Do Mornings Well part 2
Everyone needs to define for themselves what a successful homeschool morning includes and in my experience, the definition can vary with each season of life. I had a different standard during my night-time nursing years than I do now with a seven-year-old as my youngest. As you are pondering what a successful morning looks like, consider what others do, try what might work for you, and leave the rest. We don’t run a rigorous homeschool, but I like to be productive and can get discouraged when the hours float away with little to show for it. I am on a constant quest to improve our mornings and am a firm believer in the idea that winning the morning is key to winning the day; those days become weeks and months before you know it. In part one, I wrote about Homeschool Morning Time/Morning Baskets as part of a successful morning; you can read about that here. Habits help your mornings. Another key ingredient that I aim to include in our mornings is good habits. If we were to all sit-down and share our visions for a successful morning, none of us would include spending 20 minutes looking for the grammar textbook before starting the grammar lesson! Instead, we should be building in ourselves and our children some foundational habits of orderliness. Good habits are important, and your morning habits set you up for the rest of day; poor morning habits have a way of reaching into your evening, and poor evening habits reach into the next morning (morning girl hates late-night girl). Values and Habits You need to decide for yourself what habits are important to you. Start by thinking about what you value and go from there to build habits in yourself and your children. We don’t all value the same things, in the same order of priority and that’s ok. There are many categories of habits: health & wellness habits, spending & financial habits, social & relationship habits, cleanliness & orderliness habits, productivity habits…the list goes on. It really is worth sitting down, thinking things through, and coming up with a plan to incorporate the habits that align with your values. What works for me, might not work for you. I’m someone who values orderliness and so in my world, washing the breakfast dishes right before having to make lunch is a madness maker but really there is no law that says breakfast dishes must be washed immediately after breakfast. I believe what’s important is that you have a plan and live with a quiet confidence in your plan. Those breakfast dishes need to get done and if washing them at noon fits better into your day then go with that. What I think is hard to live with on a day-to-day basis is to arrive in the kitchen at noon and realize, “Oh right, I haven’t done the breakfast dishes yet”. The morning is key! As you work through the process of identifying your values and then deciding on what habits need to be worked on, focus on morning habits for now. There is no need to tackle an entire days’ worth of habits or every single beneficial health and wellness habit all at once. Instead, focus on what you want your mornings to be like and evolve from there. Training your Children Your children are building habits whether you guide them in this or not and they will be habits that will serve them well in the future or compound the challenges of life. Training the habits of children is challenging and sometimes slow going. If we were enjoying a cup of tea together, I would encourage you to start young but with a long view in mind; avoid too much too soon as small changes over time make a big difference. Begin with a few foundational habits that are important to you, master them and then add more; be gentle but consistent, and inspect what you expect. Classical Education Books carries a stack of resources to help you with your habit training. Laying Down the Rails Teaching Character Through Literature Manner of the Week Wall Chart Healthy Happy Habits Good Manners for Kids Myself & Others Mind Your Manners New Americal Cursive – manners by Adrianne Curwen Adrianne is a wife to a public-school educator/administrator and a homeschooling Mama to seven children, ranging in age from 7 to 23. She believes that we have a unique opportunity as homeschoolers to design individualized education that suits giftings, interests, and passions. She and her husband have used a blend of registered homeschooling, enrolment with independent DL schools, and participation in public trade school programs to design individualized programs for their children. She is passionate about using as many read-alouds, picture books, novels, and conversations to educate her children but also gets excited by the amazing homeschool-designed curriculum that’s out there. Adrianne is thrilled by her new role as Communication Specialist for Classical Education Books and is grateful to have an opportunity to learn something new. She is grateful, every day, for her saviour, Jesus Christ, and has no greater joy than when she sees her most important missions field walk with Him.
First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind
Written by Jessie Wise & Sara Buffington, First Language Lessons is an elementary-level grammar & composition curriculum. There are 4 levels that loosely correspond to grade levels. This is a significant plus for me as we run the full spectrum of learners; those who have giftings outside of academics and those whose giftings are academics. I greatly appreciate it when homeschool curriculum doesn’t splash the grade level across the front. It’s a simple thing but I prefer it when the terms “level 1” or “book a” are used over “grade 1”. Flexible and Easy to Use Grammar Curriculum I hold off teaching grammar until students are reading well. The First Language Lessons curriculum is flexible and allows you to do that as Level 3 can be used after levels 1 & 2 or it can be used as a first grammar text for older elementary students. Level 1 – start with a grade 1 or 2 student and then carry on with the other 3 levels Level 2 – grade 2/3 Level 3 – start with a grade 3, 4, or 5 students and then carry on with the next level Level 4 – grade 4-6 The instructions are simple and straight forward and it’s clear right from the start how you are to move through the curriculum. The fact that each level has significantly less than 180 lessons was a huge draw for me. It is a turn-off for me when homeschool curriculum packs in enough lessons to fill every possible teaching day over a 10-month period. I prefer a curriculum that allows us the freedom to veer from the schedule from time to time to pursue other interests, dive into projects, spend some time reviewing, or just take a break. Level 1 & 2 contain 100 lessons each Level 3 110 lessons: 89 regular lessons 7 writing letters lessons 7 dictionary skills lessons 7 oral usage lessons Level 4 101 lessons: 85 regular lessons 1 contraction lesson 10 writing lessons 5 dictionary skills lessons The workbooks are consumable but reasonably priced. There is a lot of white space on each page, a benefit for anyone who can become overwhelmed when there are a lot of words on a page. Also, there are no graphics or characters. We purchased the downloadable version of the workbooks, and I would not do that again. It has been a hassle to keep up with printing lessons off using our own printer and I have found having the entire workbook printed at a printing company to be costly; not enough of a savings to make the extra steps worthwhile. Classical Approach All four levels of the First Language Lessons use classical techniques to develop language ability: memory work, copy-work, dictation, picture narration, story narration, and grammar. Direct Instruction If you are at all hesitant about your own grammar skills and teaching ability this would be a great choice as every lesson is scripted, simple, and straightforward. This curriculum is not set up for a student to learn on their own; an instructor is needed! The scripted lessons make it easy for the instructor, and this direct instruction method is essential for learners who get bogged down in written instructions. Most lessons are not lengthy, so you don’t need to worry about the fact that the lessons require you to walk your student through them. There is the occasional lengthy lesson, but most are very reasonable. There is a good amount of repetition of topics throughout each level, so I have not found the short lessons to be a problem, and most lessons have an optional component that we always completed as the lessons really were so manageable. The flexibility and ease of this program allow you to use a writing program alongside it, or you could wait and use a formal writing program after Level 4. The First Language Lessons is a solid grammar curriculum and should easily make it into your top 3 when trying to narrow down your choices. by Adrianne Curwen Adrianne is a wife to a public-school educator/administrator and a homeschooling Mama to seven children, ranging in age from 7 to 23. She believes that we have a unique opportunity as homeschoolers to design individualized education that suits giftings, interests, and passions. She and her husband have used a blend of registered homeschooling, enrolment with independent DL schools, and participation in public trade school programs to design individualized programs for their children. She is passionate about using as many read-alouds, picture books, novels, and conversations to educate her children but also gets excited by the amazing homeschool-designed curriculum that’s out there. Adrianne is thrilled by her new role as Communication Specialist for Classical Education Books and is grateful to have an opportunity to learn something new. She is grateful, every day, for her saviour, Jesus Christ, and has no greater joy than when she sees her most important missions field walk with Him.
The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way (Review)
Homeschool Science: The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way Aristotle Leads the Way was the main science text I found to pair with Beautiful Feet Books Ancient History (Intermediate) curriculum for my past year of homeschooling. My kids were in grades 6 and 8 this past year, and we often do Socials and Science together for ease. Aristotle Leads the Way was a perfect fit for middle school. I wanted an open-and-go resource that we would be able to keep up with our interwoven subjects. I was so pleased with this choice! It created a rich and fertile ground for seeping ourselves into history I’d forgotten from my youth but was eager to press into.* Teach Science through History Finding Aristotle Leads the Way was like finding a needle in a haystack. I was able to marry two sciences that my children enjoy learning about–Physics and Astronomy–with the historical era of Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. If your child has never been introduced to either of these subjects, it doesn’t matter. This is an excellent place to start because Hakim gives us the chronological order of the ideas and observations that birthed these two subjects. If your students have had experience they’ll find new information and rediscover the why and how behind these disciplines from great thinkers of ancient times. As far as textbooks go, this is a smaller one, but at just under 300 pages, it’s flush with ancient maps, geographical photographs to provide context, works of art throughout antiquity, diagrams of inventions, and little excerpts that give the student practice with the concepts, whether that’s prime numbers or how Hero calculated the area of a triangle. Don’t know who Hero was? You’ll want to look him up; he was one of my students’ favorite thinkers and tinkerers from this text. If Hero’s ideas would have caught on quicker we’d likely be in flying cars by now! He invented hydraulics and a steam-powered device while living in Alexandria. The steam-engine powered train was up and running only 18 centuries later. Hero was a tad ahead of his time. I learned a lot this past year alongside my kids, and Hakim was a fantastic tour guide. She has a witty sense of humor, and the book is written to be read as a story. She spins the known world and highlights the masters of antiquity in philosophy, astronomy, physics, engineering, and mathematics, and how all of these disciplines were entwined together in the beginnings of scientific thought, experimentation, and record. We had such a good experience with Aristotle Leads the Way that we’ll be finishing the series over the next two years, adding Newton at the Center and Einstein Adds a Dimension, to our curriculum choices for science. I don’t recall ever hearing a peer saying to another, “Wow, that was really good!” about a textbook but that happened in my classroom! *So many puns, so little time. My name is Sarah Mast and I homeschool my two kids in Ft. Langley, BC. One of my favorite aspects of homeschooling is the community gained, and I volunteer with a local support group to help foster that and connect others. My family loves the outdoors and traveling, and our weekends include skiing, swimming, hiking, or biking depending on the season. I found Classical Education Books at a conference and noticed their well-curated selection of children’s books. I kept tabs on their collection of the classics and hard-to-find books and reached out. Now I get to help customers hone their collections, and work on the ever-growing inventory here at CEB!
