The main curriculum we use is called The Family School. It's so awesome, and I'm learning so much right along with the kids. I'd actually be embarrassed if anyone else realized how much I really am learning. I'm sure a lot of it I was taught at one point in time and have just forgotten over the years. In any case it's a lot of fun and it's going well. There's always more activities and ideas that I wish we could get to and aren't able to. But I love that I'm able to teach to all the kids at the same time, and then give them assignments appropriate to their age level. They also have handwriting pages to complete each day and Ty's doing cursive. He's probably behind a year in learning it, but that's okay.
Either the night before, or first thing in the morning, I write down in a spiral notebook all the things they need to do for the day and draw a little box next to it for them to check off. Specific math pages, or how many minutes to practice or chapters/minutes to read, etc. (This is just for the older three.) It's individualized and done the day of so I have a more realistic idea of what we have going on and what they need to do. I stole that idea from Sarah Mackenzie, she's a big inspiration to me. It gives a clear list of all that's expected of them for the day and they can work as fast or slow as they want, but they know all the things they have to accomplish.
We use Saxon for Math. Tyler's grade level even comes with a DVD where the instructor does a short lesson and then he does the assigned pages. It's so helpful for me to have that video instruction that he can watch and free up some time for me to help the girls.
Tyler's also doing the IEW (Institute for Excellence in Writing) program and it's great! Our CC community didn't offer Essentials class last minute (the mom who was going to tutor that ended up moving like the week we started, so they refunded the money but I was disappointed he wouldn't have that class). So anyway we bought the writing curriculum that they would've used. Again, there's video instruction from the fabulous Andrew Pudewa and he's a fantastic teacher and does a much better job at making it fun and exciting than I could.
Classical Conversations is on Tuesdays. I am so glad we chose to do it again this year. The kids are making great friends with such good kids and I love the moms too. It's been a great thing again for us. The kids love doing review for it each day. Sometimes I'll give them 2 candy corns for each question they get right. On CC day we pack up an insane amount of things in the car and are gone from the house from 8:40 to 4:00. CC is from 9:15-1:00. Then we go to the library and the park and kill time until we take Brynlee to her violin lesson at 3:00. They're all up in Beaumont so it's easier for us to just stay up there. It's a loooong day and I'm always worn out by the end. I have to plan ahead to have a super easy dinner because we also have to eat earlier than usual. The kids always have soccer practice on Tuesday evening. Or Madi has it Monday and Tyler has it Tuesday.
Monday afternoon is piano lessons. I always have to wake Briggs up from his nap early to go to that and I hate that. Wednesday is Young Men's for Kenny and Cub Scouts for Tyler. It's easy since they both have to be there at the same time.
Overall it's going really well, but Briggs and Becca make it challenging. They are by far the hardest part of homeschooling. But we get through one day at a time.
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