I’ve been asked what we are doing for homeschool for our kids. Let me tell you about my experience putting together a curriculum for my 2nd grader, kindergartener, and pre-schooler.
It was awful.
I was so incredibly stressed out it was ridiculous. I felt that everyone I talked to had a different answer, a different way of doing things, was super vague (oh, just do what you feel is right for your family), and only seemed to add to my overall sense of hopelessness. Okay, it wasn’t that bad. I did receive some great ideas from friends on Facebook, but I felt that most ideas and programs didn’t fit the needs of a full-time traveling family.
There’s so much information out there that I had to narrow it down. I found a few blogs I liked, my favorite being Confessions of a Homeschooler. I felt like her blog was simple, easy to understand, and we thought similarly enough that I could translate what she was doing to my own situation. I purchased a few of her curriculum units – Pre-K Letter of the Week (for Cara), the K4 (for Andrew), Road Trip USA, and the Classic Literature Unit. In hindsight, I probably went WAY overboard but I was feeling a bit self-conscious and nervous at this point. Plus, I really just wanted to be prepared.
Then I spent the next few weeks trying to put together a spreadsheet for our schedule, printing out cute little labels to emulate the workbox system (but with folders because we weren’t going to have room for large carts). I went through an entire ink cartridge printing papers, putting together folders, and trying to figure out what on Earth we were going to start with. I about drove myself crazy. And don’t get me started on the cost for laminating said supplies at FedEx.
And with all of that, I felt like we didn’t really even have the CORE subjects. The really important ones. So I went with workbooks. And I love them. We’ve almost ditched everything else and just stuck solidly with those. I think my brain handles it better as there’s less prep for me to do (because I don’t get a lot of time to myself anyway and I don’t want to spend it figuring out what we are doing for school tomorrow). I just look ahead, assign them the next 5 or 6 days worth of assignments on a sticky note taped to the inside of that particular book and they run with it. When they run out of listed pages to do (I usually assign 2-4 pages every day in each book) they ask for more. Actually, they tell me they don’t have an assignment and can they PLEASE skip that book today? Occasionally I’ll let them.
I also try and mix in other assignments with their books. For reading or phonics, Andrew gets to play with his Tag Reader Flash Cards, or he’ll play Context Clues with Rachel. They also have apps on the tablets that they use for Spelling and Language Arts (that’s a whole other blog post). This way they are not doing the same thing every, single day, because that would be boring. I want to excite them. Also I feel like sometimes the workbooks don’t go as deep into a subject as I’d like so I’ll hunt around and try and find them extra practice. All while trying to be mostly offline because our internet expenses are already through the roof.
I feel like this really works for us. We don’t do school 5 days a week, every week. Some weeks it is more, some weeks less. We try and take every opportunity to explore our surroundings as we travel, and I refuse to limit a hands-on learning opportunity for the sake of a paper schedule. Two nights ago we did school after dinner. Their folders are small enough they can take them in the truck and work as we drive. We make it work, and the kids are progressing through their materials faster than necessary anyway.
So that said, here are the books that we use for our kids. Why these particular books, you ask? They had them at the local store and I could browse them before buying them. We definitely tailor these books to our kids though. We skip around, we exclude, and we definitely don’t make them repeat a concept if they get it. We don’t believe in busy work.
Rachel (2nd grade)
Spectrum Math, Grade 2 She’s actually almost done with this one – we’ll probably move up to Grade 3 by January. I think Sam has her do maybe 1/2 the problems. If she aces a pre-test, he’ll skip the whole section.
Spectrum Reading, Grade 2
Spectrum Writing, Grade 2, and Scholastic Story Starters (online)
Spectrum Spelling, Grade 3 Level 2 just seemed to easy and she BEGGED for level 3. Why not?
Spectrum Language Arts, Grade 2 This one I feel is the most lacking. 2 pages on adjectives and that’s it??
Andrew (Kindergarten/1st Grade)
Andrew is a bit of an enigma to me. His birthday is Aug 24th, so technically he should have started Kindergarten last year but we held him back so he’d be the oldest (Utah school deadline is Sept 1st). The kid blew right through Kindergarten appropriate curriculum in like a week. The K4 unit I bought? Completely too easy for him. I’m hoping to use it for Cara… He reads like a 2nd grader but has trouble in other subjects. I think if he were in public school he’d be so bored he’d want to poke his eyes out every day. He still likes to color, match shapes, do mazes, and cut things out but I see less and less of that as we go on.
Spectrum Math, Grade 1
Spectrum Reading, Grade 1
Writing – we do handwriting practice in a random book my mom gave us – he had terrible handwriting when we started. Much better now.
Spectrum Spelling, Grade 1 We started halfway through this one.
Spectrum Phonics, Grade 1
Kumon My Book of Money: Dollars and Cents We skipped the first book and went straight to this. Still very repetitive so we do about half the assignments. He actually finished the whole book today.
Kumon My Book of Telling Time: Learning About Minutes I didn’t love this one. It is SO predictable that once he got the pattern down, he didn’t even have to try. Plus they put all the numbers in there between the bigger numbers (2-4, 6-9, etc.). We did about 10 pages and then I just printed out Time Clocks for him to do. Now that we don’t have a printer, he uses an app on the tablet.
Cara (preschool)
She’s only 3. I did 2 years of preschool with the other kids, but I really just don’t think she needs it. However, she feels very left out if she doesn’t get to do school. The Confessions of a Homeschooler Unit that I bought involved WAY too much printing. Way too much color printing at that. I just didn’t want to deal with it. So, we found a less than $10 preschool activity book for her at Walmart. It includes colors, shapes, letters, that sort of thing. We’ve worked our way through letters A-C solid and everywhere we go she points out all the A’s. Cara suddenly shouting “MOM! LOOK! THERE’S AN A!” is a common occurrence in our daily adventuring. During school time, She’ll play toys, play outside, or watch the other kids.
The one thing she absolutely LOVES is her Polka-Dots. The girls is obsessed. I finally broke down and bought her a book to go along with it because a) she loves them, b) they keep her entertained for longer, and c) we don’t have a printer to just print some from online.
Oh – I’m almost forgot. Her other favorite thing to do is watch the Leap Frog DVD’s. We’ve ripped them into the computer so she can watch on one of the tablets.
Well, there it is for now. As with all homeschooling families, I’m sure our curriculum will change over time and we’ll adjust as we go. What do YOU do for homeschool? Any other ideas or suggestions? I’m all ears.
