How's your year going @fledge1? Are you hanging in there? Surviving hopefully? We're doing okay over here. Missing our extracurricular activities. I tell ya, once this virus stuff is over, we're going to have a million playdates  

We're about to wrap up our Logic of English Foundations curriculum. We'll finish it up right after Thanksgiving. I spent a long time researching about what to follow up with as I had heard from a large number of people that Logic of English Essentials wasn't anywhere near as good as Foundations. I finally called Rainbow Resources last week and the lady I talked to recommended a program called Jolly Grammar. It's an England English curriculum and apparently it's been around a while, but they recently released an American English version. It was super duper cheap so I went ahead and ordered it because I figured if it doesn't fit I'm not out a lot of money. It arrived today and it looks pretty close to what I'm trying to find.  

That is awesome. Honestly it hasnt been great. Not just homeschooling just everything going on. Prayers needed!!! Anxiety with kids has been an all time high. Exhausting. Hopeing things get better out in the world soon....because yes PLAY DATES!

@fledge1, I hope things have settled down a bit for you and especially your daughter. Anxiety is rough! 

We finished up school for 2020 this afternoon. We mostly finished up last Friday, but we had a bunch of science experiments to do over the weekend (it had to be outside and the weather postponed it ) and then the kids had to write up their reports on their experiment today. (We made a whole bunch of volcanoes that didn't involve solely the classic baking soda + vinegar. We also did Alka Seltzer + Water and Mentos + Diet Pepsi ). 

Nice to be done and have a few weeks break. Though typically about a week in the kids are bored and I'm pulling my hair out trying to get them to play something without driving me and the siblings up a wall.  

Thanks @fantasia 

Things here are as crazy as ever. Missed getting on here but shoot been so nuts with my job i have hardly time to check my nonwork email. haha. 

Interesting thread.  I am brand new to homeschooling this year.  I always kind of wanted to but was too scared to try. The current events were the kick in the butt I needed.  And my oldest is autistic and I was already told he would just slip through the cracks as the grades got higher and harder.  He lost his funding so I wondered what was the point of keeping him in public support if he wasn't getting supports.  

The switch to homeschool has not been easy.  I still don't even know what I'm doing and the year is more than half gone.  We're also very much on a budget so I am either doing free online homeschool programming or trying "notebooking" with library books or texts I borrowed from a friend.  The lack of funds means what I can or can't try is very limited.  I would love to try the "Gather Round" curriculum but I could never afford to do the full year of it.  And then I always have to insert Canadian content where I can.  My kids are having a hard time transitioning too.  I've finally gone to a bribe system where the points and demerits are based on the very bad habits I've been trying to break all year and the good behaviours I would like to see.  It's been over a week and they are still enthusiastic about the system so fingers crossed!  Now the big challenge is to get them to look for answers themselves.  If they don't know an answer immediately they expect me to just give it to them.  And I'm new to teaching so it is tough to not just give it to them.  

Posted by: @mrs-smooshy

The switch to homeschool has not been easy.

Big, giant for Mrs Smooshy. I can't imagine starting homeschool the past year when you're just thrown into it without planning in advance. 

If you haven't already found this resource on your own, check out the SPED homeschool group. They specialize in helping parents with special needs kids and I know they would have tons of resources for your eldest. 

Another suggestion I made to many of my friends thrown into the homeschool situation, is give Rainbow Resource Center a call. I have no idea what your budget is, or how old your kiddos are, but this year I was stuck on a grammar curriculum and they recommended one to me that cost $30.They will be able to help you find things that range from cheap to free.

Posted by: @mrs-smooshy

My kids are having a hard time transitioning too.

I'm not terribly surprised to hear this. This last year was rough for everybody, particularly kids! Hopefully you're able to do some fun things too? Art projects, baking cookies, going on walks, etc.

Posted by: @mrs-smooshy

Now the big challenge is to get them to look for answers themselves. 

Absolutely! And totally worth the effort. Once this is learned, they can start to self-teach. Good luck!  

We had to do the "Learning from Home" all last spring (from March until the end of the year) so I figured at least Home School would give me more control over what was happening.  It took several weeks for the teachers to come up with a learning program last year so those first 2 or 3 weeks I was making up projects and it was so much fun I wanted to continue.  In Canada, we have less oversight and regulation so it's pretty much up to us to find what we want to do and to keep the kids up to speed.  Our Progress Reports are very basic. In my brother's province they don't even have to notify the government they're doing anything.  The school system doesn't even know their kids exist. I am a little jealous of that.  It makes it harder to get your kids to qualify for university though.

Our biggest struggle has been keeping the kids on task so our days end up being longer than a day at public school.  I had big plans on doing all the fun activities for homeschool but when the basic tasks were taking all day I just don't have the time or energy to do them.  Our new points system has been helping with that. And the kids are realizing how nice it is to have all afternoon to do what they want.  And I am accepting my special needs' son just has to go at his own pace.  If he needs an extra year to finish his grade 4 curriculum then so be it.  And it's really only in one subject that he is behind.  The question I have with him is how much 'supports' he should get and what that would look like.  He had his first essay assignment through the grammar program we were using and it was impossible to get him to understand the concept of transitions sentences and constructing an argument.  We thought the program taught it in a strange way.  He likes to write stories so getting him to stay on topic is a feat in itself. And he could tell us about the subject he was studying so that felt like a 'win' to me.  Subjects like Science, Reading, Bible and Social Studies we have been doing altogether.  He is a little behind and my youngest is somewhat advanced so it works.  I just expect my oldest to do more writing (say write 5 sentences when she needs to write 3).  My son has very narrow interests and one of those is cats so we have been basing our science on that.  We spent half the year on domestic cats.  I found a free notebooking printout on 30 different breeds and I had bought a book from a thrift store on breeds so we worked on that.  And then we made a notebook on general info on cats.  And then we did one on lions.  And now we're doing tigers.  Once we get through cheetahs, leopards, jaguars and cougars we will move on to outer space.  Our thrift store sells all books for 35 cents so I picked up tons of space books and have downloaded oodles of notebooking pages.  I found all sorts of fun documentaries on YouTube and if there is a song about a topic we are listening and dancing to it.  I often joke I lead the School of YouTube.  I even found a song for all of the Canadian Prime Ministers  (we are making a timeline). And we're studying the Narnia series for reading.

The kids and I finished up the Sonlight portion of our homeschool this morning (which is the bulk of our curriculum). I'm on day 169/186. I'm early thanks to Covid which cost us our Co-op and field trip days, but that's okay because I can find all sorts of filler from now until mid May. 
We still have five lessons in science to go (2 per week), two lessons in IEW (1 per week), and then I'll just do grammar work sheets and math facts and some fun activities for the rest. 

....and as of yesterday we are done! Another year finished up.  

Somehow I finished up later than usual though this year. Last year we finished in early May. That's okay though. 

We'll start up again in July when it's hot and miserable and the kids no longer want to play outside.  

After a REALLY fast 5 weeks, we are back at it today! This year is going to be a bit different because I'm not doing Sonlight. Their curriculum had some books that I didn't feel were age appropriate for my kids, so I'm kind of doing a collage of American History stuff put together and then (probably) spread out over two years.

The two primary history courses we're doing (mushed together) are...
Taking the Americas for Jesus by Generations
...and...
Our Star-Spangled Story by Notgrass History
...plus a whole tons of fun books to read on the side.

Interestingly enough, my older two kids and I are ALMOST done with the K-3 Mensa reading list. The last four books on there are all American History reads, like Little House on the Prairie. I'm really hoping to finish that up this school year. We've been working on it since 2018.

For science we're doing Noeo Chemistry. Looking at it, it appeared to be right up my alley. Lots of books + lots of fun experiments. 

Continuing on with Jolly Grammar for now. It's working well for my kids. We just picked up where we left off last May.

Trying a new math this year called Cornerstone Curriculum. Burning through the first several lessons to catch up to where the kids are actually ate. 

And then our Bible curriculum is also by Generations. 

My youngest this year is starting Pre-K and my goal for her is to learn all of the letters by the end of the year. This morning we started off by copying the letter Aa and then read the book Abuela (starts with A, on the Mensa reading list, bonus!) and that was it. Super simple. It was actually really fun going through the alphabet and picking out books to correspond with the letters of the alphabet. Next week we'll read Babar for B. 

As a side note, at the end of the history lesson today, it suggested making a dish from Central or South America. We get Atlas Crate boxes that include recipes in them. My daughter picked out Brigadeiros from Brazil which are a fudge or truffle. The chocolate is cooling as I type, and then we have to roll them into little balls and roll them in sprinkles. 

@mrs-smooshy Honestly the U.S.A. in most states have very little oversight over homeschooling too. Even some states that say you need to hand in such-and-such materials often do no enforce it. There really are no records of homeschooling kids. Some people love it, some people not so much, but it is what it is right now. I'm glad you and your kids are liking homeschooling! 

It's definitely been a strange year and a half! Homeschooling has certainly boomed, hasn't it? I hope more parents appreciate how hard it is to teach children! It takes so much effort and time and hard-work. 

@fantasia I appreciate how organized and prepared you always are! Fantastic! How were the truffles btw? haha.

Posted by: @mm1991

@fantasia I appreciate how organized and prepared you always are!

Haha, thanks! 

Posted by: @mm1991

How were the truffles btw? haha.

Those were an adventure! So, they were a candy, and I'm not a candy maker. After everything was said and done, they should have come out like fudge, but I didn't cook them long enough so it was more like thick batter. We ended up putting them in the freezer so they could at least hold their shape. But they tasted good so that was a win, right?!?!

Well, another homeschool year is nearly upon us.  We finished our past year a few weeks ahead of public school so the summer has felt really long.  I forget how to school. 😆 😏  This year, we are mostly doing the allinonehomeschool.com/Easy Peasy free online curriculum.  I am still doing our own reading program because we need to do the last three books of the Narnia series.  And then I want to read "My Side of the Mountain".  I remember seeing the movie when I was a small child.  It was one of those movies that stuck with me.  I read the book this summer just to make sure it was OK for the kids and I loved it!  I am not sure what book I want to do after that though I picked up a book of Hans Christian Anderson tales today at the thrift shop so we could do more short stories.  Or some poems.  I ended the school year with reading "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe with the kids.  It was....interesting to do with kids so young.  We watched The Simsons TreeHouse of Horror version and then listened to an audio recording of Christopher Lee reading the poem.  The kids didn't like the music with that one.  I decided to keep their notebook responses to that poem for their portfolios. 🤣 

We are also doing our own science program.  I realized I was way too ambitious last year so we're starting outer space.  I have dug up all the free notebooking resources I could find online plus worksheets and I have about 10 or 12 books from the thrift store.  I am using an Usborne Encyclopedia as the base/structure of my "curriculum".  And I want some Christian basis too so I have Answers in Genesis ready to go alongside whatever the books have to say about the Big Bang.  We're Creationists if that helps to explain our plans. 🙂  Making up my own stuff is fun but time consuming and scary and stressful.  I might do an official curriculum next year.  I am hoping our budget opens up soon so I have some options.  I am happy with the Easy Peasy program for the most part but it would be nice to have some choices.  We are saving up to do a Canadian course on Native Americans next year.  I would like to get the bonus/extra resources so we can expand on it as much as possible as the base curriculum would otherwise only last 2 months.  Canadian resources for homeschooling are not plentiful.  Last year, it was library books, Kids Britannica and journalling.  There is a documentary series I want to watch with them but they're still too young.  This year, we are doing Ancient History through the Easy Peasy program.  I found some great books to complement the topic too.

We have decided we are homeschoolers for real now.  No matter what the status of the rules and restrictions.  As we told our pastoral couple:  "we are THOSE people now".  LOL  

@mrs-smooshy The Raven section sounds so fun, I hope they enjoyed it. And you'll have to keep us updated on how the science stuff goes. Astronomy was always my favorite science subject in elementary school. Congrats on being a "real" homeschooling family! 

We are doing our own study on science so I am still hammering how much I can fit in a single class.  I want to keep the class at 40 minutes.  We are all still new at the "notebooking" idea.  I have seen so many YouTube videos on it and it seems like such a marvelous idea and most of the free resources I find are pages to help with that.   But the kids aren't really going for it so I stopped trying it for most classes.  Yesterday, we managed to learn about the topic of light-years and that was it.  So I guess for now I have to reign in my ambitions.  On Monday I want to fit in the idea of galaxies.  The different types and a few facts about the Milky Way.  I am selling the notebook/journal idea as the kids get to design their own science book/textbook.  They seem to like that as they are the more creative types.  So I bought them each a special binder with their favourite animals on it and got page protectors.  And I found a series of videos on YouTube for kids (called "Space Kids") with just 2 minute little clips on the various topics.  I have a Disney encyclopedia, a Charlie Brown encyclopedia, an Usborne Encyclopedia and a collection of kids books and I read the page on the topic of the day from each book so we hear the same information again and again so it sinks in.  I find I have to give them the specific things I want them to say but I let them choose if they want to draw about one of them or how they want to say it.  It's still new (and last year's attempts at journaling were big, tantruming failures) so I find I still have to direct them quite a bit.  Learning to say things in their own words is hard for them.