Quarter 2 Update: Homeschool Year 2020-21

Guess what!? Right before our family took a two week Christmas break, my girls completed their second quarter of homeschool!! I can’t believe we’re already halfway through our entire 2020-21 homeschool year. Honestly, I’m so proud of my girls who have worked very hard this school year. Of course there have been struggles along the way, but I admire their hard work and determination to conquer any challenge which has come their way. I’m truly so blessed to be their Mom and their teacher!!

Curriculum:

As far as our curriculum goes, everything is going well!! Last year, I shared our 2020-21 Homeschool Curriculum Choices for our entire family. I’m thrilled to report, we haven’t needed to make any major, mid-year, curriculum changes. I’m very thankful for this, because I’ve been praying for wisdom regarding our curriculum. It’s amazing to see God answer my prayers and help me know what is best for each of my girls right now. I will continue to pray for my girls, so God can direct our homeschool and make curriculum changes as needed.

For those who are curious, here’s a quick recap regarding my current curriculum choices...

EVERYONE TOGETHER 

Bible time, Memory Verses, History, and Read-Alouds: Sonlight Core K 

Write the Word for Kids: Cultivate What Matters Write the Word for Kids: Plant Seeds of the Word

Science: The Good and the Beautiful Meteorology; Kingdoms and Classifications; Botany; and Energy

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3RD GRADE: Olivia

Language Arts: The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts Level 3

Handwriting: The Good and the Beautiful Handwriting Level 3

Vocabulary: Wordly Wise Level 3000 Book 3

Creative Writing: The Good and the Beautiful Creative Writing Notebook #1

Math: Math-U-See Delta and The Good and the Beautiful Musical Multiplication

Typing: The Good and the Beautiful Typing 1

Readers: Sonlight Grade 4 Readers

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2ND GRADE: Sophie

Language Arts: The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts Level 2 

Handwriting: The Good and the Beautiful Handwriting Level 2

Vocabulary: Wordly Wise Level 3000 Book 2

Creative Writing: The Good and the Beautiful Creative Writing Notebook #1

Math: Math-U-See Gamma and The Good and the Beautiful Musical Multiplication

Typing: The Good and the Beautiful Typing 1

Readers: Sonlight Grade 2 Readers

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KINDERGARTEN: Matilda

Language Arts: Sing Spell Read and Write “Off We Go” and “Raceway Book”

Handwriting: The Good and the Beautiful Handwriting K

Phonics: Explode the Code 1, 2, 3

Math: Math u See Alpha

Enrichment: Developing the Early Learner 1, 2, 3, 4

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SCIENCE

Currently, we’ve already completed our first two The Good and the Beautiful Science Unit Studies, such as Meteorology and Kingdoms and Classifications. We need to wait until spring to do the Botany study, in the meantime we’ve last week we started their Energy Unit Study. Once we’ve completed it, we will wrap up our school year with the Botany study. 

We’ve really enjoyed new Energy Unit Study!! Last week, my husband got home in time to work through some of the energy activities for our new The Good and The Beautiful Energy Unit Study. A few of them included, the exploding bags or bottle (chemical energy), shooting rubber bands (mechanical energy) and also baked Chocolate Chip Bundt Cakes (electrical energy, chemical energy, and heat energy). We all had such a fun time!! I can’t wait to see what other memories are in store for us as we continue to work through this curriculum.

2019-20 Homeschool Year In Review

Our 2019-20 Homeschool Year felt as if we spent the entire year, homeschooling in crisis. First, we were living with my brother, then we moved to our new home, and lived under lockdown throughout the global pandemic. Honestly, my goal was to simply get school done. Don’t get me wrong, we did what was required of us. However, I didn’t elaborate or dive deeper into various topics, because we just didn’t have the time or resources. Trust me, it’s not how I expected this year to turn out.

I’m thankful the Lord allowed my girls the opportunity to work hard and complete our main Sonlight curriculum sooner than I expected, because everything else was removed from our schedule. It wasn’t ideal, but we made the most out of what we had. For this reason, I’m so excited for our upcoming 2020-21 school year and pray we will have more time for extra projects, crafts, field trips, and more!!

Below, I’m going to share some of the curriculum we loved, some of my least favorite curriculum, and our current summer plans.


CURRICULUM WE LOVED
Sing, Spell, Read & Write. Hands down, one of my very favorite curriculums, is Sing, Spell, Read, & Write!! I’m going through it for my 3rd time and I enjoy teaching it so much. This year, Matilda worked through the Kindergarten program which went through the books “All Aboard” and “On Track”. There are six readers and more short books which kids get to color themselves. My daughter is so proud of the fact, she has finished reading her very first books by herself. It’s exciting to watch her love of learning and reading blossom before my eyes. I can’t wait for us to continue to use it next year as Matilda continues to learn to read on her own.

Sonlight. Honestly, working through Sonlight Core C was exactly what I needed this year. There are several reasons why this curriculum was a great fit for us this year. The curriculum is preplanned and comes with a teacher’s guide to help me know what need to be done each day. Also, I was able to order all the books we needed for the entire year. This was very helpful, because even though we moved I already had our books and just brought the with us so we could read no matter what. Finally, it’s a curriculum I have previously used and the familiarity helped me to be able to know what was expected of me and plan accordingly. What a blessing!!


MY LEAST FAVORITE
From the time I started homeschooling my girls five years ago, I have always used “Math-U-See” for our Math curriculum. On the flip side, last year I heard a lot of great things about “Beast Academy” and decided to look into it for the girls as a way to work on mental math. We tried out their online program and my oldest daughter loved it. However, when we implemented the books at the beginning of our school year it didn’t go well at all. After a few frustrating weeks we finally switched back to Math-U-See. Maybe in the future we could use their online math program again, but for now we’ve put it on hold for now.


OUR SUMMER PLANS
We homeschool year round, so we won’t take much time off for “summer”. Last week, we finished our main Sonlight curriculum. We will still need to finish on math, science, and other review books throughout the rest of June. Then my Mom is coming to visit, so we’re going to take ten days off to spend time with her and start our new 2020-21 school year on July 13.

Not to mention, to celebrate our new school year, I’m doing a back to school series throughout the entire month of July!! I have some fun things to share with you, including our new 2020-21 curriculum choices. I’m so excited!!

Now it’s your turn!! Please leave me a comment and let me know:

 What fun activities do you have planned this summer? 

Quarter 2 Update: Homeschool Year 2018-19

All things considered, our first two quarters of school have gone very well. It’s hard to believe that we’re already halfway done with our 2018-19 school year. I am so proud of my girls for all their hard work this year. I will give you a run down of how everything is going and then talk about any changes that we made to our curriculum. If you have any additional questions, please post them in the comments below and I will do my best to answer them.

I have twin girls who are only 8 months old, so our school schedule has looked a lot different this year. I try to get most of my big girls lessons done while the twins are sleeping and then save our read aloud time for when the twins are awake. I’m learning to be flexible, because sometimes things go exactly as I’ve planned and other days things are busy and chaotic. Especially, when Jon’s gone for days on end, I am simply learning to be more gracious with myself and take a break from school if I’m feeling overwhelmed or emotional.

To be completely honest, living in Hong Kong has been the hardest thing God has ever asked me to do and feelings of homesickness, sadness, loneliness, and sorrow happen at times when I least expect it. Instead of forcing my girls to do school with a Mommy who is crying at the drop of a hat and an overall roller coaster of emotions, we take the day off.

You heard we right.

I put everything away and just take a break if it’s necessary. Obviously, we can’t do this everyday, but when I get overwhelmed I’m learning to graciously take a break from our regular school schedule, so I can spend time in God’s word, Facetime my Mom, and/or connect with old friends.

A word of encouragement: 

To anyone who has ever felt like I have, you are not alone. God wants to know how you’re feeling, so take time to step back from all your responsibilities and make time to pour out your heart and soul before Him. He will be there to bring peace in the chaos and hope when everything seems hopeless. 

One of the biggest changes I have made to our homeschool curriculum is we are now using The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts Level 1 for Olivia. She started the year using Sonlight’s language arts curriculum and it was fine. However over the years, I have pieced together our language arts program using a lot of different curriculums. As a result, I felt like there were gaps in my daughter’s knowledge about language arts. As a result, I started looking for a program that was more cohesive. I have been thinking about using The Good and the Beautiful for a long time and this year I finally took the plunge!

My daughter started using The Good and the Beautiful level 1 in January and it is an incredible curriculum. It's exactly what I wanted for my family!! I am excited for my daughter, especially as she learns to appreciate beautiful art which is all weaved into the program. I am so thankful that we have made this change and I'm excited to add more The Good and the Beautiful curriculum to our homeschool this next year.

Like I said before, if you have any other questions, please post them in the comments below and I will answer them.

Quarter 1 Update: Homeschool Year 2018-19

We use Sonlight curriculum for many of our subjects so typically, our homeschool year is roughly 36 weeks long. This means, every 9 weeks we finish one quarter of school. I’m excited to say that we have officially finished our first quarter of school!! Honestly, I am very excited about the progress we have already made in our school year. Our original plan for our move to Hong Kong had us not even starting school until November or December.

I am thankful that God changed our plans, so our entire family was able to come straight to Hong Kong in August with my husband. Just one week after our move, we started school. We decided to start school right away, so that our family could begin to get back into some kind of regular routine. We’ve had hard days or days when we took a break from school. However, overall school has provided the structure needed for our family to begin to call Hong Kong home.

In case you are curious, I've included my original 2018-19 Homeschool Curriculum Choices for my girls. Overall, we haven't made any major curriculum changes yet and all of the curriculum choices we made are working for each individual child. I will be sure to let you know if we make any major changes as our school year continues.

One the  biggest changes to our school year, has been that I have 5 kids and two of them are just 4 months old. As a result, our daily homeschool structure has to be very flexible right now. We don't have a rigid daily schedule to follow, because I would get overwhelmed if I wasn't able to stick to it like I planned. We have an overall rhythm to our day, but I have to remain flexible and be willing to change things up incase the babies get fussy.

I am so thankful for my big girls and their willingness to go with the flow. They're diligent to work on school when we have some quiet moments throughout the day and most of the time finish school before I expected them to get done. I am so proud of them!!

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2018-19 Homeschool Curriculum Choices

This year, I have a child in 1st Grade, a child in Kindergarten, and a child in Preschool. I will start by sharing the subjects that everyone is going to work on together.

EVERYONE TOGETHER
Bible, Memory Verse, History, Read-Alouds: Sonlight. This year, we are using Sonlight’s Core B – World History I. We have used Sonlight for the past few years and it really works for our family. We specifically picked this curriculum, because we knew it would be best for us if/when we moved overseas. You see Sonlight mails you a box with all the books you need for the whole year. This is great, especially now that we live in Hong Kong and don’t have the same resources that we did in the States. I have everything I need for the whole year and don’t have to worry about not being able to find a particular book. If you would like to read more about our journey with Sonlight click the link to read my blog post, “Finding Flexibility with Sonlight“.

Science: Exploring Creation with Astronomy (2nd Edition). We used Apologia’s Exploring Creation curriculum last year and really enjoyed it! There was no question about what we would use this year for science. My husband also purchased the complete science kit, so I would have all the resources necessary to complete our activities/experiments in Hong Kong. Initially, I was against this, because I didn’t want to spend money on something like this. However, I’m thankful for my husband’s wisdom. This kit has been a lifesaver! I’ve been able to do school even though we just moved. I don’t have to spend time tracking down our scissors, because there is already a pair in the kit.

1ST GRADE
I’m sure I say this every year, but how do we have a 1st grader!? When we were making our curriculum choices for our 2018-19 school year, Olivia could read some things. However, reading hadn’t come together for her yet and we didn’t want to force her to read if she wasn’t ready. We decided to let Olivia do things at her own pace. As a result, we purchased Sonlight’s Language Arts Grade 1 program, but by the time that curriculum arrived something clicked and our daughter, who started reading everything she could get her hands on. As a result, we struggled to know which curriculum would be best for her upcoming school year. Thankfully, Sonlight has a test kids can take online, which helped us know what level language arts program to buy for Olivia. We exchanged our grade 1 language arts for grade 2 and it’s been the perfect fit!!
Language Arts: Sonlight Language Arts 2
Handwriting: Handwriting without Tears: My Printing Book
Phonics: Explode the Code 4, 5, 6
Math: Math-U-See Beta
Vocabulary: Wordly Wise A

KINDERGARTEN
How can Sophie already be in Kindergarten!! Sophie is a hands-on learner and she remembers things much better when she gets to use a manipulative to help cement different concepts into her brain. For this reason, we are switching from A Reason for Handwriting back to Handwriting without Tears. I think the manipulatives that go along with this program will help both of my girls to have a better understanding of how each letter and humber written.
Language Arts: Sing, Spell, Read, & Write “Off We Go” & “Raceway Book”
Handwriting: Handwriting without Tears: Letters & Number for Me
Phonics: Explode the Code 1, 2, 3
Math: Math-U-See Alpha

PRESCHOOL
Matilda is 2 1/2 years old, but already she wants to be involved in our school day. She has a strong desire to have her own things to “work” on, so that she can do school right along with the big girls. Though her learning will be more informal, I am planning to use ABC Jesus Loves Me, Playing Skillfully, and Sonlight Preschool Readers for Matilda this next year. Our focus will be to learn more through playing, fun activities, and great books. I’ve used these curriculums with my other girls and we loved them, so I hope Matilda enjoys these as well.
Letters, numbers, shapes, and more: ABC Jesus Loves Me
Learning through play and fun activities: Playing Skillfully
Reading great books: Sonlight Preschool Readers

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
This year, we ordered most of our homeschool curriculum online from Sonlight and Rainbow Resource Center. Rainbow Resource is great, because any orders over $50.00 qualify for free shipping.