Month: April 2018

As many of you know, I am approaching my very last year of homeschooling.  For the past two years, our college son has been living at home to save money while in college, but in a year plans to go to graduate school in another state.  In other words, in a year, my kids will all be moving ahead with the plans that God has for them.  This is all good news, they are wonderful young adults and I am so excited for their future.  However, it is also gut wrenchingly hard.  I am pretty sure this is the very definition of bittersweet.  It’s both bitter and achingly sweet.  I have been convicted to get my heart right now, so that I can send them off properly.  I want them to have the knowledge that while I love them, am so proud of them, and will miss them dreadfully, this is what God’s perfect plan looks like.  My job was/is to prepare them to move into adulthood and I will be successful in that if I can let them fly and test their own wings.  I have been contemplating what I have been successful at and what I really need to work on in the next year.

Things we did right –

1. This was not about me.  When my kids were little, I felt the need to make them look and seem like the perfect little people.  Perfect hair, perfectly matched, perfectly behaved and when they weren’t, I took it very hard.  I felt like every move they made was a direct reflection of me and I did not handle that well.  God had to really work in my heart to show me that it was not about me.  It was about what God had created them to be and my job was to be the Mom God needed me to be for their sake. He designed a little gifted boy who was infinitely curious, asked really hard questions at really inappropriate times, and felt the need to correct adults all the time. He created a delightful little girl who pushed my buttons, wore her shoes on the wrong feet, and liked polka dots, stripes and checkers all in the same outfit.  He molded an adorable brown eyed, happy boy who was more stubborn than I was, understood more about God than most adults, kept a grudge for a really long time, and who wasn’t afraid to defend his twin sister’s honor with his fists. My job was to mold them into who God wanted them to be, not to create perfect little automatons who perfectly showed off how good of a Mom I was.  It was not about me, it was about them.  Oh, the freedom it gave when I finally figured that out.  My relationships with my little people became so much better when I corrected them for things that actually mattered and not for things that only had outside rewards for me.
2. The freedom to fail. This was directly tied to the first.  If it wasn’t about me, then I could allow them to fail.  Failure is fine as long as we don’t stay there.  We get up, we try again until we get better.  We tried to instill the values of excellence and hard work.  Not perfection, but excellence.  We didn’t stop until we succeeded.  Got spelling words wrong?  Fine, but we will write them 5x and then add them to next weeks words.  Don’t know all your multiplication tables?  Okay, let’s learn them. Was unkind or rude?  That’s not acceptable behavior so let’s apologize and find out what God has to say about those behaviors.
3. Have yearly, and end goals for our children. Yearly goals helped us stay on track and end goals helped to remind me that I wasn’t going to have them forever.  It consistently reminded me that my end goal was to produce responsible, educated Godly young men and women who went out to change the world.  I would fail if I they never went out into the world and weren’t prepared.

Things I need work on. –

1. My worth isn’t about what I do or accomplish but in who I am.  Oh, how I am struggling with this. It’s bringing me to tears as I write this, and I hate crying.  I am a beloved child of God and He loves me regardless of what I do.  My worth shouldn’t come from being a successful homeschooler or from being a good Mom.  I am afraid that right now, that is where I find my worth, and I am desperately working to get my heart and priorities right.  God is convicting and working in me to get this perspective and it’s hard.  I grew up in a divorced family and my worth was very much determined by what I did, how successful I was and only then was their approval given. This is a hard paradigm to shift, but it is necessary.
2. Enjoy the moment. I am a pretty type A, let’s have a plan, and accomplish things kind of girl.  I am constantly looking towards the next steps, the next thing, the next hurdle.  That has its place and it has been really helpful in accomplishing a lot of things but sometimes, I need to live in the moment.  When my kids were little, I needed to stop and play tea instead of doing the laundry.  I needed to not push on to the next subject if my kids were amazed at how erosion happens in the sand box with a hose.  Now, I need to treasure the moments when my kids are laughing and enjoying each other instead of insisting that the dishes be done right now.  I need to take them for a walk and get an ice cream instead of insisting that they need to start writing their college essays 6 months ahead of time.  I need to just be and enjoy this season.  I need to just enjoy them being here instead of worrying about when they leave.
3. This is only a season and God has good plans for the next season, too. I love being a Mom and I love homeschooling.  I didn’t think I would love either, but I do.  I love looking at new curriculum, I love teaching my kids new things, I love learning alongside them.  I don’t love every single day or every subject (seriously, Geometry about killed me and Trig is next – horrors), but overall I love it.  I know not everyone loves it but I do, I feel like this is what God designed for me to do.  However, I need to remember that this is a season and as good as this one is, God has a plan for my life ( and my kids) a plan for good and for not evil.  A plan to give me hope and a future.  I need to trust in that and trust that God has a wonderful plan for the next stage for me, for my husband and for my kids.  I don’t want to fight it. I want to welcome it.

I will admit that I have used, bought or seriously looked at almost every Language Arts curriculum.  MCT Language Arts, Shurley Grammar, Abeka, Well Trained Mind, Life of Fred, Rod and Staff, Primary Language Lessons, Critical Thinking Co.  etc.  There just seemed like there should be an easy fix to Language Arts, but I never found one.

In the end, though, here’s what I would recommend.

K and 1st

I think K and 1st should work on phonics and basic writing skills.  I, personally, don’t think it works well to add a grammar or writing program to K or 1st.  It just ends up to be busy work that you have to repeat in later years.  These littles need to learn to read, write their letters and words and very basic summaries.  Those skills along with  understanding numbers and addition and subtraction, should be the real focus of K and 1st.  Even with really advanced kids, like mine, this should be the focus.  Let them explore the world around them, let them follow their learning interests, teach them about God’s amazing creation and let them explore. Kids that aren’t allowed to do this, burn out and start to resent school.  I did this to my oldest and had to spend some serious time teaching him how to love to learn.  Let them be little.

2nd and 3rd

Spelling by Sound and Structure – I really like this spelling program.  It still teaches basic phonics and can be independently done, a bonus in my opinion.  I continued this program through 4th grade, despite other recommendations.  I found that it worked, allowed some independent work and was fairly inexpensive. Only the 2nd grade program can be bought through My Father’s World (link above) so I bought the rest either at Rod and Staff booths at convention or through Rainbow Resource.

Writing With Ease – I needed some help to teach my kids to learn how to write summaries.  I found WWE to be the perfect supplement.  I would start with book 2 depending on the child (get the teacher’s guide, too) and do a half a book a year.  Otherwise, it would be overkill.

Language Lessons for Today 2nd and 3rd – We used the book Primary Language Lessons for this stage before MFW had rewritten and repackaged the book.  I liked how gentle the grammar was and how it taught my kids to think about grammar and language.  I think it gave them a deeper understanding of using language, versus just being able to name the parts of speech.

4th and 5th

By 4th and 5th, the Classical Educator in me, came to the forefront.  I liked the gentler Charlotte Mason for the younger years but felt the need to start slowly amping up my kids education before middle school. Language Arts was one of the places I did that.

Spelling Power – By 4th and 5th, I just wanted to get spelling done as quickly as possible and move to Vocabulary.  Spelling Power helped me to do that.  Each year, I would test them in to the appropriate list.  Every Monday, I would pre-test them until they had a list of 15 – 20 misspelled words.  Sometimes, we went through 5 lists to find 20 words they didn’t know, sometimes, we went through 1. On Tuesday and Wednesday, they did (2) Activity Cards each day and wrote the entire list once. On Thursday, I tested them on their list.  Any word they still missed, they had to write 5x, add it to their personal Dictionary ( a notebook they each had with a letter on each page on which they recorded words they had a hard time remembering) and we added it to the next week’s spelling list.

First Language Lessons 3 and 4 – I love FLL for 4th and 5th graders.  It added more rigor to their schedule and gave them a really thorough grounding in grammar.  I would do a book a year starting with 3.

Now, for writing. I have two ways that I think could work depending on the student.

Writing With Skill 3 and 4 – If you have found that WWE works well for your child, then I would just continue with that.  It eases well into Writing With Skill ( which is my favorite upper level writing curriculum) and does a great job also teaching Reading Comprehension.

Writing Skills for Today – This is another product MFW has redone.  This is a revised version of Writing Strands.  Now, I have found that people either loved or hated Writing Strands.  There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground.  I liked Writing Strands.  My kids found it funny and I liked how it taught writing incrementally.  I think it taught them to think about writing in a less formulaic than many of the popular programs out there,  I wanted my kids to know how to write, to learn how to write with their own voice instead of just using a formula. Having seen the revised version, I am pleased to see how MFW made it more user friendly.  It is much easier to see the objectives of the writing assignment which makes it easier to grade and it is a lot more friendly to independent work.

Extras –

Apples and Pears – If your child struggles with spelling and phonics and/or struggles with dyslexia ( I am not an expert on dyslexia but have seen this program to work), then I would encourage you to look at this program.  This is a program from the UK and will have some British spelling but I have seen this program work for a child who had eye issues and struggled with phonics and spelling.  I wish I would have had this for Caileigh when she was young, it would have really helped her.