I noticed quite a few people were asking others how certain curricula/subjects went this past year and I know we normally have a hits and misses post which can help answer these questions so I thought I would start one up. I love these posts as much as I love knowing what people have picked out for the upcoming year.
HITS:
Diana Waring History- Now we didn’t get through as much of this as I would have liked because I had a hard pregnancy and I am now dealing with 2 new little ones BUT what I did get through was awesome. My children did some projects independently and surprised me. They wrote a rap to help remember the days of creation, they have written some wonderful paragraphs/essays and short books, we got some music and art appreciation in. Overall I am happy with this. We have to speed through the rest of the year to finish ‘on time’ and we will be sticking with her 3 year plan as of right now.
All About Reading- My 1st Grader and I worked slowly through level 2 of AAR (again my fault not hers) but we are definitely learning and now I am getting back to myself we are speeding through to the end. We will be finished in no time (before summer).
Abeka Letters and Sounds and Language 1- We had no plans to do this but as I was not at my best when we started out the year my 1st grader wanted workbooks to work on alone. I used Abeka- I didn’t use the lesson plans, rather these were used to reinforce what was being learned in AAR plus more. I would circle 2-3 pages and she would get them done daily. I would then go over the sounds and she sped through this also. I bought the books in January (as she had finished other workbooks in December) and we will be done before summer only a few more weeks worth of work left.
Complete Canadian Math Grade 1- Now I am not one to use these kinds of workbooks but the season we were in this just worked. Again I would circle pages, explain a new concept and send her off to complete the pages. She did so well that she finished the book, and when I put her sisters in Grade 4 Teaching Textbooks she was able to do some lessons and got 100% (more on this later)
Teaching Textbooks- (more on this later)
IEW/ Fix it Grammar- Fix it Grammar was a wonderful reprieve from all we have done up to this point. It was straight to the point and we could move on. Great for independent studies, short concise lessons. IEW had my children writing like they have never written so far. I see an improvement in their over all writing. I tried to finish in a year but then it got overwhelming so we will continue through this year with IEW Intensive A.
Bible- We recently started Polished Cornerstones to work on character building, family time and incorporating many subjects into one… Writing, art etc… It has led to come very interesting discussions and more time as a family as we realize we all have work to do.
MISSES
Experience Astronomy- No fault of the curriculum. I struggled to get outside with the children to map the stars, I struggled to keep up with the schedule. We are playing catch up but I finally decided (as we are behind) to watch the videos and notebook about what was learned. We do the quizzes as a family and we are still all learning.
The Good and the Beautiful Grade 1- Not necessarily a miss, we just didn’t do it. I was doing fine with the above choices and didn’t have time to implement this. I plan to use it in the future and we are doing Grade 2 this year for sure- printing as I type.
BJU Math- Now I must say this hurts. I wanted to use Teaching Textbooks or Math U See last year. For Math U See I thought the cost would be a lot, for Teaching Textbooks I was worried it would not be vigorous enough and so I went with Grade 1 and Grade 4 Math. Grade 1 I was teaching (as you know anything teacher intensive wasn’t working this year) Grade 4 was distance learning- I still ended up spending an arm and a leg… sigh. Well the only subject we fought to get done everyday was math! They hated it, I hated marking the millions of pages for the Grade 4 math and both children had to wait on one another to watch the video so a lot of time was wasted. One of my children likes to just get on with it and one is a dawdler so you can imagine how that went. Then it would be time for me to mark the work and it became an unpleasant chore. Last month I spoke to hubby and we both agreed to count our losses and switch to Teaching Textbooks, our home has become peaceful again. No more begging for math to be done. I don’t have to remind, tell off or cajole. TT is the best decision we have made regarding math. I believe we will stick it out.
If you had read my picks for this past year originally you may notice I only stuck with a couple things I originally planned on mainly because I found out I was pregnant in May which is the time of year we also go to the conference. I realized some of my original plans probably weren’t going to work and I was looking for a more independent approach for my olders. Hence BJU math etc…
I hope this helps with anyone wondering how things went and I can’t wait to hear everyone else’s hits and misses.