. For that one we mostly attended events, but gained a lot of knowledge there. So we still didn't do a lot here for that. 

My next didn't have the science teacher at co-op past 9th grade. We did a science theme at co-op that year, and did Biology labs all year there on top of the weekly physical science class and labs she was doing there, so it was a double whammy of a year. Then her official biology year, since we had done a ton the year before, we didn't do as much most of the year at home her 10th grade year. Then we did a bunch at the beginning of summer to wrap up the year all at once. We also did some citizen science projects throughout the year, did two big girl scout science themed badges/projects throughout the 10th grade year. So plenty of labwork and field work was completed. 

Yes, I include all of the kids, no matter what grade level or branch of science is their official branch that year, whenever we do hands on projects of any sort. 

For my little one- I do things as they come up. Yesterday we took a nature walk after schoolwork was completed to fulfill a scavenger hunt page of her nature journal for science time. As we read science books, if they have little activities, we just do them as they come up. We may be reading a book and it has a hands on suggestion. Sometime in the week, I will gather the materials, and we will do it. I don't really schedule a specific time, just wherever in the week it works best for us. I am trying to balance some hands on art time, some hands on science time, some Sotw history projects, etc. throughout the week. Can't do them all everyweek. But we had a big history project day Monday. Wed. we took the nature walk. Today we will do an art time after read alouds.  There won't be a specific science project this week  besides the nature walk. Other weeks, if there are one or two science things to do with her, we would do those and not the history projects that week. 

My high schooler is taking a year off of science, and doing chemistry next year. My odd did chemistry in co-op, so it will be my first year for that. But we will figure it out. 

[I don't have it in me to teach another child to read]

On 9/18/2020 at 8:35 PM, kand said:

Agree with this. It’s like swimming lessons to me. You can start swim lessons at 2, and they’ll probably start actually swimming at 4.5. Or you can start them at 4 and then will probably start swimming at 4.5. That’s our experience, anyway. My only kids that were reading at 4 were the ones who did that with barely more than a casual lesson here and there on how to “say it fast”. Ive never used a reading curriculum with a four year old. Formal reading lessons for those that didn’t already know how started in kindergarten. All my kids were strong readers by 7.. And I could never stomach 100ez lessons, either. I’m sure I could have done it once, but not repeatedly. I actually love teaching kids to read. One of my very favorite homeschooling things ❤️  

All of this exactly. 

[9th grade art?]

We are members of Schoolhouseteachers dot com. There are several high school art classes on there- some video instruction,vso no reading at all. My artsy high school dd has liked lots of those classes. 

 

 

[2nd grade art]

For good middle ages art projects, do not dismiss the SOTW2 activity guide. It really has some amazing art projects in it- making stamps with string and glue in symbols from Japan (I think? It's been a few years...)  to learn about their art and language. Stained glass projects, mosaics, calligraphy, making illuminated manuscript pages. Vol.2 has done of my favorite art projects. We paired them with reading the library books suggested and other books with real photos from the places to see the art and architecture we were learning about. Online tourist  websites would work just as well. 

 

[SOTW - 2nd Time Through - Ancient Times]

I am pretty sure our second time through we did WTM suggestions from the time- outlined from the Kingfisher Encyclopedia, created the divided history binder, did the timeline, and picked a topic for further research. My kids read a library book about the topic they wanted to look at further and wrote the narration and filed it in the appropriate place. We added the Geography Coloring Book. Then we followed the blog, Classical House of Learning Literature for literature to go along. But I could have just used the Well Trained Mind lists too. I did for high school. But I liked that the blog and scheduled a fair amount for a year (which took mine longer than a year to get through, but she enjoyed them.) 

[Do any of you homeschool without using Facebook?]

I haven't read all of these. But yes, I do not have facebook. I do miss out on some staying in touch with old friends and some groups, but most groups have alternative ways of communicating. our girl scout troop sends emails. Our dance studio uses some kind of sports app thing, GoMotion. I just graduated one teen who is starting college next week and have another one right behind her. She stays in touch with friends in other ways too. So we have survived without FB so far. 

[pre-k for 4-year-old (new homeschoolers spin off)]

Kate Snow's Preschool Math at Home is excellent. 

What Your Preschooler Needs to Know

Letteroftheweek dot com

THese altogether would be a perfect homeschool year, though not an all in one. 

[Possible to use Apologia 2nd ed astronomy notebooking journal with 1st ed text?]

On 8/13/2020 at 7:21 PM, StaceyinLA said:

 

Well, I wound up ordering the 2nd edition text today. I read some positive reviews about the changes in the text, and figured it would be worth getting since I already had the notebooks. I think my grandkids will enjoy doing the notebooking. I went ahead and purchased notebooks for the other 2 books I already have, just in case they update those texts before we get to them. I don’t want to be dealing with this same issue in a year or two. 

Not related to your issues, but just wanted to say, the journals made the course for one of mine. One of mine was fine answering questions out of the book to plain notebook paper and saw all of the artsy stuff as extra, non necessary. My next, artistic kiddo thrived with the Apologia journals. We made them kind of like our unit study for that year. They include Bible in the form of verse copywork, so handwriting too, plus literature suggestions, creative writing around science activities, and extra hands on science activities. We discovered that she did so well with these types of artistic, coloring journals that we then moved into Thinking Tree journals for her for several years which provide the same format, but can be used around your whole curriculum, any that you choose, all subjects. So have fun and good luck with these! 

[Novels for Story of the World Vol. 3 and 4]

There is an old, inactive blog called Classical House of Learning Literature that is still available to be seen, even though it isn't being updated anymore. It is a secular curriculum written by a homeschool mom to go along with SOTW. We used their booklists for grades 5-8. You might take a look at it. There were some really good choices that we really enjoyed. I believe she has some for different age groups on there now, but it has been awhile since I went through it. But I checked and the website is still there. 

[Factual secular history for third grade]

18 hours ago, JessinTX said:

 

I disagree with the bold part. I think the whole point of studying history is to learn where things went wrong before and understand that context for current events. Obviously this is an ever evolving process, but I don't think that 3rd grade is too young to understand that there were things that happened in the past that was very wrong. I could get on board with that in Kindergarten perhaps, but by 3rd grade kids have an ability to think critically about these things. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were inspiring leaders and had an amazing and beautiful vision for creating this country as a democracy, but there were a lot of people in this country who were not included in that vision of freedom. That was wrong and a mistake. 3rd graders get that. I'm not going to go into brutal graphic detail about rape and violence with a 3rd grader, but understanding that slaves were brought here against their will, forced to work for no pay, and not treated fairly is appropriate for that age I think. I'm in the midst of planning a unit on the Gilded Age for 4th-ish grade level and while of course we'll cover the amazing and life changing inventions of Edison and the innovation of Ford. We'll also talk about the fact that millions of children were working in factories because they were poor and their families would go hungry otherwise and because they had to work they didn't get to go to school, and that was wrong. 

I think we do a disservice to kids when we don't help them understand the full scope of our history. Then they start to figure it out and they get really disillusioned or we expect them to suddenly digest all this in jr.high. 

OP Sadly I don't have a great recommendation for you. I've found that the good resources are usually a little to much for 3rd grade as far a reading level, or are way too religious and excuse or dismiss the less convenient aspects of our history. I've mostly just cobbled together my own stuff. 

None of the resources recommended nor any basic third grade book leaves this stuff out though, that I'm aware of. 

[Curricula with worthwhile teacher's guides]

On 7/28/2020 at 11:37 PM, Ellie said:

The first three years of arithmetic are taught from the oral class lessons in the TM, with no instruction in the student materials. From fourth grade on, it's all in the student text.

The English texts all include the instruction in the student book; there are oral lessons in the TM, but they don't add anything. I think they might add some warm fuzzy face time, but there's no new information in them. I think they're still important to have, though, and they aren't expensive, so there you go.

The spelling series: all info is in the student books; the TMs just have answers, maybe a little information for the teacher, but again, they're inexpensive, so I get them.

I think the TM for the science series could be helpful, if you like to teach that way (very school-teacherish).

This is all true! I'm back in first grade now, using phonics and reading and  math. It's all in the tms. But later they work directly from texts. 

[Curricula with worthwhile teacher's guides]

I use Rod and Staff. The lessons are in the teacher guide, sometimes instructions for how to do the work are in the guide, not on the page, and aren't self explanatory. 

[Factual secular history for third grade]

42 minutes ago, Emily ZL said:

I forget who said this, but with young kids and history, you should always try to "start with heroes" or at least some positive or interesting stories.  For you, maybe that won't be Columbus, or maybe not American history. But there's lots of time later for all the complex, darker, shameful parts of history. That's hard to lay on a kid who has to be part of this society and is really young. Third grade is a great year to do ancients, with Greek myths, and those crazy warmaking Romans and their she-wolf origins, Egyptian culture, and ancient China etc, and those stories often aren't lingered on much in the public schools. So that might be a fun option, just putting it out there. 

Exactly, and there's a lot of ugliness beneath fairy tales, mythology, Bible stories, nursery rhymes, all of history. It's not not factual to focus on the good and heroic in the younger ages. You don't tell little kids that Romans had orgies in their temples or left some of their infants outside to die if born with birth defects. It's not age appropriate. You teach them the ideologies and the heroic truths they were aiming for by telling them their heroes, their stories. No culture reaches it's true ideals and perfection nor can they be looked at through today's lenses. But you see what they are aiming for, what they believed from their literature and stories and their heroes. Discussion of right and wrong is subjective and for later ages. For Columbus, I read his actual diaries and read some aloud to my kids. There were interesting passages where he described in awe meeting the native Americans. Not in today's language and vocabulary of course. But he is part of history. When my kids are older they read actual primary documents themselves to study. I don't get into right or wrong debates at a young age. They need to know what happened, the major players, have heroes and ideals, learn countries and continents and how to read maps.