After a rough start, I am starting our school year over. Not every subject is a wash or needs a reboot, but a few need a clean slate. A couple others just need a different approach or a little jazzing up. Luckily, I homeschool. If something needs to change, I'm not bound to things that aren't working for me. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I really messed up the beginning of our year. All I can do is claim temporary insanity due to stress. We moved. I spent a summer with a very sick daughter in the ICU. Life threw us obstacles that led to me ordering things that, had I been truly thinking clearly, I would have known were not the right choices for us.
English is one of those subjects where I did well in school. I received great grades. I loved reading. Though grammar was a bit of a pain, I managed to excel because I loved to write.
Teaching grammar is a whole different ball game from when I was the student, but my older girls seem to know their grammar fairly well. They can diagram a sentence perfectly. However, I have noticed that those awesome grammar skills don't always carry over into their writing. It makes me a bit sad because one of my daughters is an excellent writer. She loves writing stories, filling up notebooks with chapter after chapter of her imagination taking her on adventures. This year, I discovered she is an amazing poet too. A simple assignment turned into days of her writing poetry that was deep and thought provoking.
I knew that they didn't really need any more drilling in grammar. They needed help to improve using that grammar effectively in their writing. So, in the third week of school, I stopped their "traditional" English lessons. I went back to what I had used a few years earlier, Queen's Language Lessons.
A few years ago I was trying my hand at some Charlotte Mason work. I was working with my daughter on a history study on Benjamin Franklin that I had purchased through Queen's Homeschool Supplies. It was a unique way to learn, and I was a little unsure if it was for us. However, I was curious about the gentle way Queen's Homeschool stated that they taught Language Arts. I used it for one glorious year, and then switched to the program that the curriculum I was using recommended. I regret that, because my daughter loved that program so much! We had used Language Lessons for the Elementary Child, and I still remember my daughter laughing at coming up with an acrostic for her name as a lesson. She ended up coming up with acrostics for every member of our home! Talk about creativity!
I stayed with mostly Charlotte Mason techniques until I got permission to homeschool my step-daughter. Then, I switched back to more traditional with children so that they were all doing similar curriculum. Another Big Mistake! By the end of one semester, I had switched to Charlotte Mason for the younger two. By the following school year, I began using a lot of Charlotte Mason techniques with the step-daughter. The results were mostly good, though it was a huge adjustment for her. Since then, I've been eclectic in my approach. But when I drifted to more traditional materials, I could see my children were losing the love they had of learning. It was become drudgery for them. Even if my children do all the pages in their workbooks and get correct answers, I find their retention rate suffers. I don't mind an occasional workbook, but I've learned my children need creativity and a mixture of activities to keep their motivation in high gear.
This has become quite obvious with my littlest pupil. At seven, Megan is a bundle of energy that is smart, and easily bored. I cut almost all of the busy work and workbooks out except her Explode the Code and Literature and Creative Writing. Instead, I am replacing them with things that make her eyes sparkle. Even math is going to be changed up from workbook drill and kill to math games, living math, Life of Fred, and some flashcards. I am using Heart of Dakota for history, poetry (though the Language Lessons also has poetry), Bible, Storytime, and Reading. I love the Emerging Readers that Megan is reading through! Heart of Dakota is also Charlotte Mason based.
I am most excited that my second grader and I are beginning our first nature study this week as we read through Little House on the Prairie!
My older children will be using Misty of Chincoteague for a nature study, in addition to their chemistry work. I started them off with an easier book because neither of them have much nature study experience. For history, as an add-on to our US History study, I have added the book and history study, Streams to the River, River to the Sea. I have approached history gently, with lots of living books and movies. I wanted to inspire a love of history, especially in my oldest. She was in public school for most of her education and developed an intense dislike for history due to how it was taught. Slowly, she has begun to find history more interesting as she has read stories and biographies instead of dry texts.
I am excited about our journey this year, though a couple of weeks ago I was in a very different place. I have been refreshed. I took some time to reevaluate and pray. Last Spring, when I ordered curriculum, I was getting ready to move and was very stressed. I ordered what I thought would work so that I wouldn't have to worry about it later. Well... some of the materials will work. Others, not so much. Oh well, I can sell it. I'm not going to stress and leave myself all upset. The only thing to do is move forward.
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