Curriculum Choices 2022-2022

I started planning for Merry’s junior year (grade 11) about Christmas of last year. I started by looking at what her sister had done. Then I looked at what Merry was currently doing. Made a list of what was going well, what was going poorly, and what we seemed to be doing just for the sake of doing. 

What was going poorly was easiest to identify. Last year we were doing too much. Her schedule was overwhelming. But I was unwilling to cut academic classes and she was unwilling to give up her electives. So we had settled with the block scheduling. I resolved to not give her such a heavy schedule this next year.

I also realized she was getting bored with her classes. They were requirements that she didn’t have much say in. So this year I gave her a say. Over spring break I made a list of possible classes. Some were required for graduation, so I italicized those. Some were my preference for teaching, I bolded those. And most were simply classes she could take, if she wanted. 

Next was the hard part, I gave her the list and let her choose. She only picked one of my bolded classes (Latin online), she only picked one of the graduation required classes (the other three will have to be done next year), and she definitely showed interests.

Do what does Merry’s junior year schedule look like? Much to my surprise she chose two science electives, marine biology and astronomy. We will be using Apologia for both of those. In that science vibe, she also chose Sci-Fi literature. I was unable to find a curriculum for that so I’ve spent my summer putting one together for her.  And she is taking computer programming again this year from CompuScholars. Along with her STEM heavy choices are her required classes, world history and foreign language. We will be using Notgrass for history again this year, and Latin will be with an online class again.

Notably lacking from her list is math. She had finished the required levels and I decided making her take calculus would not benefit either of us. Besides there is always next year.

We start next week! And I’m excited to see how the year turns out!

Block Scheduling for the Win

We’re coming to the end of our block schedule trial period, and I think it has worked well.  It’s always nice when ideas are in fact as good as you’d hoped.

So how does block scheduling working for us?  I divided 6 of her classes into categories; writing and literature are in language arts, math and science are in stem, art and computer programing are electives. That way she would have some variety to what she did each day, no one wants to spend hours just writing papers or solving equations. Then I looked closer at the workload of each class. Literature has more reading than writing and chemistry has more reading than math. So literature and math are on one day while chemistry and writing are on the other.  Art and computer are pretty equal so they were randomly assigned.

History is still an everyday subject. Latin class is two days a week and assignments are done the other three days. 

I had handwritten out my assignment book, so that is staying.  It’s too much work to rewrite. But I use different colored highlighters to mark what has been done each day. Merry’s assignment pages were typed so each week I am simply rearranging the classes and reprinting. 

It’s still early in the year, but it looks like we’ve found a solution that works.

So that didn’t go as well as I hoped

We jumped back into school last week, and immediately we were floundering. Day one it was obvious that fitting eight subjects into the day, especially if one was an hour long online, was not going to work.  So I took my carefully crafted lesson plans and I tried to figure out what to cut.

I debate cutting classes, reducing workload, or just restructuring classes. Mostly I stared at all my hard work which was beginning to feel like a waste.

Then I looked a little closer at how the day had gone and what else we could change. A huge draw on our time was just switching classes, eight times we got out book and put away book. So I thought back to my high school years and “block scheduling.” 

Last week we tried it for two of the days, we doubled up on three classes (and had two regular classes) rather than doing all eight. The next day we doubled up on the three classes we had missed (and had our two regular classes.) That went great. She even finished early one of the days. Then we had all eight classes again on Friday. But knowing it was going to be a long day going into it helped the day’s flow. It didn’t have the same overwhelming effect that our first day had had.

So we will try block scheduling for the rest of the month at least. Some of Merry’s classes will need done everyday, Latin and History. The other six we will alternate with Chemistry, Writing, and Art on Mondays and Wednesdays, and Trigonometry, Literature, and Programing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Then Fridays she’ll have all her classes. 

We can’t call it a success yet, but being willing to adjust is important both for my student and for me. So at least we are succeeding in flexibility.

Curriculum Review: English

English is such a broad topic. Reading, spelling, writing, grammar, speeches, and literature all forms parts of the subject. Rather than look at what we did each year with Merry I thought we could look at each aspect and when we included that as part of her studies since there was a lot of overlapping.

Her first curriculum, for any subject was “Now I’m Reading.” The series is by Nora Gaydos and I highly recommend it for teaching reading. It starts with pre-readers and goes up in steps. The last page of each book is for after the book is read, it contains reading comprehension questions and sometimes sentence forming activities.  Merry used those in preschool through kindergarten.

Once Merry had a good grasp on sounding out words, we started using All About Spelling. The curriculum’s main draw was letter tiles. Being able to put the letters together 

And trade tiles out rather than having to erase was a positive for us. Mistakes felt less permanent and were less discouraging.  Because of that we continued to use AAS all the way though to level 7 in sixth grade. 

Once Merry had mastered reading, we started reading comprehension. Using the Daily Reading Comprehension workbooks by Evan Moor. We used those from first grade through fourth grade.

Along with reading comprehension, we also started focusing on grammar and writing in first grade. Through third grade we used a free printable workbook published by McGraw-Hill. The workbook was perfect for us, it had four days of grammar lessons followed by a short writing assignment for each Friday. Unfortunately, it was apparently not meant to be free. When I went to get the fourth grade version the site required a school log in code. And the workbook was not sold as a standalone product.

So when Merry was in fourth grade we started searching for a writing/grammar curriculum that would work for us.  The first one we tried was Writing Strands. But that was not a good fit for us. After two years we gave up and in sixth grade we did a year without writing.

Sixth grade was fun because instead of the writing program I made my own literature study. This was the first formal literature class that Merry did. Until this point I had simply let her read whatever interested her from the library and did my childhood favorites as family read out louds. I relied heavily on internet resources, especially teacher-pay-teachers to find guides and activities.  We used fairy tales to talk about plot, characters, and other story elements. We had a poetry unit on the different types of poems. And we did a unit on mythology, particularly that of Greeks and Romans.

In seventh grade, Merry decided to do “Cover Story,” a curriculum that walks you though making your own magazine over the course of the year. It was a good opportunity for me to see where she excelled in writing and where we needed to reinforce ideas. 

The area that needed reinforcing was grammar, so in eighth grade we went through the Life of Fred Language Arts books. As fans of the math books, these were great. They were definitely used more to reinforce rather than teach. And we will probably use them for review later in high school.

Seventh grade was when I started looking for a literature program that would work for Merry. I struggled with the reading lists in some programs or the lack of grading help in others. Then I found Lightning Literature. The middle school curriculum (which we used in seventh and eighth grade) contains the books to read, a student guide with comprehension questions and writing prompts, a student activity book with puzzles and word searches, and the teacher’s guide. The best part was the teacher’s guide made sense to me. The curriculum was a perfect fit! 

At the high school level Lightning Literature is a little more intense. But the grading guides make it easy to explain what is expected. For ninth grade we used the Speeches class. In addition to the reading and writing aspects of the class, Merry had to give 4 speeches during the year.

The Lightning Literature classes have essay writing as a part of them but I wanted to give Merry a well rounded writing foundation. So we also used Write Shop level 1 for ninth grade writing. Instead of the response focus of essays, Write Shop focuses more on the creative choices. Things like word choices, description, and sentence structures.

So that’s how we got to where we are. This next year Merry is planning to continue writing with Write Shop 2 and will be taking American Literature using Lightning Literature. 

Curriculum Review: Social Studies

Social Sciences can be hard to pin down. They include everything from history to geography to civics to cultural studies. 

Like science, in grade school I wanted a class that would be fun, and one which wouldn’t take a lot of time.  I also didn’t have any extra funds in the budget. So I came up with my own things.

Knuffle Bunny’s adventures was my first attempt and I must admit I am super proud of how it turned out. In first grade we studied one continent each month, checking out books from the library and using a children’s atlas. About once a week we would write a letter from Knuffle Bunny as if he was visiting that area. Merry would draw a picture of something we had read about to go with he simple message. Sometimes she picked a landmark, other times a cultural celebration or a common activity.

Second grade we continued to focus on geography and culture, this time with Knuffle Bunny traveling the USA. We would spend one day learning about a state and the next writing and drawing.

Third grade was another curriculum hobbled together by me.  We used the American Girls books to learn about US History. In addition to the story books, I had also picked up many of the extras throughout the years at second hand stores mostly. We had  cook books, craft books, and even paper dolls to go with the studies. And I found a website that offered free printables for American Girl lap books. (https://www.freehomeschooldeals.com/free-american-girl-lapbook-templates/).

Third grade was also the year we joined a co-op so Merry had to double up on history. It didn’t go well. The co-op used “Story of the World” which may have been fine except they were using book 4, which was made for older elementary. Instead of using the entire book, Merry and I only read the one lesson from each week that would be being discussed. And because I found the text uninspiring I sometimes just summarize.

Needless to say, I did not try “Story of the World” again. In fact for fourth grade I was back to trying my own thing.  That year Charry was studying Oregon History using a workbook by Georgina Slinger. So Merry studied with her sister and made lap books to go with the different units, i.e. one for explorers, one for plants, one for counties, etc.

Then in fifth grade I wanted a curriculum that I could use with both girls and I wanted to start putting greater focus on history. That was when I discovered Notgrass. The text books were easy to read aloud. There were workbooks designed for younger kids as well as older. It focused on geography and culture as well as dates and documents. It checked all the boxes. So they did American History together.

Because of the success with Notgrass, in sixth grade we continued with the curriculum, and with doing the subject as a group. That year we used the Civics course. An unexpected benefit was learning about different holidays, like Veteran’s Day and Mother’s Day. Finding out not only what they celebrated but how they became holidays.

Seventh grade Merry was once again on her own, but since Charry was using the Notgrass high school world history, we decided to use the middle school world history. As a teacher I enjoyed the books better when I was only using one level but it still worked well for Merry.

Eighth grade we went with local history again, using the same Oregon History workbook that her sister had used. Honestly I haven’t found a more complete Oregon History curriculum, or any other Oregon History curriculum for that matter. It won by default of existing.

Then came high school, this was where I really wanted to make sure her education was well rounded and covered more than just names and dates.

Last year, ninth grade, we opted for North Star Geography rather than history. The reasons were twofold. One, I feel that having a good knowledge of geography makes history easier to follow. Two, this allowed me to once again combine Charry and Merry. For Charry’s final year of homeschooling it was nice to have them studying some of the same subjects and be able to work together on projects. The primary reason for choosing North Star was the student project that went with it. Over the course of the year they each made their own atlas, with maps they had filled in themselves. 

This year we will be back to using Notgrass. Merry will be doing American History. The curriculum is designed to also be used for literature and Bible classes but we are limiting it to the history aspect.

So long story short, it turned out I prefer simple one year curriculums rather than the popular 3-4 year rotational options. I don’t like using formal text books with younger elementary. And I like curriculum with a broad age range, so one text book but two different workbooks appeals to me. Even though I never found a “perfect” fit for social studies, I have been very pleased with each of the various things we have tried, except for “Story of the World” which was just a bad fit for us.

Curriculum Review: Science

So while writing my math review last week I realized there was another subject which Merry has used one curriculum exclusively, science. 

Her older sister had used public school text books I had bought from a library sale for the first 3 years, but when Merry started first grade I wanted something they could use together. So began our journey with Apologia, the Exploring Creation series.

We started with Birds, which was by far our favorite, then Water Creatures followed by Land Creatures. While the main focus of each of those was exactly what you would expect, the different types of animals, I appreciated the amount of other science stuff they threw in. For example, while studying birds we also learned about aerodynamics and how planes get lift.  The curriculum also did a great job preparing students for the observation side of science class.

So even when I was back to one child in the elementary grades, we continued with the series; studying Astronomy, Physics, and Botany. Now these courses were very much designed for elementary, so while they were very well rounded, they were not intense or all inclusive.  To me elementary science was a subject that was meant to be fun, not meant to take a lot of time.

Middle school science is a different ball game. It was important to have a more structured class with experiments as well as textbook learning. Middle school is also when subjects like science and history start having the same value as math and writing. Apologia General Science was a great text for starting this more intensive class schedule. It even has a daily work schedule mapped out for students at the front of the notebook.

The Student notebooks that are a part of the upper level courses were easy to use and familiar to Merry since they were similar to the elementary version. And I still wanted science to be fun, so using a curriculum with easy to follow experiments was important too.

Now we haven’t been entirely successful with the curriculum. Biology in particular was rough because of the amount of microscopic things we were supposed to look at. With my older daughter we tried using a hobby grade microscope but we were unsuccessful and it was more frustrating than educational. With Merry we opted instead to YouTube videos of microscopic images. That was more successful but not a perfect solution.

That brings us to this year, we will be using Apologia Chemistry. From previous experience I know we will want to use the lab kit, just to make sure we have all the supplies on hand. And Merry will be using the notebook that goes with the textbook. So yep, we will keep on keeping on.

Curriculum Review: Math

Hopefully this will be a series were I look back at our previous curriculum choices and see how we got to where we are. Starting with Mathematics since for Merry it’s been a constant.

We first started Life of Fred in September of 2011, in fact I even made a blog post about it. (https://caytw.blogspot.com/2011/09/happiness-is-new-math-book.html?m=0)

In the beginning we supplemented with a lot of math practice tools, like flash cards, dollar store workbooks, and various math games.  Now that she is in high school math it is much harder to find extras that we can add on and it is less of a necessity. Math starts with a lot of facts to memorize, addition tables, multiplication tables, and orders of operation being prime examples. But in higher levels it is less about memorizing and more about a way of thinking, the logic behind it.

Life of Fred emphasizes that way of thinking even in the lower level book, which since I love mathematics appealed to me. Merry also would rather think about one problem for ten minutes than do ten problems in one minute, so the curriculum has been a good fit.

That’s not to say that we don’t supplement a little, even now. I discovered math vocabulary posters from Virginia’s state government page. (https://www.doe.virginia.gov/instruction/mathematics/resources/vocab_cards/index.shtml) And we have been using these as part of our “morning time” for the past 4 years. Math can be like a foreign language, so knowing how to express yourself and what you are thinking is important.

This next year we will also be using YouTube, https://youtube.com/user/numberphile, and learning about various American mathematicians using Wikipedia and Google. 

While I’m excited for Merry to move forward with Trigonometry, I also want her to have a better understanding of math in the real world and how mathematicians have made impacts.