I still can’t believe that 8 years ago, I printed off some words on “pumpkin seeds” and had Liam matching them to their corresponding pumpkins. Now, we’re learning about how the scientific revolution impacted how we perform science now, and how the French and Indian War was instrumental to the forming of the United States.
Through the years, our learning has evolved. We’ve welcomed in a lot of new ideas, read a lot of books, had afternoon picnics to avoid cleaning under the table for the 5th time that day, and discovered that a lot of mainstream homeschool advice didn’t work very well for our family. It’s led to a lot of trial and error with curriculum, scheduling, planning, and everything else you can think of.
I have been known to jump ship a little too soon when new curriculum seems to be an ill fit, but this year, I am feeling quite proud of myself. I gave our curriculum choices 6 whole weeks before making changes.
There’s a fine line between giving your choices a fair chance and sticking with something that simply isn’t working. I find that if you abandon something too soon, you may not know if it was a good fit, and you may find yourself repurchasing it months or years down the road to give it another shot. This leads to an endless cycle of buying and ditching curriculum “just to see” if it works. And if you stick with something that isn’t working for too long, you’ll lose your child’s interest and perhaps have to rekindle their love for learning before finding something else.
This year, I committed to 6 weeks. I set realistic goals (for the most part), abandoned the notion that we have to learn history, science and geography every day, and set aside my idealistic beliefs that a daily, afternoon poetry tea time could really work for our family this year. I committed to doing history, science and geography 2x per week each, and math and language arts daily (no matter what). I chose curricula that I felt fit our family best in this season, realizing that picture books and literature may no longer hold the full weight of a middle schooler’s education.
This is how things have worked out so far this year.
Geography: 10/10
I pieced together a geography study this year (mere weeks before we began school) because I really wanted to do an “around the world” study before my children were too old to enjoy it. I wanted to do some fun crafts, read good picture books (which big kids still love), make fun recipes and travel the world together 1-2 times per week with our learning. I determined this would be our “lighter” subject of the year; one that serves as a bridge for my growing boys’ learning.
And it turns out that this has been our favorite thus far.
We’re studying one continent at a time, using picture books, nonfiction books, atlases and whatever other books may correlate to our learning. We’re doing some type of hands-on craft or activity (using a lot of great ideas from Little School of Smiths), and bringing everything together through notebooking and mapwork.
We recently studied Asia and spent time learning about China and the Great Wall. We read, talked, looked at maps, and then watched a YouTube video to help us draw the Great Wall in our notebooks. Afterward, they wrote a few sentences about what they had learned. This continues our Charlotte Mason learning tradition of narration and notebooking, and has felt like the easiest of our subjects.
Language Arts: 6/10
We started the year using Language Lessons for a Living Education Level 7 (for both boys). I chose this because at the time, I could not imagine teaching vocabulary, writing, grammar and spelling on my own. I wanted something open-and-go that would serve us best in this busy, toddler season. I also wanted something that would require me to be very hands off, so that I could save my time and energy for teaching the subjects that were more fun (such as geography, history and science).
What I found, however, is that I was presented with a lot of questions during these lessons. It resulted in me sitting with my children during Language Arts to guide them through their work. It also resulted in a lot of huffs and puffs about writing seemingly unrelated vocabulary words onto index cards, filing them away, and not seeing them again until they were quizzed at the end of the lesson. My boys did not enjoy this. I was even asked, “Why do I need to study this word? Will I use it a lot in my writing?” For the particular words in question, the answer was no. So, I replaced the vocabulary parts with Wordly Wise.
We thoroughly enjoy Wordly Wise (10/10). My boys like that it’s consistent, and that most days it’s a manageable activity that doesn’t require extensive writing. Because of that, they rarely complain on the heavier writing days. They have learned more vocabulary words that later show up in their writing journals. I overall feel like this has been a simple, successful way for them to expand their personal vocabulary without extra, tedious activities.
This year, one of my biggest goals is for my children to become better writers, and to actually enjoy writing. That can be a difficult goal for a boy that wants to ride his bike all day, but I am determined to help him get there. What’s important is that the curriculum we choose helps him, instead of deters him. By the end of week 3 of Language Lessons for a Living Education (LLLE), I didn’t feel confident that he was being helped in this department. Also, he wasn’t enjoying the writing prompts, therefore he was not becoming a very good writer.One example: there was a picture of the Garden of Eden, and he was asked to write about what he saw. That’s not a horrible prompt, and perhaps someone may write about it more easily, but it wasn’t engaging him at all. And this became the norm for our time doing LLLE.
So I chose another writing curriculum to pick up the slack: Essentials in Writing (EIW). This contains manageable video lessons, and direct writing instruction. I give it a solid 10/10 so far. I was worried that the video lessons would make this not very “hands-off” but it has been 100x easier for me to manage with both boys, as opposed to LLLE. I’m also seeing improvement in their daily writing journals, which helps me feel confident that this was the right choice.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one language arts curriculum that also incorporates things like poetry and picture study, LLLE may be worth looking into. We already use poetry study, however, and have picture study included in our Morning Time.
With Wordly Wise, Essentials in Writing, and our Morning Time, LLLE became redundant. We were covering poetry study, picture study, narration, grammar, writing and vocabulary in all of our other choices — therefore we set aside LLLE for now. We may revisit it if our current setup doesn’t prove to be successful after the next 6 weeks.
I do have a child that struggles with spelling, and we have started The Good and the Beautiful Spelling, which is 100% free and online. We realistically get to this 2-3 times per week. We also use their typing program, which is also used maybe 2-3 times per week. Both are simple, but impactful. All together, I think we have a well-rounded Language Arts setup.
Independent Checklists: 1000/10
This might be the single biggest practical change we’ve made this year. Both boys now have an independent checklist, which is a single page with assignments written under each corresponding day of the week.
There are things I absolutely still want to teach together, but at 11 and 13, I also want them learning how to manage their own work.
Their checklists give them a clear picture of what needs to be accomplished without me constantly saying:
“Okay, now go do this.”
“Did you finish that?”
“What are you supposed to be doing?”
They can work through independent reading, Wordly Wise, handwriting or typing, assigned science/history reading and other independent work at their own pace.
It gives them more ownership and gives me more room to work individually with one child—or chase a toddler.
Which brings me to…
Independent Pouches for a Toddler: 100/10
Homeschooling middle schoolers with an 18-month-old is its own interesting experiment.
My toddler obviously isn’t going to quietly entertain himself for an hour while I teach a history lesson.
I’ve started keeping simple activities specifically for him to use during Morning Time and some of our together lessons, in the form of zipper plastic pouches. We have suction cup toys, Lego Duplo blocks, shape magnets, pipe cleaners and a colander, animal toys…
The point isn’t to create Pinterest-worthy toddler school for him, but to give him something interesting to work on if he wants to join us at the table.
History: 9/10
History is another subject where I’ve stopped expecting one curriculum to do everything.
We’re currently using a combination of Gather Round, George Washington’s World, picture books and notebooking as we study early American history.
I wouldn’t want to use any one of them exclusively—and I think that’s exactly why history is working so well.
Gather Round gives me structure and a timeline. It keeps us moving, so that we don’t get hung up on the Boston Tea Party for 6 weeks, and gives us helpful recaps and activities.
We are specifically using History 2 with Gather Round, which they call a “mini unit”. At first, I was worried that adding on literature and picture books would draw things out too much, but it’s not. The literature is where so much of the learning comes alive.
We can read about an event in our curriculum and then spend time with a living book that allows the boys to experience the people, conflicts and ideas surrounding it in a completely different way. Each week, the boys read and narrate from George Washington’s World, I read a couple of picture books aloud, and they create their notebook entries. Once or twice a week, I read from Gather Round’s Teacher Guide and the boys do the correlating activity in their student notebooks.
This approach is very representative of what our homeschool has become after eight years: I use curriculum as a tool rather than allowing the curriculum to run our homeschool.
Science: 7/10 (so far)
I’m not ready to give up on this one, because I do like Apologia General Science fundamentally.
The experiments and hands-on components are top tier—something I thought I’d have to get from a “cuter” curriculum. The content is also very thorough, and I like having a solid science framework for the boys at this age.
However, we’ve run into two problems.
First, the beginning is dense.
The first several modules contain quite a bit of history and background information about science. That’s valuable information, but it hasn’t exactly made my boys jump out of bed begging to do science.
Second: the notebook. It is HUGE.
There is a lot of writing, and I’ve realized that requiring the boys to complete every notebook component isn’t necessarily helping them understand science better. I’m still curious whether the notebook feels especially tedious right now because of the modules we’re in, or whether that will continue throughout the curriculum.
In some cases, the notebook and topics are simply making them dislike science.
That’s not a trade I’m willing to make. So instead of ditching Apologia, I’m changing how we use it.
We’re condensing some of the early material, prioritizing the concepts I actually want them to understand, keeping the experiments and hands-on pieces that add value, and reducing some of the repetitive writing.
When we get to Module 5, which is Astronomy, I intend on our science days to more closely resemble Apologia’s schedule. But until then, this adaptation is necessary for our family.
We’ll see how it goes. This is one of those subjects where I’ll probably have a much better review later in the year.
Morning Time: 1000/10
Morning Time has changed tremendously as my boys have grown, but its purpose really hasn’t.
When they were little, I originally created our Morning Menus because I was trying to find a simple way to bring together all of the things I wanted our mornings to hold—poetry, picture study, scripture, calendar and weather, something to keep little hands busy while I read aloud—without turning Morning Time into another giant block of schoolwork.
I also wanted to help my boys learn how to be more in touch with their feelings and to give them more voice in their day. I learned early that when they’re able to communicate their expectations with me, they’re much more receptive to mine.
Our Morning Menus gave them a way to tell me things they weren’t necessarily going to walk into the kitchen and announce: How are you feeling today? Is there something you’re really hoping we get to do? Is there anything else you need to share?
Knowing those things didn’t mean handing over the school day or abandoning everything I had planned. It meant we could talk about them. I could acknowledge what mattered to them, set expectations for what needed to happen, and sometimes adjust our day accordingly.
And I started noticing something: when my kids felt heard, there was a whole lot less resistance to everything that came next.
Now that they’re middle schoolers, our Morning Menus have grown with them. The questions have matured. Instead of simply identifying a feeling, we’re checking in with things like How am I arriving today? What’s my energy level? What do I need today?
Those few minutes give me information I might not otherwise get from two boys who aren’t necessarily going to initiate a heart-to-heart before math. And that is why I’m realizing Morning Time may actually be more important now than it was when they were little.
Want to create a Morning Time that does more than add another stack of work to your day?
I created our Morning Menus to make these check-ins simple—without needing to print and piece together new pages every week. You can build a menu that works for your child’s age, your family’s rhythm, and the season you’re in.
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