Tell me your postpartum curriculum

[happycc]

What has been your best postpartum curriculum? The curriculum/plan after you have had the baby for about the first year or so...

 

I am have been so tempted to just get a boxed curriculum like Sonlight, Winter's Promise, Heart of Dakota, Moving Beyond the Page, even Calvert rather than the piecemealing (WWE, AAS, FLL, Key TO, Story of the World throughout the day etc) teaching intensive stuff we have been doing and just having everything planned out.

 

But some of you may have better ideas....

[NASDAQ]

I don't know. I don't find a new baby wildly harder than being pregnant, but my pregnancies suck. This time Oldest is finishing most of what she's doing now right before I'm due, so I guess it would be a fine time to take a break.

 

Right now I'm doing Saxon. Pregnancy ate my brain and I like the scripted stuff.

[Elfknitter.#]

Well, I have an almost 8 month old. Life really hasn't been too different because for now I still work and dh maintains the home, just like when I was pregnant.

 

What has worked is having some workbookish items- zaner bloser, MM, SWO, MCP Phonics. When all else failed, there was *something* that they were working on. Since then we've also added in ILL, PLL, HTTS, various living math books and lots of read alouds. It didn't happen ovrnight but was a slow progress. We just go day by day.

[mom&nana]

Well I ordered my curriculum for this fall before I knew I was pregnant. I'll be due around the end of January and I'm a bit nervous about how school will go then. I have a lot of boxed stuff....MFW Adventures, SL Core H, MP JR K... Those will require me reading aloud quite a bit, and I still have to do a lot of one on one time with my little ones for phonics and math. We use AAR and PR for that, and for Math I have MUS for one and BJU math for the other. All those are pretty teacher intensive. I guess I'm just gonna have to play it by ear and hope for the best.

 

I don't know if I would have chosen anything different if I had known I was pregnant before ordering. What we have been doing is working well, so I wouldn't want to upset that. We usually don't start back until the middle of August, but I've decided to move that up to the last week in July. That may help give us a little head start. We may end up having to work more during the summer next year, but we'll do what it takes to get it done. I just hope it's not too wild! :)

[arcara]

I just know in general that I can't choose any curriculum that depends too much on me. I have to choose things that my kids can do independently, only asking questions here and there or that only needs a 10 min or so lesson. Otherwise, my kids will be waiting around for me too much. I've just come to accept that this is the reality of our situation. I would love to sit one-on-one with each of my kids all day directly involved in their work, but it's just not gonna happen! So, I do things like buy the First Form Latin DVDs so I don't have to teach Latin lessons, and I gave up on Classical Writing and went with WWS for my oldest. My kids will also be using history and science textbooks this year (gasp!) because everything is so straight-forward with them. It also helps for me to use Homeschool Tracker Online and have everything planned out with directions for the assignments and to print each child an assignment sheet so that they know exactly what to do each day.

[fatfishes]

I've never done this with a newborn ,so mainly just reading along for ideas.I think I would prefer to take a total break but my older son has Autism[ aspergers end of the spectrum] and really needs a routine- especially when there other changes and stresses going on.So we will probably either stretch this HOD Bigger curriculum out by going half speed and continue over the post partum period or finish quickly and Start HOD Preparing before the birth at half speed and continue that over the post partum .

[Aoife]

my oldest has autism as well (high functioning) so he thrives on structure too and school is our best part of the day. I already had all of his curriculum too when we found out we were expecting number 4 ( 4 boys 5.5, 3.5, 20 months and newbie! :willy_nilly:)

 

Honestly though I have done this before and a newborn is wayyyyyy easier then a mobile baby to contend with :lol: I am also on the spectrum myself so again routine is necessary and I am better of following it then not and feeling all lost LOL the biggest thing is having some independent stuff so you can take breaks to tend to youngers or work with youngers which is so different from what you would be doing sans new baby. I use things like reading eggs, dreambox math, our handwriting and rosetta stone. I place these in throughout our daily schedules to break it up some and schedule in time to work w/ my 3 year old and go play some with my toddler in the baby playroom.

 

When the new baby gets here I will do what I did last time and set up first the rocker/bouncer thing next to my desk then add in the playmat and exersaucer as needed when baby gets older. Eventually baby will move into the baby playroom which is next to our schoolroom and just be able to play while we school in a baby safe room full of fun LOL.

[duckens]

The best advice I received (from the hive!) was just to know that you will fall behind and to be okay with this. It's not the end of the world.

 

Of course, that's easy for me to say. My older daughter was 4 and on the cusp of reading already. I see you have older kids.

 

Friends of mine with older kids (15, 13, 9) are currently pregnant and expecting in October. They are homeschooling all summer, and expect that the first month after the new baby is born, not much homeschooling will be done. The older kids know they will be expected to help out with running the household (dishes, laundry, cleaning up) and helping with the new baby at this time.

 

Expectations for the kids are key at this time. IF you do anything, I would stick to workbooks and avoid even "curriculum" for the first month. In our household, this would be ETC and math flashcards, and probably just that.

 

After a month, consider returning to one subject at a time, just as many households do in the autumn.

 

I hope you find what works for you!

[Mavy]

Not having a baby, but will be having foot surgery next week(blah). I have Sonlight, Atelier art, and La Clase Divertida to make it easier on me. I figure I can keep up with WRTR and my math stuff as well.

 

Congrats on your upcoming baby!

[redsquirrel]

I found teaching with an infant/toddler easier than doing it pregnant. That might explain why I stopped at two.

 

Naptime rules

[mom&nana]

Well you can see with the ages of my kids, that I've done this before. I've had lots of littles around when homeschooling. But I was only homeschooling one child. Now this will be the first time I'll have 3 in school and a newborn, so I suppose that's why I'm so nervous as to how it will work out.

 

Happycc, there's been some good advice so far and I think I'll have pretty relaxed expectations once the baby arrives. I'm expecting the first month to be wild. Plus, I might have to have a c-section and recovery will be harder. I had all my babies natural except my last--too big had to be a c-section. So I don't know what this delivery will be like, but a c-section might be likely since my babies have been larger each time.

 

My 8th grader will likely be able to continue on with school since she's going to be much more independent than my younger ones. School might stop completely for the young ones for a few weeks and I'm ok with that. We have to meet the state requirements of 180 days over here, so I'm sure we'll have to go through some of the summer to make that happen. I think the previous poster, duckens, had the right idea...expect to get behind and learn to be ok with that. I'm certainly going to take that advice. :)

[Incognito]

I've only done this once, but what worked for me was to try to get ahead before the baby was born, so once she came we had very little left to do for the year. I don't like feeling behind. ;)

[birchbark]

:lol:

 

I'm probably going to need a "pp curriculum" this year. My plan is to drop the boxed curriculum, focus on the basics, and avoid teacher-intensive materials. I'm also considering moving to a video-based math.

[MinivanMom]

I find it much easier to teach with a baby than while pregnant.

 

While I'm pregnant I struggle to get schoolwork going in the morning, because I'm so sick. I have to give myself permission to start schoolwork later than normal and to focus on the 3 R's. I always strive to do the extras (Sonlight core, WTM-style science, Artistic Pursuits, music & art appreciation), but if they don't get done I don't worry about it. As long as the basics have gotten done, then I can try again tomorrow. My kids are young, though, so I feel alright taking this approach. If I had kids in middle school or high school, then I would probably look for curriculum that could be done fairly independently.

 

With a baby, I take the opposite approach. I follow a very strict schedule that revolves around the baby's schedule. I find that as long as I plan our day to work around the baby's natural rhythms (nursings, naptimes, etc.) then it is easy to get everything done. I plan a 4 day week, because there is always one day that simply doesn't go well so we can play catch up on the 5th day.

[happycc]

Salsa Spanish

those online Chinese videos for the middle/high school. Too bad they don;t have those online videos like Salsa Spanish for Chinese

Khan Academy

Alcumas-if I ever get signed up

Brain Pop

Dream Box

Ko's Journey

maybe Math Whizz

maybe Alecs?

Vocabulary.com

Study Island

So debating going back to Teaching Textbooks....

 

Notice these are all screen time.....

I still haven't found anything else that is not screen time.

Maybe Prairie Primer...and I just sit and read and nurse all day--but not sure how that would work with my loud toddler.

[LMD]

I've homeschooled with a newborn only twice. (Once when boys were 2nd, 2nd, K, and 3yo; once when they were 5th, 5th, 3rd, 1st, and 3yo.) Both times I was ready to jump back into regular curriculum somewhere around the 3rd or 4th month (basically, once the baby started to sleep longer stretches). During the time immediately after the birth (when mom isn't getting much uninterrupted sleep), I put aside all the heavier academics and focused only on music and art, which happen to be the two things that we never seemed to get around to doing anyhow, so it was a nice chance to feel like I wasn't depriving my kids of the finer things in life, kwim? (How's that for a run-on sentence?)

 

Music appreciation: We listened to CD's of the great composers, and we worked through the short biographies in the Meet the Great Composers books.

 

Music application: The boys worked through Music Ace software.

 

Art appreciation: They read through the Usborne Introduction to Art and we looked at art on the internet (Ambleside).

 

Art application: I ordered curriculum from How Great Thou Art, and the boys would work through their workbooks at their own pace.

 

ETA: I just remembered, I also made them go through their math facts flash cards and any other flashcards they might have had, like Latin vocabulary or whatever. That was so they wouldn't forget what they learned already.

 

 

I really like this, thanks for posting Kinsa!

[mindypickens]

I am expecting in november and will also have a 2nd grader. I don't really know how it will go yet, so I will just share what my plan is and pray that I can see it through! We school year around with breaks and that usually ends up being about 42 weeks. As I look at next year I know I will likely need more off time with baby coming so I am planning for a 36 or 38 week year. I know that will give me 14 weeks out of the year to be off regular schedule. Let me just say I am not a "planning person" I don't function well with inflexible schedules and I have never done a detailed plan for a whole year in advance before so this is a major deal for me. The way I have done it is to make weekly sheets with all our subjects as rows (I don't do a lot of extras) and I put "weekly goals", "days 1-4", "met?", and "notes" across the top in columns. I dont put dates on these forms because I'm not sure which weeks I will need off, this gives me the flexibility to choose what week we are on but still get all of it done. The form is such that my dd can check to see what still needs to be done and it will be much easier for me to know where we are and specifically what needs to be done so I can better ask dh for help with certain things on our list. I have highlighted our core things so we know at a glance which are the most important things to get done.

 

As for curriculum, we will be doing:

Classical Conversations

FLL

OPGTR

MUS Beta

Telling God's Story

Spelling Power w/ dictation

SOTW ancients

Daily copy work from Literature or her Bible

and read alouds that compliment our CC history and Science (planning and ordering these now bc I just wont actually make it to the library once a week) as well as working through some quality literature read alouds. Dad helps with this in the evenings.

 

My dd isn't yet an independent learner, she needs me to work with her on most things--math, and language arts especially. So I am really hoping having a reasnable plan will help us not fall behind this year even with me needing to spend so much one on one time with her and have a new baby.

 

Hope this helps someone! Congrats on all the babies!!

[Joyful_Journey]

I'm expecting my 4th this summer, so I tried to find some curriculum that would get done (even if I'm tied up with the baby), but I do still have a few teacher intensive things that I really wanted to pursue. I figure there has to be SOME teacher intensive subjects that I'll find time to hit each day:

 

Math - Switched all of the kids over to MUS this year

Grammar - Younger two will do GWG while my oldest will do AG

Spelling - Sticking with Spelling Workout - it gets done!

Writing - Youngest is doing WWE, Middle is doing IEW Level A with DVDs, and oldest is doing WWS

Science - Youngest is doing Science Odyssey while the two older ones are doing Science Fusion

History - Youngest is doing SOTW while the older is doing History Odyssey

 

I signed them up for art classes and piano lessons, so hopefully this will fill my fine arts component. :001_smile:

[ktgrok]

I'm due in September, so I understand your concern. I DID go with Sonlight for next year. I am REALLY trying to make things easier for myself. We will be doing Sonlight for history/lit/geography/some bible. Kinetic Books for Algebra I (all online...teaches and grades it), Monarch for Spanish (again, all online), Essentials in Writing (video lessons) for writing and a bit of grammar, a quick daily punctuation book for more grammar (totally written to the student, and he can check his own work if need be), and an computer course on Java programming he can do himself, and ask DH for help with if he needs it. Logic will be the Thinking Toolbox, which he can read himself. Maybe some vocab flashcards or something, oh, and Noeo Physics for science..he is old enough to do it all himself.

 

I'm going to try to have everything planned and in Homeschool Tracker by the time the baby comes, so I can just print out his schedule and let him go to work.

[JulieE]

So you think a boxed curriculum would be harder? I am finding the idea of a boxed curriculum, specifically MFW ECC, appealing. I've been following the syllabus, combining readings for my dd's, for the past couple of years. I was wondering if it would be easier to do MFW for a year or so, then switch back /supplement if I want. I have a newborn. I'm the opposite scenario than a lot of the posters - pregnancies not bad, but newborn stage, especially this particular newborn - aye aye aye! Baby girl has had health problems, been in and out of dr's and the hospital. I've been debating whether it's fair to my older dd's to have them home when not much but making it through the day is being accomplished.

:lol:

 

I'm probably going to need a "pp curriculum" this year. My plan is to drop the boxed curriculum, focus on the basics, and avoid teacher-intensive materials. I'm also considering moving to a video-based math.

[happycc]

for your middle school information post...

 

I think if I were expecting with just a bunch of younger ones like 3rd grade and younger it would be so much easier. I would be so much more relaxed in terms of academics. Housework would be another story.

 

But with middle schoolers-with two 5th graders, a special needs 3rd grader, a 3yr old who has had pdd-nos dx ......I am simply freaked. Who knows! And with the way things going with my older teens they may be coming back home and needing to be homeschooled too....oy vay!

 

My problem with my kids is that they all want interactions. They do not do well with independent work I have learned. Everything needs to be discussed and talked through. Key to series has been really hard for 5th graders. I find myself having to still teach them even though it should be pretty self explanatory.

 

Oh yes, I am definitely working through this summer. All the summer stuff will be turned in as fall stuff and all the fall stuff will turned into for spring stuff and once december/january/february/march/april/may rolls -that is that part I am worried about. And then postpartum depression hits when the kiddo is about 6-7 months for me and lasts until the child is about 2.5yrs. Happened with all four of my other kids so I am counting on this happening with this one. I am trying something totally new this time---placenta encapsulation. Idea sounds yucky but willing to try anything and my midwife says that the baby needs to stay with me for the full 24 hours after it is born. In the past, I would tell hubbie to take baby far away from me as soon as it is born (well about 30 minutes after it is born or so) so I can get some shut eye. With my second one, as soon as I gave birth like within 5-10 minutes I got up and took a shower. And then of course if things get really bad this time around-I got the effexor ready to back on course. Last pregnancy I was on zoloft and trazadone the entire pregnancy and postpartum and it still didn;t do a thing for me. Anyways I have been told that most postpartum stuff is because I am just plain old worn out and stressed. So hopefully this time around I will try and get more sleep and get some help. I have never had family to help me. They are just all pretty selfish. I hope to never do that to any of my kids once they start having kids of their own.

 

Anyone else have middle schoolers while expecting? Oh yeah still questioning the box curriculum --really that much harder?

[Spy Car]

What has been your best postpartum curriculum? The curriculum/plan after you have had the baby for about the first year or so...

 

I am have been so tempted to just get a boxed curriculum like Sonlight, Winter's Promise, Heart of Dakota, Moving Beyond the Page, even Calvert rather than the piecemealing (WWE, AAS, FLL, Key TO, Story of the World throughout the day etc) teaching intensive stuff we have been doing and just having everything planned out.

 

But some of you may have better ideas....

 

Far be it from me to criticize anyone for getting a start with "early academics" but I'm not sure a one-year old baby needs a formal boxed curriculum :D

 

Bill

[Violet Crown]

Far be it from me to criticize anyone for getting a start with "early academics" but I'm not sure a one-year old baby needs a formal boxed curriculum :D

 

Bill

 

Ho ho.

 

Our post-partum curriculum both times was

 

Me: Finished that book? Great. Here's another one. Let Mommy nap now.

Dh: Want to play math?

[birchbark]

So you think a boxed curriculum would be harder?

 

A boxed curriculum would be harder for me as it increases my feelings of obligation. I feel tied to the schedule, and guilty or stressed if I don't get all the boxes checked.

 

For others though, a boxed program may relieve more stress than it creates. :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very funny Spy Car! :D

[happycc]

you are so silly!!!!

 

 

In case anyone does not understand my original questions...the postpartum curriculum or boxed curriculum for the postpartum times is not for the newborn to one year but for those that are actually school aged!!!!!

;)

 

 

Just in case anyone read that wrong.......:lol:

 

Sharon in Austin...you said

 

dh: You want to play math?

 

Did he say that to YOU or to your children? hee hee

 

Nasdaq: You are so right that pregnancies eat your brain.....I am having such a hard time thinking and remembering things. I am suffering through going through Singapore Word Problems right now. It is so scary that I can't even finish my sentences sometimes. I wonder if it gets worse with each pregnancy...Pregnancy with number five right now.

Edited July 9, 2012 by happycc

[Robyn]

I'm due mid September. We're running a light schedule through the summer and plan to start full days next month to get a head start. I am spending the summer planning and stocking up the freezer with quick to reheat meals.

 

I'll have a 1st grader and an 8th grader. My 2 yr old is pretty good at staying busy or joining us with crayons and paper at the table.

 

I am outsourcing a few classes for my oldest and some of his subjects he can do more or less independently. The subjects we really need one on one time for will have my school day priority. I am not overly concerned about my 1st grader. We will do the best we can to stay on pace, and catch up later if need be.

 

This will be my third baby while homeschooling and I have found the newborn stage to be a good time to sit and nurse and read. I find it harder to keep up with housework than school with a new baby around.

[HeatherDanae]

I'm due with this new baby beginning of next month. It's not going to put too much of a damper on the timing of starting school...probably 2nd week in Sept...but it will be interesting having a newborn, healing from a c-section, and homeschooling my older 3 children. I used to piece different curriculum together for our schooling, but this year I'm going with Heart of Dakota. Everything's laid out and divided into multiple segments. So I can check which ones I did and finish the rest later without feeling "I'm behind." I hope something works out for you! :)

[SnMomof7]

Well, I honestly just read SL books - we cover a lot of ground when I'm nursing. Drop skills-based subjects that need more mommy-focused time and just do reading aloud with all the kids :).