After a long time away from this blog, I decided to pick it up again. Here we are in late February and I've been battling the "homeschool winter blues", but I'm glad to say that I think I've mastered it this year. I threw out Kolbe and Seton altogether, I realized that I'm not a "box curriculum" girl, I like creating my syllabus and lesson plans and even though both curriculum allowed you to make changes and additions, what's the point of spending all that money when you have to change things? Plus, I felt like I was teaching to a test and I hate that feeling. I went back to my roots and I am much happier.....I decided to keep using some of the workbooks that I had but I also bought some new stuff. Our homeschool group had a mini-retreat to help re-focus us for these months of being cooped up. Most of the women talked about growing closer to God and our spouses and really centering our minds to the question of "why we are doing this?" Me? I like to mix up our regular homeschool and start planning for next year :) This year, I decided to take planning next year slow, I want to really think about what I want before I throw myself into it. For the rest of the schoolyear we are doing something fun, I wrote down each subject on index cards and every day the girls get to blindly choose one subject each, 3 subjects daily, to do the next day.
1. Religion- Rose is finishing off her Seton 6 and Bible History 6 books, Sofia is doing the Catholic Bible History workbook (used in Kolbe History) and Gemma is watching videos of saints and I am reading Fr. Lovasik books to her.
2. Composition/Grammar: Rose is finishing off English 6 and Sofia is using Easy Grammar 3 worksheets. I also bought Wordsmith Apprentice to use with the girls.
3. History/Geography: next year I will be using RC history (Connecting with History) with the girls, starting at Level 3. So we are reading through some of Level 2 books just to get us started. Rose and Sofia are also finishing off their Map books from Seton and Kolbe.
4.Math: each girl is finishing off their math: Saxon 76, MCP and MUS Primer
5.Phonics/Reading/Lit: Gemma is finishing her Get Set for the Code C book and Sofia her MCP Phonics book. The older two are reading some literature and Gemma is enjoying BFIAR (Before Five in a Row) with Sebastian.
6.Science: Mr. Wizard videos and experiments from www.superchargedscience.com are being enjoyed.
7. Spelling/Vocab: I bought Spellwell for Sofia and I might have Rose use it as well (her spelling is not good). Wordly Wise A,B,C for Sofia and finishing Vocab 6 for Rose.
I've really got into Cathy Duffy's Review website (how did I not know about this sooner?!) and I've been making my decisions for next year based on her reviews. I love researching and organizing things for my school, it's a total passion of mine. What a blessing to get to live out my passion! What are your thoughts for beating the winter blues? Do you like my schedule? Let me know....
Go Get Them Ladies!!
