Mid-Year Homeschool Curriculum Update
Well, I’ve needed to make a handful of adjustments to our curriculum as well as to our daily rhythm. The feeling that just keeps coming back to me is gratitude. I’m so grateful that we simply can change things up in our homeschool…whenever we feel like it!
So today I am going to share about our curriculum updates and next I have a post coming about the change in our rhythm. One of the things that really does help me this time of year with managing our homeschool is to review where we’ve been and where we want to go to finish up the school year and I’d invite you to do the same if you’re feeling a little restless.
In case you’d like to reference my original curriculum picks or our last update, here ya go:
Things We’ve Loved
This is no surprise, but we really loved our Music Appreciation study. I’ve been feeling the pull to do more of this so I am excited more TGTB courses are on the horizon.
We also really loved our Ancient Egypt history unit. We used the first unit inside TGTB History I and LSOS’s Unfolding Ancient History and loved both of them! I have a highlight saved on my IG called TGTB HY1 if you’d like to see more of what we did.
We also had one of THE best Christmas homeschool seasons we’ve ever had. It was so life giving that it’s made me stop and ponder what are some things we could adjust to bring back that Spirit we felt so strongly over the holidays.
Family Studies
I love family studies so much, but it has been a lot harder to work into our schedule this year mostly because my kids all have different classes at different times (online and outside our home). So, this is one area in our rhythm I’m tweaking to make sure we still protect. But, I am learning I need to be much more intentional with our time and what we’re studying. We usually alternate various unit-style type studies (mostly history/science) during this time but when I sat down and looked over all our classes and schedules - I realized my oldest three kids were getting some science and history in other classes that I am not really involved in. I hadn’t planned on these classes when I made our curriculum picks last summer and I knew there would be some overlap when I added them, but I realized I just didn’t need to be doing so much in these areas during our family time. So, we need to pivot and let go of some of my original plans which, admittedly, has kind of been hard for me to accept because I love them all so much.
But, if I am trying to be really careful of the time we all have together to study it didn’t make sense to keep adding in more. So, I’ve had to ask the Lord: where does our family focus really need to be right now? And, after a lot of time and prayer, I just feel really strongly it needs to be centered around scripture study. So, right now my plan is to have about an hour of family studies every day and I am just going to use the Spirit to help me fill this time and we will be focusing on the Old Testament and likely related studies. Or, maybe anything else I feel like the Spirit whispers to me.
In the last few months I’ve felt like I’ve been running so thin that I just need to slow down and listen and see where the Lord takes us and allow some margin for His guidance. So right now I am going to be setting aside the next unit in TGTB History 1 and a health and human body unit that I had planned. Maybe I’ll pick these back up in a few months, maybe not, but I just feel like I need a little time where I’m not rushing from lesson to lesson and more time for the Spirit to touch me so I know what the kid’s need to hear.
And, ICYMI on my IG stories - I had all my content ready to go regarding our Old Testament study (here’s part I if you missed it), but I just didn’t feel good about posting it. Years ago I published some content I didn’t feel good about because I felt pressured to share at the “perfect” social media time and I regretted it for months. So, I’ve learned my lesson to listen to that little nudge from God. This time it’s caused me to go back and really seek more answers and rely on Him to guide me and to be honest I haven’t really wanted to be patient, but as I’ve tried to embrace patience… things are starting to come together…(shocking, I know)…but I promise I’ll share once I know for sure! Meanwhile, I did finally decide to use this NIV Study Bible along with my KJV quad for my own personal study and I’m really excited about it. I’ll share more about my thoughts on it when I release everything for our OT study.
7th Grade
First of all, my girls have wrapped up two in-person classes we had added at the last minute last fall: a digital art class and an agricultural class. Additionally, my girl’s sweet piano teacher is retiring and so we no longer have a piano teacher. Her retirement was very sudden because of some health complications so we’ve needed to switch gears really quickly. We’ve invested a lot of years into piano and so we want them to keep going, but we haven’t found another teacher that feels right yet so I am going to be helping them until we do. Hence another reason to simplify in some of our other studies. I don’t play very fluently but enough that I’ll be able to help guide them for a little while. Anyway, all of this has made their schedule a little more flexible which is really nice though.
I am taking two classes with my girls from the House of Humane Letters: Bible History and Good Books. We started Bible History in the fall and now that we have a bit more time we are just beginning the Good Books course. Since my girls have quite a few classes where I am not as involved this year, these courses have been something I’ve really looked forward connecting with them on and it’s been a bright spot for me to work on my own interests as well. My girls listen to the class together while they’re doing a puzzle or coloring or some baking and they’ll jot down notes on their iPad. I listen separately and then we review their notes together. Neither of these are available to enroll in again until August, but I’d definitely recommend to keep them on your radar for next school year.
The girls have also finished The Hobbit and the first two Lord of the Ring’s books and we’ve watched all the extended movie versions which are very long, ha! But, it has been really fun to watch with them because I haven’t seen the movies since they were originally released years ago. Next up for them is the final book in the series!
Saxon math is going slow, but fine. We’ve done like 10 lessons between December and half of January, ha. But, I’ve been okay with them moving a little slower. The first half of the course was too easy for them so they skipped a handful of lessons and now they’re on a roll where it’s starting to get a little more challenging. They did two trial weeks: one with My Math Assistant and the other with Nicole the Math Lady and they decided they wanted to use Nicole’s videos so we’ve added that as a supplement to help with the course. We’ve officially reached a point where I can’t help them much more with math without having to study it myself, which I really don’t want to do, so for next year I am considering putting them in some sort of in-person or online class but I haven’t begun researching options yet.
For Christmas I got my girls a bread maker and cake classes and they’re really enjoying both and we’re incorporating both of those things into our homeschool day and I’ll share more about that in our rhythm post in a few days.
The girls completed a middle school class of Wonders of Energy and are just starting Motion and Simple Machines & will finish up the year with Health & The Human Mind. They’ve been taking these classes with a few friends and have loved having some friends to learn with and I am very grateful for my neighbor who has been teaching these courses.
Since we’re not doing anymore formal history, I am going to have them continue to read from the Millennial Instructors and I think that’ll be perfect to finish out the rest of the school year.
3rd Grade
We’ve hit one year using Savvy for reading lessons (1UA8WO is my referral code) with my son and we’ve been really happy with it so we’re just going to keep chugging along. It’s been fun to see him start reading more. Right now he’s enjoying reading through the Billy and Blaze series and he’s listening to the 5th Harry Potter book. I do writing practice with my 3rd and 1st grader together and am just helping them work on the basics right now. And we’re getting ready to do another project with Bravewriter.
The biggest change I made with my 3rd grader was in math…again. It was actually right after Halloween and I didn’t want to say anything because I have been through three different math courses with him since the beginning of the school year so I’ve just been a little all over the place. Since we’d swapped around so much I really didn’t want to change MWC, but I could just tell it just wasn’t what he needed. So, we’re officially back to TGTB Math 3 and, really, he is doing so. much. better. We’d taken a pause from this course last school year (he was about a grade level ahead at that point) and it was just getting too hard for him. But, now with some time and playing around in other courses, it’s been a good fit for him. He’s about 40 lessons away from finishing the course and now I’m confident we’ll just be able to move on to TGTB Math 4. We lost a lot of time and money switching all around, but I have learned a lot. And, I have so many thoughts swirling about math and other curriculums and a child’s relationship with math, but I am going to have to save all that for another day.
Both of my boys (and my girls too) really enjoyed our mini Engineering Unit from Harbor & Sprout. I think the course is a bit pricy for what you get - there are no video recommendations and the hands-on activities are just ideas - not really any instructions, but all the information you need is in the course itself which makes it simple if you don’t like to add a lot of extras. I added this Simple Machines kit for some easy science experiments. It comes with tons of ideas so I think one kit could last you the whole unit, but Thames & Kosmos have a large variety of kits which look fun.
My big guy is also taking a really good class outside the home that is also touching on science and history and he’s really been enjoying that. This month to support this class at home we’re reading Thomas Edison (I really like this biography series).
For Christmas we also got our kids a basketball hoop and the weather has been so mild here that they’ve been able to go out and shoot hoops quite a bit. Both my boys are really taking to sports so we’ve been in basketball over the winter and it’s looking like we’ll start up flag football and baseball in the coming months.
1st grader
My little guy is so good to just hang out and do whatever we’re all doing for family studies, but I know I need to step it up and cater a few more things to him. He’s enjoyed our Deep Space Sparkle art projects so I am going to make sure we still sneak some of these in.
I have also had the thought for years that he would really love music lessons…and last summer I did look into Let’s Play Music for him, but I just felt like adding another class I had to participate with him would be a lot for me so I put it on the back burner, but it’s still something I’ll probably consider down the line. For now, I pulled out our Prodigy Bells & our sheet music and he LOVES them and is so happy. They’re a little easy for him now, but I think it’s still good ear training and I’ve been working with him the on music scale. I also signed him up for Hoffman Academy Code LEARN gets you 10% off when you use my link. We’re only 2 lessons in, but we did use this resource for a short period of time with my girls. I honestly don’t know if Hoffman will be a good fit for him at this age…my girls were older when they used it. So, I’m a little worried he’s still too young…I think 8 is a much better age to begin with. But, he’s so excited to start learning to play so we’ll just see how it goes and I’ll just let him take the lead. I figure we could try at least one unit and see how it goes.
Then, I’m starting LSOS Me on the Map unit with him and I do think he’ll really enjoy this unit. I also signed him (and my 3rd grader) up for a homeschool PE class that is taught in my city. He’s been to the class twice now and has said he loves it so I think that’ll be another something he has to look forward to each week.
And, last of all, I also changed my first grader back to math with TGTB. Again…a lot of thoughts on all this I’ll have to share another day though. He’s also still utilizing Savvy for reading lessons (1UA8WO is my referral code) and it’s been a great fit for him.
I have a few other things I am planning to do with him, but I’ll share more about that with our updated rhythm.
Final Thoughts
If you’re feeling at all a little down or unmotivated this time of year in your homeschool I’d say that is just really normal. I’ve found about the time of March or Easter things pick up again and I think there really is something to the “seasons of homeschool.” And this time of year can just be a little slower and if you’re finding yourself in a similar place that’s okay. Hang in there. Spring always comes!
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