Another great video. I love how honest and real they are. I had a daughter who would hide from me when I mentioned math. I threw out the curriculum and let her do Teaching Textbooks. Now she completes two lessons a day on the online math program. I was so close to putting her in school and was so happy to find something that worked for her. Thanks for sharing your journey.
Always fun to hear an update! I am so excited that homeschool can be so much more customizable! Slowing down, speeding up, going with your kid's interests. Also great to hear that staying home is being so great! Hooray!
Shel Silverstein poetry! My kids love that. I tried switching history & science in the AM for the reason you expressed but my kiddos weren’t having it. First time homeschool mom here. Definitely finding the flow but feeling blessed!
Lauren Thank you for always being so honest. We love Abeka, and I feel like my Kinder-child could possibly go through what your youngest is going through when she's in 1st grade next year. She's on the younger side (her bday is in July) so this helps me gage what I could do! I love your approach. Also, we do a Friday co-op day and it has really sealed the deal for us as new homeschoolers, my girls look forward to it all week. I hope if you do find one that you like that it's as much of a blessing for you as it is for us! ☺️
We love Abeka LA and Math! ❤️ Love how you slowed down for few months, we had to do that too and now even skipping videos and just working on the worksheets because she "gets it"
For poetry, we got “I Am The Seed That Grew The Tree,” the same book as “Sing a Song of Seasons.” It’s a poem a day with a hard cover and charming illustrations. Highly recommend! And I’m glad you mentioned you moved onto Explode the Code for your youngest. I was about to comment and recommend it when you said you started it. Sounds like a perfect fit! Hope your next couple of months are fantastic!
It's good that you recognized that your daughter was not grasping the material. Another one of my pet peeves is that parents and schools are pushing the children too early. It's not a competition! The government has been pushing children to learn earlier and earlier over the years; however, IQ scores and scholastic achievement scores have gone down, not up. Earlier is not better; it's worse. Studies have shown that the later a child matriculates, the quicker they grasp concepts and the higher their achievement scores. Back in the day, when I started school in the 60's (lol), we did not have preschool, kindergarten was optional, and many of us (including myself) did not start any school whatsoever until first grade at age 6. It was in FIRST grade (not preschool and not preK and not kindergarten) that we learned the alphabet and by the end of the year, we were reading proficiently. And studies have shown that we baby boomers have higher IQ's than our parents did AND have higher IQs than all of the children schooled after us through today. Something to think about...later is better.
Unless a specially gifted or early developing child I feel it's totally unnessesary to start teaching reading before age 6 or 7, many wont grasp it or start reading much earlier anyway. I didn't start reading until I was 7 (I read perfectly at the end of the year) and have done fine, I have always had a special love for reading and writing. But if I had started earlier before I understood I think it would just have becone a huge stress instead of fun.
Hi, thanks for your authentic and transparent video. As a newer "Learn at Home " parent from my kids being in public school, I read Sarah Mackenzie's book "Teaching from Rest" and was VERY moved by her stating, "We forget that we are dealing with a soul, a precious child bearing the image of God, and all we can see is that there are only a few months left to the 'school year' and we are still only halfway through the Math book" 🙃 Her statement really compelled me to REthink what types of learning we were doing and why 🤔
I’m so happy for you to be able to not work! I’m currently working 10 hours, 4 days a week, and homeschooling my 3, and I would love to be able to drop work or be able to go part time, but it’s not what we can do right now. But I am always so happy to see another homeschool mom be able to live that dream!
You are such a joy to watch! I hope you are enjoying staying home all the time. I loved my job too and stay home now. It becomes so normal after awhile! I like these update videos 😊
We go to a Co-op that's classical conversations inspired. Larissa would probably LOVE it! It's called Threads... Maybe they have something like that close to you? Love your videos, and appreciate your vulnerability!
Great idea with TGTB math 1 to space it out.I’m not sure it’s laying a strong foundation with my daughter (maybe too spiral?) but I think I’m going to do the same as you and do worksheets from another source 2 days a week. I don’t want to switch mid year. Great idea to do explode the code!! Abeka first grade moves pretty fast IMO- they fly through all those special sounds! I’m super excited for TGTB new science units- definitely planning on getting some of those for next year.
I need to go check out your other videos, because I am new. I worked outside the home too until I had twin daughters who came two months early. That was in 2003. They went to public school through the fourth grade. I brought them home, and I wish I had homeschooled all along. It's gone so fast, and I absolutely love to be with them. They were born with a speech disorder and have a timid and very shy personality around anyone who is not my husband or me. Otherwise, they are wild and crazy girls; they are my sweets! We used Abeka for grammar only, math, history, geography, American government, and science. Actually, we used the science until we got to chemistry and then physics. We instead used Apologia's Exploring Creation with Chemistry and then Exploring Creation with Physics, both by Dr. Jay L. Wile. Really good.. Currently, we are also finishing up Abeka's economics book which is great. It's nice to find someone else who's using Abeka. I think the other curriculums are perhaps more popular.
I had a sense that Larissa would have fomo (fear of missing out) when Lexi went to school. What about homeschool group outings to museums and historic villages and such? Sometimes libraries have great homeschool programs. Field trips, track and field, those are my favorite memories from school. Maybe those could be recreated somehow. Social activities were my biggest concern when we decided to homeschool our son, who's in 2nd grade. I knew I'd be able to give him a better education at home than school, but how to give him the social interaction he needed? Fortunately, the Waldorf schools he attended for nursery school and mixed-age kindergarten have lovely events for Halloween, Lantern Walk (in November), holiday fairs in December and such, so he still gets interaction with his friends from school. Our local library has a book club he goes to, he also goes to a music and movement class and chorus on the weekends with kids he's known since he was 4. You will find what works for you and your family; there are many wonderful things out there to choose from =)
Wow, you are so right about that poem! We used sonlight A last year, and while using 2 cores was WAY too much I liked the poem book and the kids did too, Bill Martin’s big book of poetry, I got it on thrift books 😊
I don't remember if yall have done the good and the beautiful level 3 ..but it comes with a seperate book of poetry , also free in the pdf to check out online. A Child's Garden of Verses may be good too.
We do have a child’s garden of verses actually…I do plan on adding that back at some point 😄 totally forgot about TGTB poetry (we haven’t done level 3).
You are amazing at how you listen and are in tune with your girls!! ❤ Taylor if their education to what each individually needs for a certain season is great. That will truly make them love learning and have a heart for knowledge and a lifelong love of education. We are doing Abeka kinder with our four year old bc she seemed ready and some days are hard so I have really slowed it down to only 2-3 Abeka lessons per week to really lay a strong foundation in phonics. Hoping that helps but if we do k5 again next year at the regular pace, I’m ok with that
My philosophy is less is more. I've noticed that most homeschool curricula these days overwhelm the student with "extras" that they don't need. For example, one preschool curriculum, while learning about months (September, for example) takes the student down a sideroad with hundreds of "adult" facts about September. One thing at a time! The preschooler is doing good to learn the months of the year by the end of the year. Daily poetry is another one I don't get. Preschoolers should be learning the basic rhymes that we all grew up with: Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet, etc. That is for cultural literacy purposes. You don't want your child to be the only adult in his office to have never heard Mary Had a Little Lamb. Other than that, I think poetry should be covered when poetry is covered in language arts, at the appropriate age. After they get a taste of poetry, if the child likes poetry, they can explore more on their own. That is self-guided teaching and that is what inspires a love of lifelong learning. Teach to the normal standards, and let the child explore the rest on their own. Much less stressful for the student and the parent. Less is more!
Joining a once a week co-op was a game changer for us. Moms don’t have to teach classes because we pay at this particular co-op so they have other women teaching, but we still have to be on campus helping. My kids love it. I cover all core subjects at home and they just go there to socialize with friends and do art and other fun things because that’s not my forte Lol.
Akeeba Maze is a great resource for this very thing! She's doing a work shop this weekend and in January going over Phonics to Reading. She is a teacher who is now homeschooling her children and has resonated with a lot of what I felt about the learning process and might for you as well! Blessings:)
I'm so happy for you to have your dream come true of staying staying home. It's a joy to hear that burden lifted of having to go to work. I can't wait to see how God provides for you. If Ever I start to worry about finances I just remind myself that these are God's children and he wants them raised well. We loved explode the code. I tried Abeka language and it worked great for my son but not my daughters. Each child is different. Both of my girls learned to read through explode the code, but one of them learned to spell that way and the other didn't. So much is trial and error when it comes to curriculum, and we just make adjustments all the time. You're really blessed that you can do any subjects at all together. One of my girls is an auditory learner and likes to make noise to learn and the other is a visual learner and needs silence to learn. I've always had to educate them in separate rooms with different materials but thank God homeschooling is customizable. Keep up the good work! By the way for your older daughter, Queens homeschooling makes a planner for students where they fill in the subjects and then check them off as the school day goes by. It's especially important for the independent subjects so we both know what subjects have been completed and what still is left to be done. I buy the tiny stickers from Dollar Tree for fun to fill in the blanks.
May I suggest using any poem even if you feel they won't understand it then following the poem up with a philosophical discussion on the poem? Philosophy is often thought of as needing to dig really deep into complex issues but it is more of a way of thinking & an amazing tool for building critical thinking skills. Even if they do fail to grasp the meaning of the poem in the end the habit of looking at things critically will translate to other fields as well.
About the poems… why not use ‚I sat by the sea‘ from TGATB? It’s a collection of poems that goes along with the level 3 LA program. I currently don’t have a third grader, but we read from the book during morning time all the same.
We do our group subjects with my older kids and my youngest can sit in but I know it goes over her head!!! She does her own morning time and my older kids aren’t normally awake till Noon anyway!!! We may do energy but it depends on how my older daughter finds certain science topics that she needs!!! We find TGTB science units easier to teach and my kids find them easy to understand!!! We waited for them to be older to do science tho!!! It’s awesome that you are scaling down on language arts!!! It’s awesome that you doing the phonics work!!! We’ve spilt TGTB math lessons up!!!
We’ve really enjoyed the Mr. Roger’s poetry book “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” Also, maybe you should look into Saxon math for your oldest daughter. It’s really good!! The lessons are long if you do everything, but I skip the math facts drills and only have my son do odds/evens. That way they only take him 30-45 minutes. TGTB Math levels 4-5 didn’t work for us, because it jumped around from topic to topic too quickly and the video lessons didn’t stick. I’ve seen a lot of people talking about only doing half the review problems in TGTB upper level math, too-so if you stick with it, maybe you could shorten it.
I’m gathering the consensus across the board regardless of curriculum that math at this level is going to take longer. Having that in mind has been helpful for us!
I love Rod and Staffs book Poems to Memorize. The book is divided into poems for different grade levels and my children have loved all of them. You can find it on Milestone books.
Poetry..I have a 1st and preK. I bought this off of Thriftbooks. We love it!!! My kids love animals so they find these poems relatable! "National Geographic book of Animal Poetry (200 poems with photographs that squeak, soar and roar!)". We also like Sing a Song of Seasons but not as much as the animal poems.
All children are different. My son(5) breezes through everything (reading, writing, math) to a point where it makes my job as his teacher super easy. However, my daughter(4) is not as fast pasted as him. She's very smart, but her learning style is different from my son. So, I had to adjust how I taught her, bc what worked for my son, did not work for her. I had to spend a little more time on certain things with her.
I think animal themed poetry is an easy theme to start with with elementary kids. "Animals Animals" by Eric Carle is a good beginner one, or "Tiger Tiger Burning Bright" is volume that has an animal poem for each day of the year. We're about to start an ocean study and my son keeps asking every day if we're going to start it--marine biology is a fun science topic!
My son was hitting a roadblock in abeka phonics K5. He was simply NOT enjoying it and having a hard time with blends. I did the free trial of 25hrs streaming and started playing the phonics lessons. Each video is about 18 min in K5. It has made a HUGE difference. He is actually enjoying it! Idk if he would do well with all subjects video led but so far just the phonics has been great. I started him at the beginning and just did every other lsn to build his confidence. Worked like a charm ✨️
For poetry" "Where the sidewalk ends" and (especially for boys) "Making Friends With Frankenstein". These are more silly poems, but it makes it fun for my kids. They also don't comprehend the super "in depth" poems. We'd rather read giggle poems and have a great time with it!
I paused all of the abeka work books for grade 1 language arts as well. Love the readers! We switched to alphaphonics. Way simpler and a lot more effective. I just use words from the alpha phonics for spelling.
I do a very modified version of abeka phonics with my son and wanted to mention I keep the abeka phonics sounds CD in the van and my son holds the handbook for reading and says the charts with the lady
@@thepracticalhomeschooler yes we have a lot of driving time and it has helped me learn how to pronounce a lot of them correctly lol! Also thanks for the explore the code suggestion. At the end of the day does it really matter if they can “circle” the special sounds and mark the vowels if they can read well? That’s my thinking at least 🤣
The ONLY poetry my son can get on board with is the Nat Geo collections. He really loves the National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry. I really love the Nature Poetry one. I love beautiful illustrations usually but for poetry I have noticed it works so, so well to have beautiful, detailed photography to focus on while reading/being read to.
I don’t do lessons or lesson plans for that. We’re very laid back about it but definitely make sure we read and discuss all the information and that she gets it. She reads much of it independently, but then we review and discuss everything pretty thoroughly
I use Abeka for the following grades k, 3rd , 9th and 10th. It’s is a lot of work and can be very overwhelming . I am going to be using the good and beautiful next year for little ones. Does anyone have suggestions for a great high school curriculum?
Hi, I came across your videos as l was looking for homescholling content and learned a lot from you. I was wondering if you can help me learn more about the co-op as I don't know how to approach that. Thank you!
Honestly, we’ve never done a co op so I wouldn’t be a good person to ask 😕 the only info I’ve gotten about our local ones are through my area’s Facebook groups.
Do you have a video update or info video about your child who ATTENDS school? I Homeschool a first and third grader but my seventh grader attends public even though we don’t really like it but she hates homeschooling. Just wanted to see what your perspective is and choosing not to homeschool all of your children. Thanks
Not a full update yet…waiting for a little bit longer. I mentioned briefly in a previous video that she’s enjoying school and doing really well so far 😊
I'm enjoying following you so much!! I keep thinking it has to be our dietitian brains that make us think so alike. 😂 I know you're not into having your kids in a bunch of activities (same!), but I wonder if your older daughter could play on a sports team or something with kids from the Christian school! Just a thought. My Christian school soccer team growing up had a few homeschoolers on it.
I would love your opinion on kindergarten phonics. I do have 7 kids and started out with Abeka but have branched out a bit. This year everyone is doing the good and the beautiful language arts and I really love it! It’s complicated but we’ve done almost no school this year. We started school in the Dominican Republic where we were missionaries for a month, and it didn’t work out. So now we’ve been living with my mother in law while we wait for our house to close and it’s been very stressful. So we’ve done almost nothing. Anyway, I have a kindergartener and I was able to get a really good deal on all about reading but I actually don’t like it, it’s too many moving pieces. So I’ve been considering using Abeka in some capacity or the good and the beautiful. I’ve not used kindergarten for the good and the beautiful but I have a daughter who is doing the second grade and i really love it! And second I watched your video and I’m so sorry about the miscarriage. I’ve not personally experienced it but I have a friend who has had 4 second trimester losses and I know for her it’s been so discouraging for her when people offer “solutions “. Or maybe they offer their own personal stories and I know that can give false hope. I’ll be saying a prayer for you today 😊
Sorry you’ve been going through such a stressful time right now! I think they’re both great and either will work. They both have a phonics approach (I personally prefer Abeka, but that’s just personal preference). I have a lot of videos in my Abeka playlist if you want to get a better idea
Thanks! I used all Abeka with my first 3 and then with the fourth I tried my fathers world but it got busy and it became too easy so I just gave her the Abeka workbook and she figured it out herself! I think if you’ve tried both and prefer Abeka I should just go with Abeka. You’ve taught it just using the letters and sounds right? I’ll probably just use the workbook and maybe the readers.
@@nicoles9223 yes I have with just the handbook for reading, the workbook and readers! But it also depends on the child too...some prefer more "fun" (TGTB) and some are ok with straight to the point (abeka).
The poem you showed was bad for a first grader and probably well above, even though it's a very pretty book. Sing a Song of Seasons, A Nature Poem for Each Day of the Year is good. An example would be: "Boats sail on the rivers, And ships sail on the seas; But clouds that sail across the sky Are prettier than these." And then it has a second stanza, but anyway...The artwork is so beautiful in this one too.
We like Abeka but we encounter a lesson where the instructor said God sent Christopher Columbus. I stopped the lesson to let my kid know that Christopher Columbus and the people who came with him did horrendous things. I've noticed that some Christian curricula gloss over history which is very disappointing because we wanted to use Christian curricula. Now we use more secular materials and we do Bible separately.
@@thepracticalhomeschooler when you said that your daughter was having difficulty spelling from sound, sometimes it's a hearing problem. When my sister was little she thought the word was packpack instead of backpack. She couldn't hear the difference in subtle sounds like "b" and "p". She had a surgery and they fixed the problem with her ears. It's just something to think about.
I’ve had to scale back on Abeka too. I’ve been using Language and Arithmetic 3rd grade and it was like he was too overwhelmed from this. So I’ve gone to just using ACE for now, and later as he feels more confident I will use Abeka as an occasional break from ACE.
0:00 Intro
1:13 morning subjects/group subjects
7:40 1st grade update
17:55 5th grade update
22:10 life as a stay at home mom
Another great video. I love how honest and real they are. I had a daughter who would hide from me when I mentioned math. I threw out the curriculum and let her do Teaching Textbooks. Now she completes two lessons a day on the online math program. I was so close to putting her in school and was so happy to find something that worked for her. Thanks for sharing your journey.
Always fun to hear an update! I am so excited that homeschool can be so much more customizable! Slowing down, speeding up, going with your kid's interests. Also great to hear that staying home is being so great! Hooray!
Thanks for watching ❤️😄
Shel Silverstein poetry! My kids love that. I tried switching history & science in the AM for the reason you expressed but my kiddos weren’t having it. First time homeschool mom here. Definitely finding the flow but feeling blessed!
Lauren Thank you for always being so honest. We love Abeka, and I feel like my Kinder-child could possibly go through what your youngest is going through when she's in 1st grade next year. She's on the younger side (her bday is in July) so this helps me gage what I could do! I love your approach. Also, we do a Friday co-op day and it has really sealed the deal for us as new homeschoolers, my girls look forward to it all week. I hope if you do find one that you like that it's as much of a blessing for you as it is for us! ☺️
Each is different, so you never know! So glad you found a group that you can all look forward too 😄
The poetry book from level 3 of the TGTB language " i sat by the sea" is so sweet. We have been loving it!
That is a good one! My daughter loves reading them.
I was going to suggest that one. It's my favorite poetry book so far.
We love Abeka LA and Math! ❤️ Love how you slowed down for few months, we had to do that too and now even skipping videos and just working on the worksheets because she "gets it"
For poetry, we got “I Am The Seed That Grew The Tree,” the same book as “Sing a Song of Seasons.” It’s a poem a day with a hard cover and charming illustrations. Highly recommend!
And I’m glad you mentioned you moved onto Explode the Code for your youngest. I was about to comment and recommend it when you said you started it. Sounds like a perfect fit!
Hope your next couple of months are fantastic!
It's good that you recognized that your daughter was not grasping the material. Another one of my pet peeves is that parents and schools are pushing the children too early. It's not a competition! The government has been pushing children to learn earlier and earlier over the years; however, IQ scores and scholastic achievement scores have gone down, not up. Earlier is not better; it's worse. Studies have shown that the later a child matriculates, the quicker they grasp concepts and the higher their achievement scores. Back in the day, when I started school in the 60's (lol), we did not have preschool, kindergarten was optional, and many of us (including myself) did not start any school whatsoever until first grade at age 6. It was in FIRST grade (not preschool and not preK and not kindergarten) that we learned the alphabet and by the end of the year, we were reading proficiently. And studies have shown that we baby boomers have higher IQ's than our parents did AND have higher IQs than all of the children schooled after us through today. Something to think about...later is better.
My mom started school right in first grade too 😊😊 she did just fine!
Unless a specially gifted or early developing child I feel it's totally unnessesary to start teaching reading before age 6 or 7, many wont grasp it or start reading much earlier anyway. I didn't start reading until I was 7 (I read perfectly at the end of the year) and have done fine, I have always had a special love for reading and writing. But if I had started earlier before I understood I think it would just have becone a huge stress instead of fun.
Hi, thanks for your authentic and transparent video. As a newer "Learn at Home " parent from my kids being in public school, I read Sarah Mackenzie's book "Teaching from Rest" and was VERY moved by her stating, "We forget that we are dealing with a soul, a precious child bearing the image of God, and all we can see is that there are only a few months left to the 'school year' and we are still only halfway through the Math book" 🙃 Her statement really compelled me to REthink what types of learning we were doing and why 🤔
So good!! 🥰
Sing a song of seasons is a poetry book we really like. Nicholas usually reads it to us in the morning. And we enjoy it!
Yes it looks cute!
I’m so happy for you to be able to not work! I’m currently working 10 hours, 4 days a week, and homeschooling my 3, and I would love to be able to drop work or be able to go part time, but it’s not what we can do right now. But I am always so happy to see another homeschool mom be able to live that dream!
Oh I feel this so much!! It felt like it would never happen for us and it took YEARS, but we got there. You will too! Hang in there ❤️
You are such a joy to watch! I hope you are enjoying staying home all the time. I loved my job too and stay home now. It becomes so normal after awhile!
I like these update videos 😊
Aww thank you, Jerilyn! ❤️
We go to a Co-op that's classical conversations inspired. Larissa would probably LOVE it! It's called Threads... Maybe they have something like that close to you? Love your videos, and appreciate your vulnerability!
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Silverstein is good. I loved those books as a child.
Love hearing your updates! So glad all is well❤
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Great idea with TGTB math 1 to space it out.I’m not sure it’s laying a strong foundation with my daughter (maybe too spiral?) but I think I’m going to do the same as you and do worksheets from another source 2 days a week. I don’t want to switch mid year. Great idea to do explode the code!! Abeka first grade moves pretty fast IMO- they fly through all those special sounds! I’m super excited for TGTB new science units- definitely planning on getting some of those for next year.
Yes it does move quickly, which is fine for some kids and some too fast for others. Also, sorry you’re not having much success with TGTB math 1
I need to go check out your other videos, because I am new. I worked outside the home too until I had twin daughters who came two months early. That was in 2003. They went to public school through the fourth grade. I brought them home, and I wish I had homeschooled all along. It's gone so fast, and I absolutely love to be with them. They were born with a speech disorder and have a timid and very shy personality around anyone who is not my husband or me. Otherwise, they are wild and crazy girls; they are my sweets! We used Abeka for grammar only, math, history, geography, American government, and science. Actually, we used the science until we got to chemistry and then physics. We instead used Apologia's Exploring Creation with Chemistry and then Exploring Creation with Physics, both by Dr. Jay L. Wile. Really good.. Currently, we are also finishing up Abeka's economics book which is great. It's nice to find someone else who's using Abeka. I think the other curriculums are perhaps more popular.
I had a sense that Larissa would have fomo (fear of missing out) when Lexi went to school. What about homeschool group outings to museums and historic villages and such? Sometimes libraries have great homeschool programs. Field trips, track and field, those are my favorite memories from school. Maybe those could be recreated somehow. Social activities were my biggest concern when we decided to homeschool our son, who's in 2nd grade. I knew I'd be able to give him a better education at home than school, but how to give him the social interaction he needed? Fortunately, the Waldorf schools he attended for nursery school and mixed-age kindergarten have lovely events for Halloween, Lantern Walk (in November), holiday fairs in December and such, so he still gets interaction with his friends from school. Our local library has a book club he goes to, he also goes to a music and movement class and chorus on the weekends with kids he's known since he was 4. You will find what works for you and your family; there are many wonderful things out there to choose from =)
Yes just looking into it all right now, trying to decide what sounds fun and interesting
Thanks for the video. I also have 2 daughters asking to go ( back ) to public or NONhomeschool option since 7th grade sister has gone back.
Aww, yea it’s tough 😕
Wow, you are so right about that poem! We used sonlight A last year, and while using 2 cores was WAY too much I liked the poem book and the kids did too, Bill Martin’s big book of poetry, I got it on thrift books 😊
I don't remember if yall have done the good and the beautiful level 3 ..but it comes with a seperate book of poetry , also free in the pdf to check out online. A Child's Garden of Verses may be good too.
We do have a child’s garden of verses actually…I do plan on adding that back at some point 😄 totally forgot about TGTB poetry (we haven’t done level 3).
You are amazing at how you listen and are in tune with your girls!! ❤ Taylor if their education to what each individually needs for a certain season is great. That will truly make them love learning and have a heart for knowledge and a lifelong love of education.
We are doing Abeka kinder with our four year old bc she seemed ready and some days are hard so I have really slowed it down to only 2-3 Abeka lessons per week to really lay a strong foundation in phonics. Hoping that helps but if we do k5 again next year at the regular pace, I’m ok with that
Great idea!
My philosophy is less is more. I've noticed that most homeschool curricula these days overwhelm the student with "extras" that they don't need. For example, one preschool curriculum, while learning about months (September, for example) takes the student down a sideroad with hundreds of "adult" facts about September. One thing at a time! The preschooler is doing good to learn the months of the year by the end of the year. Daily poetry is another one I don't get. Preschoolers should be learning the basic rhymes that we all grew up with: Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet, etc. That is for cultural literacy purposes. You don't want your child to be the only adult in his office to have never heard Mary Had a Little Lamb. Other than that, I think poetry should be covered when poetry is covered in language arts, at the appropriate age. After they get a taste of poetry, if the child likes poetry, they can explore more on their own. That is self-guided teaching and that is what inspires a love of lifelong learning. Teach to the normal standards, and let the child explore the rest on their own. Much less stressful for the student and the parent. Less is more!
We are doing a cottage school. My girls go to it 1-1/2:days a week. It is a good compromise.
I love abeka to and just paused for my Pre-K to focus on vowel and blends. We only use Abeka for ELA for prek-1 and math all the way through
Love their LA program for the younger years too!
Joining a once a week co-op was a game changer for us. Moms don’t have to teach classes because we pay at this particular co-op so they have other women teaching, but we still have to be on campus helping. My kids love it. I cover all core subjects at home and they just go there to socialize with friends and do art and other fun things because that’s not my forte Lol.
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Akeeba Maze is a great resource for this very thing! She's doing a work shop this weekend and in January going over Phonics to Reading. She is a teacher who is now homeschooling her children and has resonated with a lot of what I felt about the learning process and might for you as well! Blessings:)
Thanks!
I'm so happy for you to have your dream come true of staying staying home. It's a joy to hear that burden lifted of having to go to work. I can't wait to see how God provides for you. If Ever I start to worry about finances I just remind myself that these are God's children and he wants them raised well. We loved explode the code. I tried Abeka language and it worked great for my son but not my daughters. Each child is different. Both of my girls learned to read through explode the code, but one of them learned to spell that way and the other didn't. So much is trial and error when it comes to curriculum, and we just make adjustments all the time. You're really blessed that you can do any subjects at all together. One of my girls is an auditory learner and likes to make noise to learn and the other is a visual learner and needs silence to learn. I've always had to educate them in separate rooms with different materials but thank God homeschooling is customizable. Keep up the good work! By the way for your older daughter, Queens homeschooling makes a planner for students where they fill in the subjects and then check them off as the school day goes by. It's especially important for the independent subjects so we both know what subjects have been completed and what still is left to be done. I buy the tiny stickers from Dollar Tree for fun to fill in the blanks.
She made her own checklist this year and uses it daily….she loves it! 😄
@@thepracticalhomeschooler wonderful!
May I suggest using any poem even if you feel they won't understand it then following the poem up with a philosophical discussion on the poem? Philosophy is often thought of as needing to dig really deep into complex issues but it is more of a way of thinking & an amazing tool for building critical thinking skills. Even if they do fail to grasp the meaning of the poem in the end the habit of looking at things critically will translate to other fields as well.
About the poems… why not use ‚I sat by the sea‘ from TGATB? It’s a collection of poems that goes along with the level 3 LA program.
I currently don’t have a third grader, but we read from the book during morning time all the same.
Yes someone else suggested the same thing! 😊
We do our group subjects with my older kids and my youngest can sit in but I know it goes over her head!!! She does her own morning time and my older kids aren’t normally awake till Noon anyway!!! We may do energy but it depends on how my older daughter finds certain science topics that she needs!!! We find TGTB science units easier to teach and my kids find them easy to understand!!! We waited for them to be older to do science tho!!! It’s awesome that you are scaling down on language arts!!! It’s awesome that you doing the phonics work!!! We’ve spilt TGTB math lessons up!!!
We’ve really enjoyed the Mr. Roger’s poetry book “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”
Also, maybe you should look into Saxon math for your oldest daughter. It’s really good!! The lessons are long if you do everything, but I skip the math facts drills and only have my son do odds/evens. That way they only take him 30-45 minutes.
TGTB Math levels 4-5 didn’t work for us, because it jumped around from topic to topic too quickly and the video lessons didn’t stick. I’ve seen a lot of people talking about only doing half the review problems in TGTB upper level math, too-so if you stick with it, maybe you could shorten it.
She does enjoy it. She doesn’t want to change but goodness, it’s at least a good hour every day, sometimes 1.5! 🥴
Will check out the poetry book 😉
Level 5 math is taking us such a long time too. I've discarded the mental math book for now, and I've crossed out a few of the practice problems.
I’m gathering the consensus across the board regardless of curriculum that math at this level is going to take longer. Having that in mind has been helpful for us!
I love Rod and Staffs book Poems to Memorize. The book is divided into poems for different grade levels and my children have loved all of them. You can find it on Milestone books.
Thanks!
Poetry..I have a 1st and preK. I bought this off of Thriftbooks. We love it!!! My kids love animals so they find these poems relatable! "National Geographic book of Animal Poetry (200 poems with photographs that squeak, soar and roar!)". We also like Sing a Song of Seasons but not as much as the animal poems.
Ooh my oldest is a huge fan of nat geo! She’s been getting the kid magazines for years. She’d love that!
All children are different. My son(5) breezes through everything (reading, writing, math) to a point where it makes my job as his teacher super easy. However, my daughter(4) is not as fast pasted as him. She's very smart, but her learning style is different from my son. So, I had to adjust how I taught her, bc what worked for my son, did not work for her. I had to spend a little more time on certain things with her.
I think animal themed poetry is an easy theme to start with with elementary kids. "Animals Animals" by Eric Carle is a good beginner one, or "Tiger Tiger Burning Bright" is volume that has an animal poem for each day of the year. We're about to start an ocean study and my son keeps asking every day if we're going to start it--marine biology is a fun science topic!
Thanks! Looks love Eric carle!
My son was hitting a roadblock in abeka phonics K5. He was simply NOT enjoying it and having a hard time with blends. I did the free trial of 25hrs streaming and started playing the phonics lessons. Each video is about 18 min in K5. It has made a HUGE difference. He is actually enjoying it! Idk if he would do well with all subjects video led but so far just the phonics has been great. I started him at the beginning and just did every other lsn to build his confidence. Worked like a charm ✨️
That’s awesome!
For poetry" "Where the sidewalk ends" and (especially for boys) "Making Friends With Frankenstein". These are more silly poems, but it makes it fun for my kids. They also don't comprehend the super "in depth" poems. We'd rather read giggle poems and have a great time with it!
I paused all of the abeka work books for grade 1 language arts as well. Love the readers! We switched to alphaphonics. Way simpler and a lot more effective. I just use words from the alpha phonics for spelling.
I do a very modified version of abeka phonics with my son and wanted to mention I keep the abeka phonics sounds CD in the van and my son holds the handbook for reading and says the charts with the lady
I didn’t realize there was a cd! I should look into that! Thanks 😊
@@thepracticalhomeschooler yes we have a lot of driving time and it has helped me learn how to pronounce a lot of them correctly lol! Also thanks for the explore the code suggestion. At the end of the day does it really matter if they can “circle” the special sounds and mark the vowels if they can read well? That’s my thinking at least 🤣
The ONLY poetry my son can get on board with is the Nat Geo collections. He really loves the National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry. I really love the Nature Poetry one. I love beautiful illustrations usually but for poetry I have noticed it works so, so well to have beautiful, detailed photography to focus on while reading/being read to.
Someone else mentioned that too. I’ll have to check it out!
Is your daughter able to do Abeka history 5 independently? Do you have to teach the lessons to her?
I don’t do lessons or lesson plans for that. We’re very laid back about it but definitely make sure we read and discuss all the information and that she gets it. She reads much of it independently, but then we review and discuss everything pretty thoroughly
I use Abeka for the following grades k, 3rd , 9th and 10th. It’s is a lot of work and can be very overwhelming . I am going to be using the good and beautiful next year for little ones. Does anyone have suggestions for a great high school curriculum?
Hi, I came across your videos as l was looking for homescholling content and learned a lot from you. I was wondering if you can help me learn more about the co-op as I don't know how to approach that.
Thank you!
Honestly, we’ve never done a co op so I wouldn’t be a good person to ask 😕 the only info I’ve gotten about our local ones are through my area’s Facebook groups.
Did you also do the code A B C books before?
I’m not sure what you’re referring to
Favorite Poems Old and New is our favorite over here
Thanks!
Do you have a video update or info video about your child who ATTENDS school? I Homeschool a first and third grader but my seventh grader attends public even though we don’t really like it but she hates homeschooling. Just wanted to see what your perspective is and choosing not to homeschool all of your children. Thanks
Not a full update yet…waiting for a little bit longer. I mentioned briefly in a previous video that she’s enjoying school and doing really well so far 😊
I'm enjoying following you so much!! I keep thinking it has to be our dietitian brains that make us think so alike. 😂 I know you're not into having your kids in a bunch of activities (same!), but I wonder if your older daughter could play on a sports team or something with kids from the Christian school! Just a thought. My Christian school soccer team growing up had a few homeschoolers on it.
My oldest hates sports 😕 she does have an opportunity to play at the school my other daughter goes to but she is not interested.
I'm the same I forget why I make certain decisions for curriculums haha
Haha sometimes it just all runs together!
I would love your opinion on kindergarten phonics. I do have 7 kids and started out with Abeka but have branched out a bit. This year everyone is doing the good and the beautiful language arts and I really love it! It’s complicated but we’ve done almost no school this year. We started school in the Dominican Republic where we were missionaries for a month, and it didn’t work out. So now we’ve been living with my mother in law while we wait for our house to close and it’s been very stressful. So we’ve done almost nothing. Anyway, I have a kindergartener and I was able to get a really good deal on all about reading but I actually don’t like it, it’s too many moving pieces. So I’ve been considering using Abeka in some capacity or the good and the beautiful. I’ve not used kindergarten for the good and the beautiful but I have a daughter who is doing the second grade and i really love it!
And second I watched your video and I’m so sorry about the miscarriage. I’ve not personally experienced it but I have a friend who has had 4 second trimester losses and I know for her it’s been so discouraging for her when people offer “solutions “. Or maybe they offer their own personal stories and I know that can give false hope. I’ll be saying a prayer for you today 😊
Sorry you’ve been going through such a stressful time right now!
I think they’re both great and either will work. They both have a phonics approach (I personally prefer Abeka, but that’s just personal preference). I have a lot of videos in my Abeka playlist if you want to get a better idea
Thanks! I used all Abeka with my first 3 and then with the fourth I tried my fathers world but it got busy and it became too easy so I just gave her the Abeka workbook and she figured it out herself!
I think if you’ve tried both and prefer Abeka I should just go with Abeka. You’ve taught it just using the letters and sounds right? I’ll probably just use the workbook and maybe the readers.
@@nicoles9223 yes I have with just the handbook for reading, the workbook and readers! But it also depends on the child too...some prefer more "fun" (TGTB) and some are ok with straight to the point (abeka).
The poem you showed was bad for a first grader and probably well above, even though it's a very pretty book. Sing a Song of Seasons, A Nature Poem for Each Day of the Year is good. An example would be: "Boats sail on the rivers, And ships sail on the seas; But clouds that sail across the sky Are prettier than these." And then it has a second stanza, but anyway...The artwork is so beautiful in this one too.
Haha I’m glad it’s not just me! I remember reading stuff like this in high school and it being way over my head 🥴
@@thepracticalhomeschooler I think this must be like reading Shakespeare...where's the study guide! 😍
Animal Poetry and Nature Poetry by National Geogrpahic are both great collections. The Random House Book of Poetry is another.
*Geographic
We like Abeka but we encounter a lesson where the instructor said God sent Christopher Columbus. I stopped the lesson to let my kid know that Christopher Columbus and the people who came with him did horrendous things. I've noticed that some Christian curricula gloss over history which is very disappointing because we wanted to use Christian curricula. Now we use more secular materials and we do Bible separately.
We’re using their old world history (Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia), not covering American history this year.
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Sing a song of seasons
Yes!!
How old is your first grader here?
She was 5 at the start of the school year and turned 6 end of September
Have you had your daughter's ears checked? My daughter needed hearing aids. It's always good to check.
Is this in regards to something I mentioned specifically?
@@thepracticalhomeschooler when you said that your daughter was having difficulty spelling from sound, sometimes it's a hearing problem. When my sister was little she thought the word was packpack instead of backpack. She couldn't hear the difference in subtle sounds like "b" and "p". She had a surgery and they fixed the problem with her ears. It's just something to think about.
@@jessicaherrera7900 ahh ok! She's always done ok with her hearing at the doctor, but I'll keep it in mind.
I’ve had to scale back on Abeka too. I’ve been using Language and Arithmetic 3rd grade and it was like he was too overwhelmed from this. So I’ve gone to just using ACE for now, and later as he feels more confident I will use Abeka as an occasional break from ACE.
Oh and none of my three kids ever liked poetry. They all say the same thing, it just doesn't make sense to them.