Tag: homeschool curriculum

Homeschool

Making a Homeschool Rhythm

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Hey Loves!

Can I share something with you? I had no idea what a homeschool rhythm was. Not one. Not a clue. 

If you don’t know what something is, you have no idea how the benefits of it flow through your home.

So, once I found out about this gem and did a little digging, I was able to apply it so my family could thrive with it and not be bound to a schedule.

What’s the difference between a schedule and rhythms, you ask? Simply put, freedom and grace. A schedule is pass/fail. You either do the thing, complete the task or you don’t. A rhythm allows for grace to maybe kinder complete the task and the grace to either skip it or try it a different way.

Here is how I organize our homeschool rhythm every year:

Survey our life- That sounds very technical but basically I compile our activities, plans and ideals-like downtime, family time and things like church, chores and meal prep. 

Be realistic- I am definitely team “go hard or go home” but I have learned, albeit the hard way, that actually we can do way more when we do a little and are intentional with our time. 

Prep and plan- So, taking the two items above, I plan out our days. This includes not just the activities and ideals, but I have to be realistic and include traffic, prep time, travel time between destinations, etc. 

Put it all together- This is the last step. Think of the items above like puzzle pieces or Jenga blocks. I piece each item together in the little matrix of our lives and then, this is the key, I structure what lessons we do on what day so we can get into our rhythm.

I’ve said this before but I honestly can’t stress enough that the emphasis of homeschooling is on the home, not the opening  or closing of a curriculum at a certain time.
If you would like a printable to organize your own homeschool rhythm you can grab it here.

Homeschool

How We Use Digital Learning

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Hey Loves!

I understand that seeing all of our resources and/or eclectic approach to homeschool can be a little overwhelming. I need you to know we take our time and we utilize games and digital learning platforms.

I am far from a screen-free mama. In fact, we changed our Internet provider because we have so many devices running. I truly believe these can be used effectively and add to the educational experiences. 

Here is a snippet of what we use and how we use it.

Podcasts: History, character, cooperative work and more are explained and can be applied all through various podcasts! It is honestly kind of crazy the amount of information that is available in podcasts. We also use them to reinforce lessons, particularly in Spanish.

BrainPop: This app is a  deep and rich well of information spanning a multitude of subjects and ideas. They have two levels and we have been very happy with them both.

Epic: It;s only been a year since I was even introduced to this app but WOW! My love for books definitely passed down because my kids can  get lost for hours in their vast catalog of books. They have everything from comic books, audiobooks, read-to-me, and absolutely everything in between. They have resource books, story books and original book series. 

Kindle Unlimited: Again, more books, I know. We honestly can’t get enough of them. Kindle unlimited offers us a great amount of reading material, while it does have a cap, we have been able to take our time and read lots of books for one low fee instead of who knows how much.

Hoopla: This comes with our library card and admittedly, I use it more than my kids! They have so many audiobooks as well as ebooks,movies and music!

Khan Academy Kids: This was one of the very first apps my kids use and we still love it! It is engaging, fun and somehow never gets old!

Are there some others I must try?

Homeschool

History Curriculum Picks, 22-23

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How goes it, my loves!

Today’s blog will be a short one as I have had some lengthy ones and have more coming. Per the title, we are covering our history topics!

Our main curriculum will be Curiosity Chronicles, Medieval. This non-eurocentric comprehensive curriculum has been awesome! We are wrapping up ancient history and just love the audio and ebook and the activities are engaging and fun, but not taking so much prep from me. We pair it with the Schoolnest History Timeline notebook. You can see it all here!

We will also spend lots of time exploring Africa with books, videos and cultural digging! It baffles me how the stereotype of this vast continent continues to prevail. 

Lastly, my little fact-spitter will love just learning random geography facts, so he can do that too!

That’s it! You can find the links to everything here.

Homeschool

Bible, Foreign Language and Morning Starters Curriculum Picks, 22-23

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Hey Loves!

I know Yesterday was a lot so I am going to keep it simple today. I promise. Well, my definition of simple.

For Bible, in addition to Awana and our church lessons, we will continue with resources from Color and kindness, devotional and prayer books, the bible, worship and serving.

Foreign Language was a bit tricky! We had a wonderful experience with our hybrid program this year but unfortunately, the instructor will be at our other location full-time. While I am trying to convince her to start a language immersion playgroup, I am going to do what I can with podcasts, vocabulary units, verbs and activity books.

Morning Starters went ahhhhhhmazing this year and we are all thrilled to continue. As you read when I shared our language arts picks, we are working with Jude, God and a host of specialists to identify and then meet his unique learning needs. With that, his morning starters will be an emotions coloring and activity book, sight word activities and hand writing practice.

James will loop geography, daily grams, test practice, writing and critical thinking workbooks.

Both will also have a journal. You can watch me explain it all here.

Boom! Told you I would keep it simple. You can find all the links here.

Homeschool

Language Arts Curriculum Picks, 22-23: Brother James

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Dearest Loves,

Let me preface this with, “we are eclectic homeschoolers”. We don’t use just one thing to teach one subject. Language arts is not the exception, it is the rule. It was very important for me to begin to expose James to the foundations of literature and to allow him space to apply literacy, grammar and comprehension concepts to literary works. I also really wanted to work on his creative writing muscles. Lastly, I wanted to formally introduce vocabulary this year. Whew!

Now that we got that out of the way, here is what we are using. I do suggest heading over to youtube to listen to how I plan on making all of this work.

Read Aloud for Literature Exploration: Black Boy Joy, 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood

Reading: All About Reading, Level 4

Spelling: All About Reading, Level 2

Grammar: Kamali Academy, middle grades

Handwriting: Melanin Inspirations Cursive Practice

Creative Writing: LWT Building Writer, Usborne Books, Young and Brilliant Workbook

Vocabulary: Young and Brilliant Vocabulary Puzzles, Banish Boring Words, Word Roots Beginner, Schoolnest Vocabulary Notebook.
I know that was a lot. You can see all the items here. You can read what we are doing for Jude here.

Homeschool

Language Arts Curriculum Picks, 22-23: Brother Jude

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Hiya Loves!

So, our LA curriculum is expansive and that is because my kids are not “one-size fits-all”. They need specifications and alterations. Through this year, we’ve observed lots of difficulty with Jude’s reading fluency although he can recognize both upper and lower case letters and their phonemes. He can segment cvc words and even spell them but reading is difficult. It is affecting his confidence as well so we are taking interventions.

With that, these are what we are choosing so far but may change

Reading: Teach Your Child to read in 100 Easy lessons, Orton Gillingham Workbook, Explode the Code

Handwriting: Melanin Inspirations copy work, Schoolnest Copywork Notebook, Letters and Numbers for Me

Spine Read Aloud: I Affirm Me

Everything is linked here and you can watch me explain it all here. 

Oh! You can read what we are doing for James here!

Homeschool

Science Curriculum Picks, 22-23

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Hey Loves!

We are rolling full-steam ahead in sharing what our homeschool will use for learning for the 22-23 academic year. You can check out our math picks here if you missed them. Today is all about Science.

To be clear, I’ve never once been excited about this subject. I am so excited to share that I am for this upcoming year. Part of it was finding our stride and identifying my kids interests, another part was realizing and healing part of my traditional school trauma and another part was finding resources!

Y’all I am stoked!!! Better than that, my kids are stoked!

As we are wrapping up what we planned for this year, I asked my kids what it is they wanted to explore and having a solid grip on their interest and capabilities, I began the hunt. Jude was easy. He likes nature, rocks and robots. Sold! I’ll go hard with exploring nature with children, supplementing with other books and things he will learn at our hybrid homeschool program. We will also delve into some earth science folder games and do all the things with rocks. All of them. We recently decided to throw in some weather robots units too!

James was a bit more tricky. He was quite a bit more detailed about what he wanted to explore (muscle movement, animal life, propulsion, distance) and adamant about the things he did not (the human body systems). Great. Just great. Thanks To Erica at Melanated and Well Educated, I was introduced to Science Fusion and grabbed grade 5 and 2 grade 6-8 books. Those will be our spine and we will use other library books, videos and activities to round it out to fulfill his heart’s desires.
You can get all the links for these items here.

Homeschool

Math Curriculum Picks, 22-23

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Hello My Loves!

Can we just take  a minute to acknowledge how fast this year has just flown by? I mean, wasn’t I sharing curriculum picks like two weeks ago for the 21-22 school year?

Le sigh… time flies when you are having fun! That’s what we did this year and I am anticipating lots of fun for this upcoming year as well!

I won’t bore you with all the deets as this will be a series of blogs. I value your time and attention span. Today’s subject? You guessed it! Math!

True story, this was the easiest subject for me to choose. Per what we used last year, I added a few things to our math manipulative stash and quickly decided on Saxon Math 3 and Singapore Math 3 as James’ main loop and we will throw in Horizon’s math grade 2 as a review and confidence boost. Saxon and Singapore worked so incredibly well this year and I feel like the math gains were significant but they weren’t painful for us.

For Jude, we will continue with Singapore math as well and I’ll bring out our faithful Math U See Primer from demme Learning. Jude’s math gains were great but the Demme learning provides a number sense foundation that is unmatched.

You can check out our math manipulatives here and all our curriculum picks here.