Before Christmas, I felt we were all on the verge of burnout. We have been "schooling" since June. We started early, because Beckham was due in September, and I knew we would be take time off to adjust to life with a newborn. But...Beckham was a great newborn! And, we ended up only taking 1 week off of our school work. My original plan had been to take a month off, but we just didn't need that much time. Fast forward to the beginning of December. I was stressing out because I felt like I wasn't getting enough done with their books to be finished with everything by late April or early May. Cade was very much near burnout..it was like pulling teeth to get him to finish his schoolwork! It would seriously take him 3 hours to finish just a few math problems, and they weren't difficult problems, just simple addition. I knew it was time for a change.
So, over Christmas, we took a much needed 2 weeks off. I took that time to plan the next 9 weeks of school and to order new curriculum. I could tell they were getting bored with what we were using and that was part of the problem with getting Cade to do his work. Also, after talking to Bryan, we decided to go to a year round school schedule. As Voddie Baucham says, if you know what grade your kid is in, you're doing homeschooling wrong :) If you haven't heard of him, look him up on YouTube. I LOVE listening to him speak. He has a great message on homeschooling that is a great listen! Switching our schedule has given me so much relief. We can work at the pace we need to work at. I ordered a lot of new curriculum over the break, and now Cade is officially a 1st/2nd grader. I love that we can work on the level he needs instead of trying to keep up or stay back with what he would be learning in public school.
On top of the new curriculum, I knew we needed a routine. There were some days that we would be doing school before bed. Days like that just threw me off. Some people can homeschool with a schedule like that, but it just doesn't work for us. I find I get the best work out of the boys when we do it first thing in the morning. If we wait until after lunch, I may as well forget them learning anything because it will be a fight to get them to focus.
Our new routine/schedule has been working great. If you're interested in what a day looks like for us, here it is :)
At 9:30, we do Bible together. We are just following one of the plans for kids on YouVersion. The one we're doing right now is called Heroes of the Bible. It's been really great and they are enjoying it. We have something we read out of the Bible each day, then a story that explains what was going on and a video to watch from What's in the Bible with Buck Denver. Most days also has a coloring sheet to go along with it.
After Bible, we start on math. Cade is doing math with Easy Peasy All In One Homeschool. This is a GREAT free complete curriculum that's online. There are some worksheets to do, games, an videos. I also usually add some of my own worksheets to it to reinforce what he is learning. Because most of it is online, he's able to do a lot of the math himself. I help him if needed.
During this time, I work with Liam on his math. Liam is using Abeka K5 math. He is flying through it. He has been doing this for 2 weeks (8 days), and is already on lesson 19. I think it will get harder as we get more into the book, though, so I'm sure we will slow down. But, I am kind of wishing I had bought him the 1st grade book instead. Oh well..we will make it work. Bryan says I can't spend anymore on curriculum ;)
After math, Cade gets a short break while I work on phonics and writing with Liam. Liam is still using Abeka K5 Phonics and writing and he's doing really great with it. He is about halfway through all the lessons and is starting to read! I was intimidated to teach him to read and at first, I really was thinking it wasn't going to work. But, we just had to find the program that worked for him and Abeka has been great.
After Liam is done with phonics and writing, I do either science or history with Liam. We do science 2 days per week and history 3 days per week. I'm using Lesson Pathways for him. This is another free curriculum that's online. It has a lot of fun activities to go along with the lessons. We are really enjoying it!
After that, Liam is done with school for the day, so I spend the rest of the time focused on Cade. For his phonics, spelling and language arts, he is using Abeka's 2nd grade curriculum. We are liking it a lot. Earlier in this school year, he completed 1st grade Hooked on Phonics as well as some Explode the Code workbooks. I think Abeka is going to really help him improve with his reading. We are also using Abeka to learn cursive. Two days per week we do science. He is also using Easy Peasy for science. We are doing biology. We do history 3 days per week. We do a combination of Story of the World and Mystery of History. We are really enjoying this. It's a classical approach to history and I just love how it intertwines Biblical history into world history. I think I'm learning just as much as Cade is! With history, we are making a timeline to show everything we are learning. It also suggests map work, which I was going to skip but just today Cade asked if we could make maps, so I guess we will be doing that as well!
We are done with school by 12:00 or 12:30 each day. This new schedule has been great. I've accomplished everything I want to with them during the week, we have all afternoon free to do whatever we want and I don't feel like we are falling behind!
If interested, here is a little peak into a day at our house!
Beckham hanging out...have to add this one because he's cute ;)
