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SeaStar
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| Posted: Sept 22 2010 at 6:44am | IP Logged
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So... school has started. Is anyone using a new (at least to them  ) resource that you just love? Workboxes? Change in educational philosophy?
MusIQ?
Here, we are enjoying "How To Introduce Your Child to Classical Music in 52 Easy Lessons", which sounds intimidating but really has been a lot of fun.
My kids are really getting into the music.... everything has been "The French are attacking!" and "Napoleon this, Napoleon that" since we read about and listened to the 1812 Overture. Now we are onto "Pictures at an Exhibition", and they really like the chicken ballet
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Melinda, mom to ds ('02) and dd ('04)
SQUILT Music Appreciation
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lapazfarm
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| Posted: Sept 22 2010 at 11:44am | IP Logged
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We are dong a VERY CM year and it is going superbly. Week 6 this week and everything is so smooth and easy!
The biggest hits here so far this year have been:
For ds (15):
Caveman Chemistry is great! He is having fun and learning lots of good chemistry at the same time. Who knew that was possible, right?
History Scribe's History Scholar notebooking pages are working very well to help keep ds on track with his history studies.
For dd (9):
Gombrich's Little History of the World-has made history her favorite subject.
Loyola Kids Book of Saints by Amy Welborn-she loves the style of these saint stories and I very much enjoy reading them to her. Wish I had this book when my other kids were little.
Arabella Buckley books. Loving these!
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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
LaPaz Home Learning
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kristacecilia
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| Posted: Sept 22 2010 at 12:02pm | IP Logged
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We are loving our nature study! We're using the Handbook of Nature Study along with the Handbook of Nature Study Blog, starting with the first Outdoor Hours... which have been a real blessing to me since I have almost no background in studying nature.
We're loving anything that is nature study or art related- and we're using Drawing with Children along with the HbNS blog to learn to draw. I am absolutely loving doing this along with the children.
My 4 year old has laid claim to the Dover coloring book I purchased on birds. Everyday he is spending at least 30 minutes examining the pictures and coloring the birds just-so. He scours the house for the proper colored pencils. I have never seen him so interested in anything art related! He sits so still!!
We're reading lots of stories from Kindergarten Gems and the Among the People series about things we are seeing in nature. Lots of picture books from the library.
We're using Story of the World Vol 1, which has been okay, but what we are really LOVING is all the read alouds we're doing along with it. My 6 year old and I are read The Pharoahs of Ancient Egypt and sooooo enjoying it. I can't believe I didn't know all that! I just ordered us a whole truck load more living history read alouds on the ancient world because we're loving it so much. He is really enjoying his book of centuries, too.
This is my first year just using the St. Joseph's First Communion Catechism instead of a catechism program like Faith and Life or Who Am I? I am loving it's simplicity. My son just likes to memorize things, so he loves it, too. I am still using Who Am I? with the 4 year old twice a week and he loves that special time. (So do I!)
My favorite mommy resource, though: The Original Homeschooling Series! I bought it for myself as a treat and I am loving reading it!
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God bless,
Krista
Wife to a great guy, mom to two boys ('04, '06) and three girls ('08, '10, '12!)
I blog at http://kristacecilia.wordpress.com/
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allegiance_mom
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My ds age 12 has just started Henle Latin I and is loving it. Twice he has told me that he really likes Latin. We are using the Memoria Press lesson plans for Henle I (first two units). That has helped me tremendously because it has 32 weeks of daily lessons all planned out. DS has done Latin since K with Memoria Press products, and he wants to finish all four volumes of Henle by 12th grade.
For his science we are using Apologia's Exploring Creation with General Science. I found FREE daily lesson plans for this on Donna Young's site. FREE! It saved me literally hours of planning for science this year.
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Allegiance Mom in NY
Wife 17 years
Mom to two boys, 14 and 8, and one pre-born babe in Heaven (Jan 2010)
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Grace&Chaos
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| Posted: Sept 25 2010 at 10:18am | IP Logged
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We have switched to creating a very CM method of schooling this year. I made my own lesson plans based on some very good resources such as:
Ambelside Online
Simply Charlotte Mason
Mater Amabilis
and many wonderful blogs by some very creative more experienced catholic moms.
I really enjoyed putting the plans together and thinking of each child individually in order to create the best atmosphere for them. My dds have enjoyed having subjects overlap and being able to work side by side on them.
Our days have the occasional "don't want to work, laziness" to them but over all I have enjoyed watching my girls enjoy the material they are reading and making connections to their other subjects. School has a must start by this time rule but it flows very smoothly after that.
Krista, My girls are loving Among the --- People  .
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Blessings,
Jenny
Mom to dds(00,03) and dss(05,06,08,09)
Grace in Loving Chaos
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kristacecilia
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| Posted: Sept 25 2010 at 7:17pm | IP Logged
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Grace&Chaos wrote:
We have switched to creating a very CM method of schooling this year. I made my own lesson plans based on some very good resources such as:
Ambelside Online
Simply Charlotte Mason
Mater Amabilis
and many wonderful blogs by some very creative more experienced catholic moms.
I really enjoyed putting the plans together and thinking of each child individually in order to create the best atmosphere for them. My dds have enjoyed having subjects overlap and being able to work side by side on them.
Our days have the occasional "don't want to work, laziness" to them but over all I have enjoyed watching my girls enjoy the material they are reading and making connections to their other subjects. School has a must start by this time rule but it flows very smoothly after that.
Krista, My girls are loving Among the --- People . |
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This is exactly what I did for my two sons this year, and I am so enjoying what we are doing- and we are having our occasional days of laziness, too. ;)
Isn't the book so fun? Why did I not know that all these lovely books even existed until I started homeschooling? 
__________________
God bless,
Krista
Wife to a great guy, mom to two boys ('04, '06) and three girls ('08, '10, '12!)
I blog at http://kristacecilia.wordpress.com/
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amyable
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| Posted: Sept 27 2010 at 2:56pm | IP Logged
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Definitely CLAA by a longshot.
Something else neat we "fell into" for the next 8 or so weeks - my dd is taking a class about 50 minutes from our home. There is a library 3 minutes from her class that has these "science kits" - books, hands on activities, etc on a variety of subjects like anatomy, space, magnetism, electricity, etc. So we drop off DD, zoom to the library, and use the 1+ hours there to do science. I think I'm most happy that science is actually getting done in some documentable fashion. Other than nature study - which is great, mind you, but not enough according to my engineer/left brained DH - science has always slid into the background here.
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Amy
mom of 5, ages 6-16, and happy wife of 
The Highly Sensitive Homeschooler
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myboysnme
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| Posted: Sept 27 2010 at 6:14pm | IP Logged
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Krista,
Thank you for your post. It reminded me that I wanted to add the Handbook of Nature Study outdoor challenges this year. I also have Drawing with Children, and both of my boys love to draw, so I am going to pull it out and see if I can work it into our schooling.
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Michele
Married to DH for 13 years, Mother to ds 9, ds 5, and my sweet saint in heaven
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anitamarie
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| Posted: Sept 27 2010 at 7:50pm | IP Logged
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I am loving Horizons Math. It has been such a relief to find something besides Saxon for the early grades. My ds loves it. It covers everything amply, it is spiral and we get done in about 20 min. All good.
Anita
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Tina P.
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| Posted: Sept 29 2010 at 10:54am | IP Logged
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Some of the things we opted *not* to do after we started them last year, we're doing gleefully this year.
For my pre-K and 1st grader, their whole curriculum is based on almost anything by Kumon
is great for math and writing. McGraw Hill Spectrum Phonics is very thorough. I'm really pleased with all my 1st grader is learning. he's not sooo thrilled iwth it, since there's a lot of writing involved. But of all my boys, due to Kumon and this phonics, he is the neatest writer by far! The only other "text book" we use is Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It's so nice for me to have everything all laid out in one book. I started teaching my now-16 yo with bells and whistles. Since then, I've pared down considerably. Kids really don't need bells and whistles. All they need is to be ready to learn to read. Other than this, we do a lot of reading aloud and exploring outside.
My older kids are enjoying and learning a ton from The Grammar of Poetry. I don't remember learning these things when I was even in high school! But they're soaking it all in, writing in iambic and trochaic meters, learning about tropes and rhyme schemes.
The other thing that they're especially enjoying this year is botany. Both of these things were addressed and then cast to the side last year. They were just too young for it.
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Tina, wife to one and mom to 9 + 3 in heaven
Mary's Muse
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Tina P.
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Forgot to add that those Apologia books are very hands-on ACTIVE ways to learn. Lots of fun after a stretch of seatwork. You can get lesson plans and lapbook materials to go with them. I've opted out of that. I like to write my own. And since there's notebooking within each book, I don't bother with lapbooks.
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Tina, wife to one and mom to 9 + 3 in heaven
Mary's Muse
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Erin
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Story of the World Vol 4 has been a huge hit with my boys and dd.
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Erin
Faith Filled Days
Seven Little Australians
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mom3aut1not
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Well, this will sound odd, but....
My iPad! I am finding a variety of uses for it in our homeschool. I can easily read pdf files -- more easily than I can with my computer when I have my son beside me or on my lap. I have both free pdfs as well as ones I paid for from Peace Hill Press and the Classical Writing Primer publisher. I also just downloaded a book from Yesterday's Classics via the Kindle app for Ipod/ipad and saved $8 by doing so. I also have some of my son's evals saved off on it, and I plan to have my school plans on it as well. While an ipod is nice and fits well in my purse, the size of an ipad makes it more useful at home. I also have our music on both, and I can put educational (or even just for fun) movies on the ipad if I need to have it for my son when we are not at home.
I am thinking of scanning things I want to have copies of that are not sensitive and keeping them on my ipad or ipod. Uses for it seem to be expanding......
In Christ,
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Deborah
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JennGM
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kristacecilia wrote:
Grace&Chaos wrote:
We have switched to creating a very CM method of schooling this year. I made my own lesson plans based on some very good resources such as:
Ambelside Online
Simply Charlotte Mason
Mater Amabilis
and many wonderful blogs by some very creative more experienced catholic moms.
I really enjoyed putting the plans together and thinking of each child individually in order to create the best atmosphere for them. My dds have enjoyed having subjects overlap and being able to work side by side on them.
Our days have the occasional "don't want to work, laziness" to them but over all I have enjoyed watching my girls enjoy the material they are reading and making connections to their other subjects. School has a must start by this time rule but it flows very smoothly after that.
Krista, My girls are loving Among the --- People . |
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This is exactly what I did for my two sons this year, and I am so enjoying what we are doing- and we are having our occasional days of laziness, too. ;) |
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Yes, it's not about one resource, but that I'm just L-O-V-I-N-G going full-force Charlotte Mason. It fits so perfectly, and I can see that the connections are happening. And really, it's so freeing to do full-CM than CM inspired. Having to add CM elements to an existing day would be so much harder than what we are doing.
Reading and narration we have down well; there are still bumps in the road with copywork and dictation. We had a rough start in September, with 3 weeks of sickness and such. But what was wonderful was the reading and narration continued even in our bouts of illness.
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Jennifer G. Miller
Wife to & ds1  '03 & ds2  '07
Family in Feast and Feria
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: New favorite resource
