This is my second year of pure homeschooling - without the use of a public school at home online program. Our first year we had so much fun homeschooling, so I don’t know why I decided to switch everything up this past year! Ug! It turned into a very stressful, falling further behind, terrible year!
So HITS:. Language Arts:. We tried BookShark Language Arts this year, and we really really liked it. They use the natural method which I really liked. I really like the writing assignments that they provide as well. So, this was a hit!
Art:. We continued to use K12 art - independently - we love the art assignments, so this was a hit!
Math:. For my younger ones we used BJU math - and we really really loved it! I love how they review at the end of each lesson. The lessons are not too much. For my older ones they switch to Teaching Textbooks, which we love, love, love! What a life-saver to me! I also love how much review they do. In any one day they don’t have to do 30 problems of division, which I love.
MISSES:
I thought it would be a grand idea to switch to BookShark. While I still love the idea of reading living books, it was almost too much reading for us, so instead of being fun, it became stressful and we kept falling further behind.
Science:. BookShark Science - while I like the concept, and at first I really loved the science, it just got to a point where I didn’t like how we never got deeper into anything. I didn’t like the snippets of information. I didn’t like how the experiments at the end of the week were just thrown in. I also didn’t like how much work day schedules they have. Even with a 4 day week, we just kept falling further behind their schedule, which was really stressful.
History:. BookShark:. Again love the concept (next year we are going back to Story of the World, and trying A History of Us Condensed and adding in living books) but it was too much. Too much unimportant detail on somethings while other things were just snippets of information. I didn’t really like the core books for any of the grades. Also all the readers and read alouds just proved to be too much! We had no time for any other literature, (nor time for the language arts section, which we liked, honestly) and that was frustrating to me.
I think that is everything! We are dumping this school year (I couldn’t even make it through the last couple of months), we are calling it complete, and going back to what we did and enjoyed the first year!