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Elizabeth
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If you are using CHC lesson plans and you started around September, what week are you currently doing?
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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Paula in MN
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We are on week 17...
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 Paula
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msclavel
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Who Knows?!  (And that would a kind of crazed hysterical laughter, because for some reason the noise level in my house is about to make me go mad.)
I mainly follow them for some of the reading and religion supplements and since we pitched all "plans" in December and just had fun with Advent (thanks to your wonderful ideas and units, I might add) we are umm...behind. 
But then, I'm not really following them day-by-day every subject. Still considering where I thought we would be...not there yet.
This post is no help  .
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SuzC
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We're on week 17, also!
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Elizabeth
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Well, Maria, it is a help in the sense that I totally understood it  .
I always think lesson plans with everything spelled out would be so wonderful. Then, I decide not use one component, get ahead on another, and fall behind on a third and then it's not at all tidy.
I can't believe I'm revisiting this in January...last week I thought I was all set. 
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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cathhomeschool
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Elizabeth wrote:
| I always think lesson plans with everything spelled out would be so wonderful. Then, I decide not use one component, get ahead on another, and fall behind on a third and then it's not at all tidy. |
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CHC's lesson plans have looked SO good on so many occasions, but it's this same problem that holds me from buying them. We've looked at them and I do follow some of their suggestions (like a Story of the Saints each week), but I'd go crazy trying to keep up with the plans. We would be WAY behind in All Ye Lands... I don't feel "as behind" when we unit study and I can add things and go off the path. When you get side-tracked and go back to the plans where you left off, what do you do at the end of the year when you're not "finished?"
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Dawnie
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Elizabeth,
Everything is all messed up here, too. I've done a day of school here and a day there since Clara was born, but nothing consistently. We're sort of around week 13, I think? We're way behind in science and social studies. We're just a little behind in everything else. I really don't want to do school all summer (besides nature walking), so it looks like we may not "finish" everything in 2nd grade.
I really love the look and the ideas of CHC's materials and lesson plans, but this happens every year! Last year, I was in a different week for almost every subject!  If I buy the lesson plans for next year, I'm only using the supplements. I'll just write my own lessons week-to-week in a lesson planner or something. That will be less confusing, I think.
I'm trying to at least keep up in Religion, since Mary Beth is receiving FHC this year. I'm slowly drifting into unschooling in every other subject...
Dawn
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Servant2theKing
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We're on week 16 (I had to ask our boys that one)...actually this week they've done Monday's and Tuesday's lessons for Week 16...next week they'll finish Week 16 on Wed. Thur and Fri....we're taking a few days off here and there for various family needs. We've always juggled our study days....sometimes my boys skate right through and double up, on their own, so they can take time off...other times they muddle through.
The BEAUTY of homeschooling is that you can never truly be behind, because your family is the only point of comparison (or SHOULD be). Kind of like Stephen Cosgrove's, Leo the Lop....normal is whatever you are! With homeschooling, we like to adopt Leo the Lop's philosophy...normal is wherever you are in YOUR lesson plans!
The thing I LOVE about using CHC's lesson plans is that we always have a core to follow, which helps us stay (somewhat) on track...without lesson plans we would really struggle to stay afloat with the basics! We do quite well with all the rabbit trails and extra-curricular learning, but we need a little help keeping track of things like the 4 R's; Religion, Reading, 'Riting and "Rithmetic.
CHC's beautifully written Lesson Plans help my boys be much more self-directed. They're pretty adept at keeping track of what they've done and whether they're "ahead" or "behind"...(I try to discourage such references as much as possible though!) I've written our own lesson plans for years, and am pretty dependent on them, but I could never produce anything as well-thought out and creative as CHC offers. I'm dreading the time when all our boys are too old for CHC's plans!
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Cay Gibson
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We love CHC and a big part of the reason is because I don't feel so guilty about adapting it and working it into my own plans.  The "gentleness" of their plans allow for Mom to cut, snip, and glue her own plans to make it her own.
My lesson plans say we're in week 20 but, since we haven't exactly "done" school yesterday or today, that's subjective. Thing is I enter all "real learning" activites into these lesson plans so there's so much more going on than just CHC.
Getting back to CHC, I looked and saw that we are on Lesson 34 in PLL (this book will probably take us another year to finish) and only on lesson 10 in spelling (I have no idea how we fell behind on that, Chels loves spelling), and we're starting the poetry section in LOG (that's about halfway through the book).
We don't "do" all the other things in the CHC lesson plans. We follow it very loosely.
I looked at HS of Dreams but decided against it for Garrett. He likes a schedule and likes to work independently (though he's the one I worry about the most when it comes to testing and learning abilities). We went with MODG for him. I know what he's doing and what he's reading at the moment but I have no idea where he's "at" in terms of weeks and syllabus.
Elizabeth, I think (and this is strictly from a personal viewpoint) that MODG blends classical education very gently into real learning and literature. I will say that we only use a skeleton syllabus...pretty much just the plans in the DYOCC book. I don't order all the separate science, math, etc. planners. He just follows the books recommended in DYOCC chapter by chapter in order. But this is good for us. I save money, he has a guide to follow, there is some structure involved, yet there is still plenty of room for real learning.
Also, I haven't registered or gotten a consultant with MODG. We've tried that and it totally hinders us. Call us Jo March and Laurie.
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Cay Gibson
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Cheryl
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We're on week 17 of the 2nd grade plans. We're current on spelling and grammar (though I don't do spelling tests). We're actually on week 16 in math. We're probably in the middle of first grade for reading, on week 15 for religion, and we're not using the science curriculum. We started with the Tour of the Continents for North America, then stopped completely. We're in the middle of a penguin unit study and I discovered that Week 17 of the Tour is in the middle of Antartica. Yay! I'm going to bake the suggested cake on Friday.
I bought the K plans also, but don't use them because my ds 6 would be in the middle of first grade and my dd 4.5 is not ready for K.
I'm starting to waffle on the spelling and grammar. Although they may only take about 15-20 minutes, I'm not convinced they are worth the hassle. My boys don't care for them and I know there are other ways to learn spelling and grammar. What are your opinions on these workbooks?
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Bookswithtea
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I planned to use the 1st grade lesson plans. I stopped looking at it well before Christmas and don't even know where they are now (likely buried under a mound of books). Plans just don't work for me and this year, I've decided to just accept that. I do better writing my own while using the ideas from other plans. I couldn't even keep up with those little virtues cards! But I'm never unhappy with what we've accomplished when the schoolyear comes to an end.
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JennyMaine
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Personally, we're returning to CHC lesson plans here for the rest of this year and hope to stick with it for years to come. I've dabbled with Seton materials and WinterPromise, but we were happiest and making progress the most with CHC. (I will still keep my WP readers and read-alouds to use with Sea to Shining Sea. They are a great supplement to a good Catholic text!)
Cay said:
"We love CHC and a big part of the reason is because I don't feel so guilty about adapting it and working it into my own plans. The "gentleness" of their plans allow for Mom to cut, snip, and glue her own plans to make it her own."
I have to totally agree with that. I love the lesson plans, especially the column that gives the goals for the week. I can look at this and say, "Ok, by the end of the week, we should be here in math." The plans are so user-friendly in terms of the layout. You can simply take out, for instance, 4 weeks of pages and any supplemental pages and put them in a slim, light binder. (Isn't it nice to not need a wheelbarrow to carry your lesson plans and materials from one room to another?) My children don't fit into one tidy grade level. So, if they are advanced one year or behind one year in a subject, it is so easy to use that new-fangled correct tape to white out one box of plans and write in your own plan or CHC's plan in math, for instance, from the next grade level. I like having the entire week facing me on just two sheets of paper!
I must say I love the religion lessons throughout all grade levels. They just get better and better. Another thing about the CHC materials is their emphasis on real family life and giving examples that children can relate to (for instance, in the LOG workbooks). I love the affordability and the fact that so many resources are used year after year. Having everything laid out in the middle school plans and high school of your dreams is genius -- giving people a guide to follow, but the tools to customize.
Finally, there is the ability to totally use whatever you want while still taking the best from CHC. My daughter enjoys the CHC speller and LOG, but it still leaves enough time in our day to review phonograms with an Orton-Gillingham program or do a little work in our MegaWords workbooks from EPS. With her dyslexia, we need that time in our day.
I'm so grateful that CHC has created such wonderful lesson plans!
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--JennyMaine, Mom to Catherine (17) and Sam (15) "The countenance is a reflection of the soul. You should always have a calm and serene countenance." -- Therese of Lisieux
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Elizabeth
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Jenny makes some great points. Well, really, you all do.
Anybody up for an experiment? If you have the CHC plans, would you see how long it takes you every day to get through the basics? Just time what is in the plan books. I'm curious about how much time is left (I'm thinking a lot). If CHC is the core, then my hunch is there is plenty of time for Cahtolic Mosaic and liturgical crafts. For us, my bugaboo came when the children were all split into different places for history and science. I will always do that family style. And I think CHC needs lots of literature supplementation but that can easily be done using the Real Learning list...
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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Elizabeth
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Jenny,
Quick question? What grade levels are you using? Are you talking about middle school plans?
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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JennyMaine
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I used CHC plans for K-4, but sometimes ventured off into other things. (An occasional Beyond FIAR unit, a Christian Cottage unit, etc.) So, I used the history and science plans loosely. Those are the years I'm thinking of when I mention the ease of the plans, and how much I loved the religion portion, etc.
My daughter is 1/2 way through Seton 5 and we're jumping back into CHC with her, using the middle school lesson plans, mostly on a 5th grade level. (Keep in mind, this is my struggling learner). Her brother will be combined with her for religion, science, history, art at the 5th grade level. This has always worked very well for us. I agree with you that these areas need to be combined for mom's sanity and sibling bonding! LOL We do lots of read-alouds in the evenings (right now we're reading St. Dominic and the Rosary - as hoped, it is having a positive impact on my son's devotion to the rosary. And it is covering some great info on church history!) I don't worry about the lack of literature suggestions in CHC because we are just so immersed in books here anyway. After years of homeschool research, you just know what to pull off the shelf and include when. I found that when trying to implement someone else's literature suggestions (such as WinterPromise), I sometimes thought, "Well, but I know we already have 3 great books for this time period . . .do I really care what someone else suggests we read?" I just keep a couple baskets of books out and available for each period of history that we cover and/or a specific science topic. Otherwise, I find my own home library isn't getting used.
Sorry I can't tell you how long the 5th grade takes with CHC, because we're just getting there! I just rejoice in the fact that it will take much less time than Seton and will be done cheerfully, and is fully Catholic!
I do have a CHC question, though! Anyone actually used Universe in My Hands w/Pilgrims of the Holy Family? I'm wondering because I see it coming up for sale alot. I think that it's a great idea -- I know unit studies such as Christian Cottage use the Boy Scout Merit Badge books and ideas when writing their science units. Does it work out well with CHC? (My son just had another horrible experience with being injured at a Scout den meeting. This time a new kid walked up and head-butted him out of the blue. Sigh. I told him I don't think we're going back, and he's ok with that. The public schooled boys are out of control. So, I'm thinking of trying to hook up with one other family and do Pilgrims of the Holy Family instead.)
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--JennyMaine, Mom to Catherine (17) and Sam (15) "The countenance is a reflection of the soul. You should always have a calm and serene countenance." -- Therese of Lisieux
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mariB
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I've been really wanting to use CHC with my 7 year old daughter. We are using MODG with my 10 and 13 year old (just the lesson plans with a lot of it tweaked). We are on week 13. My oldest who is 15 is using Seton and is on week 9 and week 11 on some things. I guess I'm in big trouble when I look at where you girls are at! AND THIS IS THE PROBLEM---I'm not worried!
Usually I'm a worry wart. But this forum always makes me feel better. Everyone always has good advice. If we say our Rosary, listen to the Mass readings from Elizabeth's web site and read a good book out loud then I always feel much better! That's real homeschooling!
marianne
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Paula in MN
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Elizabeth wrote:
Jenny makes some great points. Well, really, you all do.
Anybody up for an experiment? If you have the CHC plans, would you see how long it takes you every day to get through the basics? Just time what is in the plan books. I'm curious about how much time is left (I'm thinking a lot). If CHC is the core, then my hunch is there is plenty of time for Cahtolic Mosaic and liturgical crafts. For us, my bugaboo came when the children were all split into different places for history and science. I will always do that family style. And I think CHC needs lots of literature supplementation but that can easily be done using the Real Learning list... |
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I use the CHC Grade 2 plans. We typically start around 8:30 or 9:00 every morning. We were using their spelling and grammar, but I have switched to Spelling Power instead. And I have always used a different math program. We follow right along with the plans -- reading, spelling, grammar, math, religion, and science (those are the core plans that you do every day). We do our own copywork for the handwriting portion. We are usually done with all of the above around 10 or 10:30. We take a break, then we will do the Social Studies and Map Skills. We do those daily versus the weekly they recommend. I have their ArtPacs, but I prefer to do our own picture study (with Discovering Great Artists...) and our own music study.
Then we will all snuggle on the couch and start reading. And yes, that is using Catholic Mosaic, Real Learning lists, and some of the Mater Amabilis suggestions.
We are done by 12 or 12:30, make lunch, and have the rest of the day for more reading, nature, games, anything.
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ALmom
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I use the CHC grade K plans - but we started them loosely last year, went through what I wanted a day here and a day there and by this semester, I just ordered the first grade plans. I'd say it takes less than an hour to do what we want from them and then we do our own things.
I simply write a date by what we do because we are never in the same place with every subject. I write in my own math as I don't use theirs and add in whatever of our own stuff we do if I think about it. But since this child is not of legal reporting age in our state, I am very, very loose with recording stuff. I save the art appreciation, etc. that seems conducive to lots of children together and we try to do that together without writing in the materials. I cut and laminate the character cards, memory verses, etc. and I can use them year after year with everyone. We may check off character cards using a greese pencil or washable dry/erase. The materials from CHC work better than anything for us with our delayed eye/hand skills and the better page contrast and better size of material(generally with some exceptions like in handwriting which is way too small for us - we use Kolbe's penmanship and often pick a practice book at a lower grade level to get bigger print).
I have used CHC grade 2, 3 and 4 but by 4th grade we are doing mostly a combination of CHC,Kolbe and co-op and a lot of mixing and matching of our own ideas especially with my current 4th grader. My current 6th grader did CHC 4th grade and 5th grade and it worked very well for us. It probably took him more than an hour to do - but he had vision problems and worked at a slower pace than others. Still it didn't take him really long. The grammar workbooks have reasonable quantity of practice and does not require excessive copying from book to paper - something that slows us way down so it really saves us time over the typical grammar texts used. Of course, we don't fixate either - we finish when we finish and have no problems rolling books over several years so we can do more in depth study or correlate it with real life.
It would be very, very hard to say what week we are on as it would be different for every single subject  . I love using it.
Janet
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Genevieve
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Janet,
I'll have to ask to take a peak at the lesson plans when I pop by.
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mavmama
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Oh, this is such a timely post for me!
We just started home schooling in Dec. after our big move. Our twin dds, 8, were in Catholic school from Kdg. until then and are what I consider 2nd graders. Everyday I worry about "where we are" because we are all over the place!
I think I will post separately about this, since I don't want to hijack this post, but I am so thankful to hear that others have this same issue. I am encouraged because you all have my utmost respect.
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: If you use CHC lesson plans...
