CupOfTea Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 Need help choosing curriculum!!! My 7yr old is an actress so is homeschooled periodically throughout the year but with the current Covid we are planning to homeschool for all of 2nd grade. For K we used Reading Eggs and Mathseeds which was great. For 1st she attended brick and mortar school for first semester and then we used Time4Learning from Jan-May which worked well but we are looking for a more complete curriculum for 2nd. There needs to be an online learning component and ideally accompanying workbooks. For ease of use I gravitate towards a full package program that we can do at our own pace but are open to piecing different subjects together. Does anyone have feedback on the following full curriculums... Bridgeway Academy (Total Care blended program) BJU press online 2nd grade kit or piecing together... Math - Mathseeds Online and workbook ELA - Power Homeschool and supplement with Spectrum books (writing, spelling) Science - Tinker science 2nd grade What am I missing?? Thank you for any and all advice!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xahm Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 Welcome! My eldest just finished up second grade and another will be there in a year, so I have that freshly on my mind. Could you tell us a little more about your daughter and her strengths and weaknesses so we can help you choose? Also, is there a specific reason you need an online curriculum? I've noticed a lot of times when people first switch from public school, they get time of ads for online programs and so they assume that's the way to go, but at least on this forum it's very rare for any family to continue on with such a program for the long term, though certainly many use lots of online components. I am not trying to discourage your plan, just learn more about your reasons to help you choose. If you give us some idea of your own strengths and limitations, that can help, too. (A stay at home mom with a PhD in biology and an unlimited budget might need something very different from someone in a more typical circumstance) 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CupOfTea Posted May 30, 2020 Author Share Posted May 30, 2020 1 hour ago, xahm said: Welcome! My eldest just finished up second grade and another will be there in a year, so I have that freshly on my mind. Could you tell us a little more about your daughter and her strengths and weaknesses so we can help you choose? Also, is there a specific reason you need an online curriculum? I've noticed a lot of times when people first switch from public school, they get time of ads for online programs and so they assume that's the way to go, but at least on this forum it's very rare for any family to continue on with such a program for the long term, though certainly many use lots of online components. I am not trying to discourage your plan, just learn more about your reasons to help you choose. If you give us some idea of your own strengths and limitations, that can help, too. (A stay at home mom with a PhD in biology and an unlimited budget might need something very different from someone in a more typical circumstance) Thank you for your detailed response 🙂. The main reason we choose primarily online is because of the travel aspect. She is in a Broadway National tour so we fly from city to city usually staying a a couple of weeks in each city. Lugging around so many books is just not possible hence we gravitate to online. Sometimes I tutor her and sometimes it’s the tour tutor so having an online program is more consistent and flexible. They also school at unconventional times and some days for an hour and some days for 4 hours depending on the performances and travel. She just took the CAT exam and passed at above a 99% with a 5th grade level so I was pleased with what we did on Time4Learning last year but she doesn’t love it. She does learn best with adding in some workbooks, one on one etc to add to what is being taught online. She is creative, artistic and reading/language is easier for her than math. She scored at 4th grade on math and 6th grade for ELA. If all learning was taught in the form of a Broadway show tune that would make her very happy haha. Doesn’t want to memorize math facts but can learn an entire musical score in a day or so. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xahm Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 Great! It sounds like you are working with a very bright child, which I know takes the pressure off in some ways and intensifies it on others. I'm not too much help for finding an overarching online curriculum that would work, and it could well be that those you've already selected would work best My daughter did Beast Academy and we recently moved to doing it online rather than in the workbooks. Your daughter would probably either like it a lot or despise it. It focuses on understanding math by puzzling it out rather than lots of rote practice of math facts. It also has both the online and the workbooks, and each book is very slim (one year divided into 4 sections with a comic style textbook and a work boo for each section) so they could be carried around without much trouble. There are some other online math programs, too. This is just the only one I know well enough to talk about. If she likes to read and watch documentaries, I would make that the bulk of her science and social studies, just getting booklists that span the areas you are considering and getting a mix of e books and physical copies to meet your needs. Then you could do science days with fun demos when it fits in your schedule and take advantage of the travel to get in some fun geography, history, etc. That leaves language arts stuff. You have a plan there, I see, and ib know nothing about online programs for that, but you may want to have two strands going to keep things from getting dry. The tour tutor could help her with the things you listed, then maybe when she's working with you you could help her with a writing project, maybe related to musicals since that's her passion. The two of you could write (and you may take turns doing the physical writing if she had lots of ideas), then you could help her revise the work's grammar and spelling, and then she copies it with her best handwriting and illustrates it. This could be reviews of plays, instructions for being a good actor, a plot for an original show, summaries of shows she's seen, or anything else. Over time you would segue into discussing things like word choice and sentence structure, but that doesn't have to happen right away. I hope more people who have been in your shoes chime in with suggestions. It sounds like y'all have been doing great so far, and I hope you both enjoy this next year homeschooling full time! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.