Homeschool Memoirs #4: What’s New?
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This week’s Homeschool Memoirs question from Homeschool Blog Awards asks, “What new curriculum are you using in your homeschool this year and what do you think of it?”
Honestly, we all felt that we’d found such good fits for our family with the curriculum that we were using last year, that we added very little to our plate for this year. There are a couple of things, though.
First Language Lessons, Level 3. I’ll count this as a new piece of curriculum, even though we used First Language Lessons, Levels 1 & 2 last year because Level 3 is so different. It’s set up to be used only two days a week and is a pretty rigorous curriculum, if you use it exactly as it’s intended, with the student workbook and optional enrichment activities.
We don’t do that.
I’m sure that those who know me aren’t terribly surprised that we don’t since we rarely use anything exactly as it’s intended. Because Josh and Megan aren’t reading and writing as fluently as required to use FLL 3 as it’s intended, we do everything orally and on the white board.
We also supplement our grammar with Easy Grammar, Grade 2, which I *love*! For those of you who are familiar with Easy Grammar materials, the Grade 2 book is set up just like the Daily Grams books for subsequent grades, so it provides a 5-10 minute daily review of things like punctuation, capitalization, parts of speech and sentence combining. It’s a quick, easy, enjoyable way to cover a little grammar every day and my kids are learning so much from it.
Study of Ancient Rome. I found this little gem through CurrClick’s free downloads. I wish the author would hurry up and write one for the Middle Ages since that’s what we’ll be studying after the first of the year! It’s a study of ancient Rome through literature, written for students in 5th-7th grades and it’s been perfect for Brianna. She reads a little from three different books each day: a non-fiction history book, a biography, and a historical fiction, and she’s able to do it all independently, which is nice for me.
We’ve also added Latin, which is really more for fun since we’re studying ancient Rome. I’m not sure if we’ll continue with it after we move on to the Middle Ages. We’re using Latina Christiana, which we’ve used before when Brianna did Latin 3 or 4 years ago. We’re enjoying playing with it and I think it’s great for increasing vocabulary, so we may continue on with it, if the kids are still enjoying it.
That’s it for our new curriculum. What are you using that’s new? Be sure to peruse all the other posts at Homeschool Blog Awards to find out what new curriculum is being used and enjoyed by other families this school year.
Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.
I need to find a way to get some more gramar and writing into our school days. I just went with what the boys picked to do (and my husband insisted upon) this year. I need to find a way to get grammar and writing into our ‘quasi-unschooling’ this year.
thanks for the reminder- and I have been reminded of a lot we don’t do lately, LOL