Homeschool Year In Review for 2019-2020 What Worked, What Didn’t

This post is a Homeschool Year In Review for 2019-2020 school year and curriculum choices.

Logic

I planned to do the Evan Moor Daily Higher-Order Thinking grades 2 and 3. Changed things up and did grade 1 and 2 with both my 2nd and 3rd graders. They did the activities for a week one day. The second day the words and meanings, underlining the syllables. On the second day, they also got to pick one of the words and draw how they interpreted that word. The girls had fun with that. The third to the fifth day they reviewed the words and gave a few examples. Overall, they enjoyed the Evan Moor Daily Order Thinking, and we may do it as a group again this school year.

Math

We are still enjoying Math-U-See. And they are both doing great with this curriculum.

Spelling

We are still enjoying All About spelling. No complaints.

Reading

We are still working through Level 2 and Level 3 of All About Reading. I am no longer aiming to finish an AAR level in a year, even if we manage too. Changing my mindset and putting the activities for levels one and two in a binder has been helpful. (Sometimes we can put more burden than is necessary for ourselves.) I was ready to throw in the towel. I love the program, but it was becoming stressful now my five-year-old is doing ‘big girl’ school. So I am looking forward to us continuing with a fresh approach since the program works well.

Writing

My kids aren’t too happy with Writing With Ease.

It doesn’t work very well for my second daughter.

She is more of a kinesthetic learner. And I found it difficult to find ways to make the stories anymore relatable or tangible for her. (The FLL, although a lot of stories, is also filled with possible activities, which for her I do some of them.) As such, it was difficult for her to recall a lot of the narrations and attempt answering the questions .

So we did our own writing ‘program’ this year. As for narrations, I had her tell us a story (she is the storyteller amongst her sisters, so I had her use her own stories). Asking where possible, who, what, where, etc., questions to help guide her to plan her story. Then she wrote her story down the best she could. And for dictations, I often picked a simple sentence, said it aloud, and she wrote it. That was it.

Although my eldest has been doing really well with the program, she wants to try something else. She also wrote some of her own stories this past school year.

Grammar

First Language Lessons curriculum has been stable for us. Not a lot of frills, but it does the job. I switched back to this curriculum for both girls. With my second daughter, I will move at her pace, as we move forward. We will use our Easy Grammar curriculum as a supplement.

Science

–180 Days of Science: We completed about seven weeks of this. I used it as a supplement on days when I wanted them to work independently.

–Nonfiction Reading Comprehension Science: This was not a good fit for my eldest (who reads a lot). However, it works ok for my middle daughter, who is more of a kinesthetic learner. So the simple layout with bite-size information was not overwhelming for her. For my eldest, she read her Smithsonian books instead. Because I have it already, I may use it with my two younger ones. For days when I need them to work independently.

But trying a higher grade level can also be an option if these are not challenging enough.

Nonfiction Reading Comprehension Science Grade 3

–DK Science Workbooks– I decided to go back to these. This series is simple but worked. The series runs from Pre-K to 3rd grade. I used my binder and made a book out of the K-3rd grade workbooks. We completed most of the series (what we wanted to do). Making it into one book made it easier for us to do some simple projects as we jumped around a bit.

Social Studies

–180 Days of Social Studies: some fascinating conversations stemmed from doing these workbooks. I was hoping to have the girls use these independently. But, we would have to do these as a group, if we use them. So we can discuss specific topics together. There were quite a few questions that I did not feel comfortable having my girls pick an a, b, c, or d answer for. Without context. But that’s a personal feeling and for our household.

–Nonfiction Reading Comprehension Social Studies: Like the science version above.

–DK Geography Workbooks: I did similar like I did with the DK Science workbooks. But K-4th grade. This time to make them easier to carry around when discussing together and not for projects. The series runs up to the 6th grade. Most likely, we will continue with some format of what we did in the past school year. It worked. Same, these workbooks are simple, but we get it done, and the kids and I enjoyed them.

–Carson Dellosa’s Maps and Geography: We did not get enough done for me to form an opinion. So we will continue with this in the upcoming school year.

–The Fun-Schooling Social Studies Books– same as the Maps and Geography. Got a bit done. But as I am learning American history alongside my kids, we can get more out of these. So picking up where we left off from in the upcoming school year.

Summary of our Homeschool Year In Review for 2019-2020 What Worked, What Didn’t

What We Are Doing Well With:

-Logic
-Math
-DK Science (finished with the series)
-DK Geography
-Spelling
-Grammar
-Reading (with a changed mindset moving forward)

Will use as supplements:

-Easy Grammar
-180 Days of Science
-180 Days of Social Studies (*with discussions)
-Non-Fiction Comprehension Science (maybe for my middle daughter)
-Non-Fiction Comprehension Social Studies (perhaps for my middle daughter)
Changes:
-Writing