Homeschool Subject-by-Subject: What We're Using for Math

 

Hi everyone! It's Friday! And we are on the final post in a collaboration where we share what we've been using for curriculum this past school year in our homeschool, subject-by-subject. This collaboration is hosted by April at The Simple Rugged Path, Michelle at The Brave Homeschooling Mama, and Ashley at Joyful Noise Living. Each of these ladies has wonderful content on their channels about faith, mothering, homeschooling, and more. Be sure to check them out!

Over the last few weeks, many of us mamas have shared what curriculum we use for Science, History/Geography, and Language Arts. Now in our final week, we are sharing what we have been using for Math. Be sure to check out the playlist at the end of this post. You will find a variety of curricula in these 4 areas, and real thoughts from real homeschooling moms!

We Have a History with Math Curricula!

Ah, Math! While for the most part in the past, we have stuck with My Father's World recommendations, math is one we have bounced around a bit with. Math is built into the main curriculum and everyday activities up through 1st grade. From 2nd-6th grades, they recommend Singapore. After that, their recommendation is Saxon. With the exception of Jacob's Geometry. 

My oldest (now an adult and no longer in our homeschool) loved math! With the exception of Geometry (he hated it, no matter what curriculum we tried), he was a rock star in math. For him, we stuck with the MFW recommendations and he did really well.

Enter my middle son. He is more the creative, artistic type. And he does not love math! He was struggling before the end of his first year of Singapore. After researching different math curricula, I settled on Life of Fred for him. Learning math through the life story of a 5-year-old university math professor? Right up this kid's alley! I switched him to LOF and never looked back.

Now, my youngest son, who is 2 years younger, was just starting Singapore when I switched my middle to LOF. When his big brother got the package with the nice, shiny, hardcover LOF books, he wanted to do it, too! All LOF books are non-consumable, so I tried it with both of them. We ended up deciding to scrap Singapore altogether. We went through the LOF elementary series and intermediate series within a couple of years. My middle has insisted on sticking with it. My math-minded youngest recently decided he likes the structure of Singapore better, so we switched him back to that. He is also an up-and-coming math rock star.

Our Mixed Bag of Math Curricula

Singapore

Singapore Primary Mathematics U.S. Edition. As I mentioned, my youngest loves this curriculum, and so do I! The lessons are short and gentle, yet effective. It does a great job of teaching mental math. Through My Father's World, we get a booklet with lesson plans and answer keys for each level. There is a placement test (click on "Required Placement Test") to see where your child should start. If you're moving your child to Singapore from another curriculum, it is perfectly normal for your child to test a level or two below their grade level. Singapore is considered a more advanced curriculum, so don't let yourself or your child be discouraged with that! My youngest is in 5th grade, but tested to level 3A, as he had not learned fractions yet with LOF. He's speeding through the stuff he knows, and then we slow down when he's learning something new. So it all works out.

Life of Fred

Life of Fred. As I mentioned earlier, this teaches math through a story. A story about a 5-year-old math professor at Kittens University. Read as Fred takes all the math concepts you’re learning about and applies them to his life situations. The elementary series starts off gentle. There is no drill & kill. You just read a chapter of the story. At the end of each chapter is a section called “Your Turn to Play,” with only a few questions about the math part of the lesson. With younger kiddos, you can have them answer these orally. As you progress into the older grades, it gets progressively more rigorous. But, you still get all the fun and learning of the story. The story line is silly and fun, and yet, even I’ve learned how to understand certain math concepts that seemed complicated to me before. Plus, there’s all kinds of other little facts from other subjects and life sprinkled into the stories. I can’t say enough about this curriculum! Seriously. If you’re looking for something fun, gentle, and effective, go check out LOF!

Khan Academy Online

For my middle, who is using Life of Fred, I also supplement him with Khan Academy's Pre-algebra course. He's been getting more of his questions wrong than in the past, so I decided to give him a more instructional boost with Khan. So far, it's working great! Khan is a great supplement for many courses, not just math! Sign up for a free account, and you have access to a well organized course site, complete with easy-to-follow instructional videos, exercises, and quizzes & tests. Plus, they have a point and "level up" system. Pretty much everything you do as you go through a course earns you points, and eventually "trophies." My son is super motivated by this!

That's all, folks!

That concludes this collaboration of sharing curriculum we've been using this year! I hope you were helped or inspired not only by my posts, but by the other moms who put this together as well. Be sure to check out the playlist below to see what all the other participants are using!

Playlist: Homeschool Curriculum Review 2019

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend everyone!

Homeschool Subject-by-Subject: What We're Using For Language Arts

 

It's Friday! And it's time for another review on curriculum we've been using this year. This collaboration is hosted by April at The Simple Rugged Path, Michelle at The Brave Homeschooling Mama, and Ashley at Joyful Noise Living. Each of these ladies have wonderful content on their channels about faith, mothering, homeschooling, and more. Be sure to check them out!

So far, we've talked about the curriculum we use for Science and History. Now, it's time to discuss Language Arts. As always, there will be a playlist at the end of this post. I'm looking forward to see what everyone else is using!

What We Use for Spelling

Spelling Power, by Beverly L. Adams-Gordon. I've been using this for years, as you can tell! The book started falling apart, so I have it in a 3-ring binder. Because of the reading you have to do to get started, many people don't like this program. But, seriously, the reading to learn how to do it, at least to me, is worth it! You only have to read it once, or at least until you get it.

The lists in Spelling Power are arranged according to phonetic rules, and then in increasing levels of difficulty.

How our actual lessons look like is this: test for 5 minutes or until the student gets 3 words wrong, whichever comes sooner; then, they study the words according to the procedure in to Spelling Power. With 3 words or less to study, this should take them about 5 minutes. Finally, they have to write sentences using each of the words they had to study.

Total time for spelling for each student should take roughly 15 minutes per day, once you get the procedure down. That's why I say, it's totally worth it to read and figure out how to do it! We do this 3 days per week, and then on Day 4, I follow the same procedure, but with all the words they've gotten wrong that week. This is laid out in Spelling Power, and it really helps reinforce those words.

What We Use for Grammar

For grammar lessons, we use the books put out by My Father's World, according to grade level. Language Lessons for Today are modified by My Father's World, based on Emma Serl's books, Primary Language Lessons and Intermediate Language Lessons. These books were originally published in 1911, and My Father's World obtained permission to update the lessons as needed. These lessons for the elementary and middle school years are simple. However, they are effective in teaching elementary grammar naturally through good literature, poetry, dictation, narration, picture study, and brief, informative lessons.

These lessons can also be done in about 10-15 minutes a day. Some require the student to write, but many can be done orally if you wish. We do these lessons 3 days a week, and one book lasts us for the year.

What We Use for Reading

At my kiddos' ages, 10 and 13, reading is done very simply. We will go through my book lists and together pick out a book for them to read for a few weeks. We check it out from the library. Then, each day, they spend 30 minutes reading in it. After the 30 minutes are up, they each tell me about what they read that day. Then, the book gets put away until the next day. If they are really into it, they are welcome to read further during their free time.

What We Use for Vocabulary

This year for vocabulary, we are studying Latin root words using English From the Roots Up, by Joegil K. Lundquist. Each week, we do 2 roots, making our own flashcards for each. On the flashcards, we include the definition of the root, plus common words that use that root and their definitions. With those common words, the kids have to write out sentences using them. At the end of the week, I give them an oral test on the meanings of the roots we learned that week, as well as all the past roots we have learned.

What We Use for Writing

Once again, we use books put out by My Father's World for our writing. In 3rd or 4th grade (depending on if they're ready), they start Writing Skills for Today. These books are based off of Writing Strands, by Master Books. My Father's World obtained permission from Master Books to modify the books for their homeschool families, in order to break down the lessons more simply.

The length of each lesson varies. Some are just preemptive reading, some require some research and writing drafts for papers. I would say, average, we spend 30 minutes per day. We only do writing from these books 2 days per week.

Changes are in the making

That's it for our Language Arts choices for this past year. I hope this post was helpful! I will throw out a teaser and say, as much as I've loved My Father's World and for as long as I have used it with my kids, there will be some changes coming for our next school year. Partially because I would be going back through the family cycle for the 3rd time, and partially because not all kids are the same, and I've been having to consider changes with my younger 2 that were not an issue with my oldest.

But that's for another post! Starting next month, I will be cohosting a collaboration where we share what curriculum choices we are making for our next school year. I am so excited to share with you the changes we will be making, so definitely stay tuned for that!

Playlist: Homeschool Curriculum Review 2019

Don't forget to check out the playlist! You will be able to see reviews for what other curriculum is out there for Language Arts!

Thank you for reading, and have a great weekend!

Books We've Read April 2019

 

It's the beginning of May, which means it's time to share the books we've read in April! I have to be totally honest. My personal reading was sorely lacking this past month. I even had three books from the library that I had to return without reading because they sat and became overdue. With all the planning and activity swirling around in my home and family, I just haven't found a lot of extra time! And that's okay. Life will settle down again soon. Right? Ahem. Anyway, moving on...

This is a collaboration hosted by Ingrid from Mommy & Mia Homeschool Chronicles, April from The Simple Rugged Path, and Lee from Creative 2X Mom. Be sure to check out the playlist for this collaboration at the end of this post, to see what books other moms have read in April with their families.

Unfortunately, I don't have pictures for every book, as some I had to return to the library before I could get them in the shots. But that's okay! Let's dive in to what we did read in the month of April.

Family Devotionals

I'll bet these are starting to look familiar!

Daily Light on the Daily Path, compiled by the Samuel Bagster Family. Our morning and evening family devotional that contains only selected scriptures and nothing else. This one will last all year long. I can count on one hand how many we've missed all this year so far. By now, the kids are really weirded out when we miss a reading!

Leading Little Ones to God, by Marian M. Schoolland. This is our bedtime devotional to read with the kiddos. They've really gotten into answering the simple questions after the reading, and they ask to read the Bible passage at the end instead of myself. I love that they're enjoying this so much! We will be done with this by the end of May.

Morning Reading with the Kiddos

We are continuing to read through The Book of Virtues, by William J. Bennett. The kiddos (and Mom!) are really enjoying all the different kinds of literature, as well as the character lessons that come along with the readings. I often get asked for "one more!"

We finished You Come, Too, by Robert Frost, in April. Both of my boys wanted more poetry, so we checked out this one by Scott Elledge, called Wider Than the Sky. This is an amazing collection of all different kind of poems from many different poets. I think this is our favorite book of poetry yet! Unfortunately, since it's an interlibrary loan, we don't get to renew it, so we will have to return it long before we finish it. I would love to buy it, but I will have to look around. There is a copy on Amazon for a little over $40, and I just can't justify it at the moment. I'm hoping to find something for a little bit of a better price than that!

How God Fix Jonah, by Lorenz Graham. This is a collection of Bible stories as they were orally passed down in Liberia. It is written so that when you read it aloud, you would say it how the storytellers in Liberia would actually speak it. This is probably our favorite book of the month! I love books that give us a glimpse into other peoples and cultures and how their perspective can be so different and yet so familiar at the same time.

We finally finished The Blue Fairy Book! Myself and the kiddos all enjoyed this collection of fairy tales edited by Andrew Lang. We also started The Red Fairy Book in the month of April.

Personal Reading

Personal reading? Not so much in April! I am in a year-long process of monthly readings out of The Life-giving Home, by Sally & Sarah Clarkson. But, I'm going to need to catch up in May. I'm sad to say, I didn't even touch this book in April.

School Reading

This is a book I did read in April, as pre-reading for my son. Black Hearts in Battersea, by Joan Aiken. This is the second book in The Wolves Chronicles. The book follows Simon, who we met in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, to London to study art. He finds himself wrapped up in a strange and dangerous mystery. This one really hooked my 13-year-old into wanting to read the rest of The Wolves Chronicles! I really enjoyed this one, too, it was hard to put down!

The Return of the Indian, by Lynne Reid Banks. This is the first sequel to The Indian in the Cupboard. After winning an award for writing about his adventures in the first book, Omri gets a hankering to see Little Bear again. So he gets out the key to the magic cupboard. My 10-year-old is really loving this series and going through it as quick as we can get the next book from the library!

Is That It???

I think that's it for the books we read in April! I really, really feel like I'm missing something. But I think it's just because for me, there's really not a lot there! I hope to be reading more in May!

Playlist: What We Read in 2019

Don't forget to check out the playlist! You will get some great ideas on books to read. Thank you for reading, everyone!