What have you changed so far?

[happynurse]

Just curious what, if anything, you've already changed in your homeschool this year?

For history we have already dropped MFW Creation to the Greeks in favor of Notgrass Adam to Us. Textbooks just get done in my house. 😄 The only part of MFW we kept was Science in the Beginning. 

We also dropped TGTB LA 5 and returned to CLE 500 for language Arts. 

Anyone else make big (or not so big) changes or am I the only crazy one? 😜 

[Clarita]

It seems we may be switching from Singapore Math 1A to Beast Academy 1A. Also my kids were not so keen on Socratic seminar/postulating in science, they would rather do some hands-on stuff and have me or a video tell them what's going on. 

[hollyhock2]

I don't think I've changed anything, which is a minor miracle. There's almost always something, so this is uncommon. 🙂

[freesia]

After spending $100 on a new algebra curriculum for my fourth child, I dropped it and went with the one I did with my first.  Ugh!

I also changed up Economics for my senior. My brilliant  plan was just more than either of us wanted this year.  I am also sitting with him and watching his physics videos and teaching calculus rather than having him watch videos. He’s just a social collaborative learner and is happier this way. It’s our last year together, so I enjoying it, too. I did decide to add a DE writing class next semester, though instead of continuing to do English with him. 

[AngelaR]

I switched Singapore Math 3 for Rightstart Math D.  We just that, so we’ll see how it goes. I’m also dropping The Alveary’s Science, & geography courses and going with BF books new geography and science for littles.  I’ll be dropping The Alveary’s French but not sure what I’ll replace it with. 

[Elizabeth86]

Changed? Oh goodness, we’ve barely even started. 🤣

[bookbard]

I'm on day 3 of the last term of the year - I program term by term. I've already dropped writing out daily quotes from famous people as their copywork. I've realised a lot of out of context quotes are pretty trite; I'm going to go back to getting them to write out short poems instead.

Science is working (thanks for the idea, somebody on here - we're drawing a new Australian dinosaur each day, very easy way to learn a lot of facts). Social studies also has the potential to work - they have to make a timeline of literally anything at all, historical or geographical - so it's all research skills and working out how time changes with CE/BCE and so on. English is super relaxed, just discussing an audiobook we're listening to together, and writing fanfic (which they do for fun). Then there's maths. They've got one online activity and one paper activity and they're not happy that it's double-dosing, but they need the review on top of the new stuff. 

I think we should get through this term ok. 

[alysee]

We are a month in and we dropped IEW for BraveWriter. My oldest two are more natural writers and IEW felt very stifling. We will most likely go back to it when my oldest is in high school. 

We are going to be adding Bookshark Science Level E. We are just waiting for it to arrive. 

We don't use much curriculum and we are taking a relaxed semester(year?) Thanks to a new baby born a week before school started. 

Edited October 12, 2022 by alysee
Forgot to add

[GoodnightMoogle]

17 hours ago, AngelaR said:

I switched Singapore Math 3 for Rightstart Math D.  We just that, so we’ll see how it goes. I’m also dropping The Alveary’s Science, & geography courses and going with BF books new geography and science for littles.  I’ll be dropping The Alveary’s French but not sure what I’ll replace it with. 

What made you move away from the Alveary materials? It’s one I’ve had my eye on but it’s tricky to find good reviews 

[Shoeless]

Haven't changed anything, but I have added in more literature. 

[AngelaR]

16 hours ago, GoodnightMoogle said:

What made you move away from the Alveary materials? It’s one I’ve had my eye on but it’s tricky to find good reviews 

My kids are just not connecting to the source texts.  In Science, form 1 reads from 3 different books a week, each reading about 5 minutes.  That in itself makes my kids crazy. I thought it was awesome at first bc it went so fast. But my kids were always wanting me to read more, or asking when we were “ever” going to finish reading x,y,z.  Also…examples of deep dives they go into:  snakes(ugh!), corn (???), insects’ eggs freezing over winter…I think the grade 1-3 science is on a three year loop so maybe if we’d done all three years, it would make more sense. The geography, again, is so short—they’re drawing out a year long course into two years, so it moves extra slow, but at the same time, they’re expecting kids in form 1 to understand the global grid system…I really love their art lessons, and their handicrafts lessons.  Also, their online training is very good for people who don’t know much about Charlotte Mason.  They have some good helps for neuroatypical learners also.  

Edited October 13, 2022 by AngelaR
Correcting “autocorrect”

[Ting Tang]

Originally, I planned for my 5th grader to use Singapore Primary 6A/6B Standards Edition for Math.  Well, that was short-lived.  I ended up buying him 5th grade CLE math, even though he used a 5th and 6th grade traditional math program last year (Master Books - big mistake).

It's going much better and getting the job done for now, but I do feel sad that he is no longer on an accelerated math track. 

My middle two are still using their Singapore Dimensions math curriculums.  I really like it, but my 4th grader is struggling.  He also used Master Books last year for math and completed both grade 3 and 4.  I could tell it wasn't the best, but it did take him through multiplication and division, so I was hoping the depth of Singapore would be doable for him.  Sometimes he gets a lot of the challenge problems, and other days, we are finishing basic concepts from the previous day....sigh...  I still really like the curriculum, even though it is challenging my kids.

 

Other changes were just adds.  I added Famous Men of Rome for my oldest, but we are not doing all the output required by the Memoria Press student guides. I have a teacher guide, and I go through that with him. We read along to the audio book on YouTube.  I wanted to add Christian Studies II, but we haven't found the time yet.

[jgain]

We have dropped TGTB Language Arts in favor of different options for spelling, grammar, and writing. My son hated it, and we felt there was just too much religion in it, and we are generally more secular in our education efforts. I had heard there wasn't that much religious stuff in the curriculum, but we have not found that to be the case. 

He's still using their math, and seems to be enjoying it, so we will continue with that one. 

[JazzyMom]

We dropped Lial’s prealgebra for my 7th grader and switched to MUS prealgebra done at a co-op.  I need to help an extended family member for a few months, so I have ds doing 3 co-op classes to give myself more time.  I wasn’t sure I’d like MUS, but it has been fine.  I’m planning to have him do a few chapters of Lial’s this summer just to strengthen things a bit. 

[keirin]

I had to look up my plans to remember what exactly I had "planned" for this year, if that tells you much of anything. 😄

For my 6th graders:

ELA:

-We are using Center for Lit's Elementary Literature course. I knew the 2 hour meeting time might be difficult, especially for my son, and it is. I do think it is good for them to go into a bit more depth with another instructor other than me and with some books they had already read in the past (almost all of the reading list were read prior, many as read alouds with me)

-I had not PLANNED on using School Speciality's The Paragraph but picked up the first book kind of last minute and added it in for writing. This has worked very well and I am very happy with it. We are adding in a Lantern English writing class now that we have finished the first book, but I am definitely going to get the next Paragraph book to do with them when they finish their Lantern English class. 

 

So this changed in the sense that I had NO IDEA which of three options I was doing for ELA going into this school year. Everything solidified very last minute.

Math:

We started with Singapore Standards Edition 6A/6B but I didn't like their Algebra chapter so I supplemented with Carnegie Learning's 6th grade math book, and then picked up Hands on Equations. We are still doing Hands on Equations, though I'm starting to think we need to circle back around and pick up some more from the Singapore math. My kids love HOE and would do it all the time happily. But I'm not sure I can call this 6th grade math if it's all we get done! 🙃

History:

I've added in the Oxford press books along with Story of Civilization and some read aloud chapter books. 

Science:

Chemistry with Science Mom is going really well, and I've been happy with it. Since it is only a semester, I'm leaning toward doing a Computer Science with them in the spring, though.

 

For my 2nd grader:

He really clicked with reading a few months ago.  We will finish AAR2 soon and continue to AAR3. I'm hopeful to finish it by the end of this school year. Then I'll have to decide if I want to do AAR4 or not. We're also adding in Memoria Press's story time treasures right now, and I expect by the end of the year we'll be pulling reading materials from their 2nd grade. I feel like their early stuff is so advanced that I don't mind doing it a "grade behind."

He is still finishing the Beast Academy 1C/1D books. He had finished first grade Singapore math early in first grade (we started it in Kindergarten), but he just wasn't quite ready for 2nd grade Singapore so I got the Beast Academy 1A-1D kind of as they came out. He's enjoyed them so much that I plan to finish them. After that, I'm trying to decide if I should sign him up for Beast online or try Singapore 2A again. 

I had NOT planned any grammar or spelling really but I think by the spring I will need to add those in.

Not TOO many changes overall?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

Nothing much. We didn’t start the year with pieces of CAP Narrative II as planned - dove right into writing across the curriculum instead. Everything else is running according to plan. 

[Moose]

SOTW Middle Ages is not going as well as Ancients did. We got to chapter 11 and now it feels like a real slog. I've been looking at the Core Knowledge History Units and this week we're going to try Vikings and see how it goes. I'm hoping the colourful student readers will be a bit more interesting. 

[AnneGG]

I always make changes. Ugh. Idk why I self sabotage all my summer planning efforts every year. 🙄 

[Slache]

DS6th. He was supposed to do Cover Story but we decided to unschool writing this year. Fortunately, we decided that before we bought it.

[countrymum]

We swapped Beautiful Feet Early American primary(1st) and mom assigned books (4th) for Notgrass Star Spangled Story for our American history strand for the middle 2.....somehow I just do not like too many Beautiful Feet book choices and the 4th grader was not ready to do history on her own yet....

Also for the 4th grader I dropped Language Lessons for Today 5 and All About Spelling for Spelling Wisdom and Using Language well.

Also dropped RightStart B for Math with Confidence 1 and dropped All About Reading 1 for Abeka 1st grade language arts. (So much for my 1st grade summer plans....science remains the same though;) On the other hand nothing changed for the 5th grader.

[2_girls_mommy]

I haven't made any super changes on purpose.  Science kind of morphed.  It is technically still a chemistry year for us going by the WTM schedule.  I planned on using Adventures with Atoms and Molecules and pairing it up with funschooling journals we have on hand for notebooking similarly to how I have done 3rd grade in the past with a science fair in there sometime this winter.  But dd8's co-op planned a science course.  They are doing hands on experiments there every week and discussing many of the topics I planned on doing.  Plus she does a once a month science activity class at two different libraries.  One is using a fiction science series that she read and loves as its theme and working in the scientific method teachings.  One is kind of more random "STEAM" topics.  And she has attended three girl scout camps that all so far had science activities and topics for badges.  So we have ended up not needing to do my planned book after all.  So at home, we are just reading random science books as they are of interest and notebooking on them when we want to or have extra time, like when I give her a chance to pick her reading and narrating for a day, and she picks a topic like caves.  I also have picked up library books on the scientific method and other topics she has covered in her outside classes to support that learning vs me having to plan out activities here.  It has worked out fine for this semester. 

Not changed completely yet, but SOTW and WWE are not going how I had thought.  We are supposed to be in SOTW3, but are still wrapping up SOTW2.  And I wanted to add WWE in and do that. We are doing it, but slowly, only on about week 4 for our week 9 of school.  I think the reason is because we are still doing Rod and Staff English which covers writing.  And the more I think about it, it seems like I am just adding something else in.  I dropped narrating and dictation from SOTW with this dd.  And now as we are doing that skill with random stories from WWE, I think for me personally, I might like to just drop that and add it back in to our SOTW studies to make them more meaningful.  We read a lot of stories from other places like a McGuffey's reader, What Your Second and Third Grader Needs to Know and library books, it seems like now that I have had a taste of WWE that I could just continue the skills with the other books that we are already using.  It would feel like less of another subject and just going a bit deeper in things we are already doing.  So I am considering that. 

And I am doing Prima Latina with my dd's co-op class.  I have never really liked starting there in co-op because there is so little to it.  I like starting with Latina Christiana.  But my dd was excited to do it.  We had done Spanish with her group last year, and I had put a lot of effort into finding fun songs and books and games and crafts to do with them in Spanish. There is an abundance of Spanish lesson plans online for free, that it was not an effort to plan it.  I do not have access to as many fun things for Latin for littles.  You kind of have to buy a full curriculum or spend on Teachers Pay Teachers mini units to find fun ideas.  I mean I have some go tos that I can adapt, but it is taking more time than I feel like I have right now.  So I haven't changed anything there, just lamenting I guess.  Last week we did charades with the vocab they had learned so far.  They enjoyed it.  I just need more things like that with the very limited vocab that they have so far. Most of my go to games would include so much that I haven't covered and that PL won't cover this year, so it is like reinventing the wheel to come up with activities. 

 

ETA, I just read my siggie.  I am paying for piano lessons so dropped the music theory course I was going to do from SHT.  She is also in two Christmas plays, one at church and one at co-op, so she is singing and performing in those on top of songs for Latin and at Sunday School.  So we aren't doing anything specific for music at home either.  I will need to add in other types of music and songs next semester.  But for this semester, she is well covered. 

Edited October 27, 2022 by 2_girls_mommy

[Green Bean]

BJU Math to Teaching Textbooks