Category: Homeschool

  • Memoria Press: My New Favourite

    Memoria Press: My New Favourite

    Disclaimer: Memoria Press sent me curriculum to use with my three kids in exchange for some posts on my blog. You can trust that all opinions are my own and that my blog posts will be a true reflection of our experience.

    Her eyes opened in disbelief. “You’re taking away my FAVOURITE SUBJECT?!?”

    That was the reaction of my eleven-year-old when I told her that we’d be using a different Latin curriculum this year.

    I get it. I mean, her old instructor was funny — I loved watching his videos too! It’s just that I had all these lingering doubts about the curriculum itself. I felt like the learning was … shallow, for lack of a better word. I guess I wanted something with more drills, more grammar, more review? Yeah, you can see why my daughter wasn’t excited by the news.

    I kept looking at other Latin curriculums, wondering if they might be better. Mostly, I kept circling back to First Form Latin by Memoria Press. I’ve been impressed with every single book I’ve received from MP, so why would their Latin program be any different?

    I downloaded a sample from their site and compared the contents to the curriculum that we were using at the time. The difference in depth was obvious, even from just reading the table of contents. So I bought it.

    And you know what? Latin is still my daughter’s favourite subject! In fact, just the other week she told me that she feels like shes “really learning Latin now.” I’m happy with it too — the lessons aren’t too easy or too hard. The videos aren’t too long and the worksheets aren’t too tedious. We’ve found our Goldilocks of Latin curriculums.

    In fact, “Goldilocks” is the perfect description for all of our Memoria Press books so far. River’s books are challenging without being overwhelming. Harbour’s books are charming but not condescending. And, Forest’s workbooks? Well, they’re way too advanced for him, but he happily colours wherever he wants and hasn’t let things like “the directions” hold him back. That was my fault for picking something he wasn’t ready for. I’m not discouraged though — he’s four, so I’m just happy to have books that he can work on whenever the “school mood” strikes him.

    We’ve been using Memoria Press for three-ish solid months now, and I want to post an update on how it’s working out. It’s a bit of a long post, so feel free to jump around:

    MEMORIA PRESS: JUNIOR KINDERGARTEN

    You might remember that I’ve never really done a formal JK curriculum. Despite that, I decided to get the junior kindergarten program for Forest so he could do school with his sisters. I’m so glad that my days of frantically searching Pinterest for busywork are over — now I just have to pull out our JK books whenever he feels like doing worksheets.

    Which turned out to not be very often. In a surprise plot twist, we ended up enrolling Forest in the local Waldorf kindergarten at the very last minute. I think that he was in the classroom before we officially finished the application process — that’s how last minute it was.

    As crazy as that week was, I’m so thankful that we enrolled him. Kindergarten has made my life so much easier. Forest’s half-day of school is very un-academic, focusing instead on imaginative play, fairy tales, and time outdoors. It’s basically everything that I wish I had time to do with him, but I can’t because I’m busy sounding out H-O-T with Harbour or trying to find River’s math book.

    But where does that leave him with his homeschooling? I’m still figuring that out, to be honest. At the beginning, Forest really struggled with the idea of leaving home four mornings a week. I didn’t want to add to his stress by pushing the JK curriculum on him in the afternoons, so I decided to hold off until January.

    And oh, look at the calendar. January has come out of nowhere.

    Now I’m trying to decide how to work the books into our day. Memoria Press’ JK is split over two days (though a five-day curriculum is apparently in the works). How do I work a two-day program into our week? I briefly considered doing it on Fridays and Saturdays, but that is a bit too much for me. I need my Saturdays for cooking and cleaning!

    A better option is to do the work in the afternoons when he’s finished school. This arrangement will work particularly well, I think, because Harbour has a hard time adjusting to her brother being home from school and in “her space”. Now, after lunch, I can send her to her room for a bit of “alone time” while Forest and I read the stories and do the workbooks on the couch.

    If Forest had stayed home instead of going to Kindergarten, I believe I would have quickly purchased the Simply Classical Level C guide to replace the JK one that I have. I’ve read in the MP Facebook groups that the two levels cover the same material, but Level C is spread out over more days, creating a better daily rhythm.

    In fact, I might have even downgraded to Level B, which is apparently a halfway point between the Preschool curriculum and the JK/Level C curriculum. That’s probably where Forest should have started, but I didn’t realize that at the time. He’s a September-born kid and JK is a bit too advanced for him.

    That’s not to say that we’ve haven’t had fun with the books. He joyfully disregards my instructions to draw ONE cloud in the sky and ONE apple on the tree on the “one” page. The book says to colour the squirrel brown? “No, mommy, he wants to be purple.” Meh. I’m not going to say no — he’s still so little. There is still too much Charlotte Mason in me to make a four-year-old to sit down and do worksheets properly. As long as he’s having fun, I’m happy to keep pulling them out.

    Links: view the Memoria Press Junior Kindergarten, Simply Classical Level B and Simply Classical Level C curriculums.

    MEMORIA PRESS: GRADE ONE(ISH)

    Oh, man. Where do I even begin with Harbour?

    Memoria Press: First Start Reading

    I had dearly hoped to finish up First Start Reading D by the end of August, but we literally finished Book B the week before Halloween. Yikes.

    Despite that, I’m encouraged by our steady progress, as slow as it is. Harbour is getting so much better at reading her CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. Site words are … well, we’re still working on those.

    Books A and B covered the vowels A, I, and O, and I’m grateful that she hasn’t been pushed to go faster. Going too fast with other curriculums just left us both frustrated. Infinitely slow seems to suit us both better.

    People, I cannot stress enough that we’re moving at the speed of molasses. But molasses is sweet and a good source of minerals and I’m sure there’s an analogy in there somewhere. Please feel free to share it with me, because I need the encouragment.

    Memoria Press: Enrichment

    At the beginning of September, I took a long look at where we were and where I wanted to be. I figured that if Harbour and I worked hard, we could finish the First Start Reading books by January and then begin Grade One properly.

    I packed away all our beautiful new picture books and textbooks and I pulled the Kindergarten Enrichment Guide back out again. It was a hard thing to do.

    Things went fine until a new problem emerged: our library doesn’t stock many of the books from the Kindergarten booklist and I ran out. I couldn’t buy them either, because I spent all of our book money on the Grade One selections. Argh.

    Back went the Kindergarten guide and out came the First Grade Enrichment Guide. Now we’re slowly working through our new picture books and I’m actually pretty happy about that.

    I’m enjoying the Grade One guide as much as I enjoyed the Kindergarten one. I enjoy going through the comprehension questions with Harbour, learning new words, and discussing the stories and the illustrations.

    It can be a lot to do at once, so we generally split the vocab and the discussion questions up over a few days. I don’t worry much about starting a new book each week either. We generally stay with a book until it feels done, and then we move on to the next one.

    I did feel a bit scattered for the first few months, not being on track in either the Kindergarten manual or the Grade One manual. I’m okay with it now, though. I just had to make peace with going our own speed.

    Memoria Press: Simply Classical

    Actually, I still wonder if I should have put Harbour in the Simply Classical stream, which is Memoria Press’ curriculum for kids that have learning issues. I go back and forth on it every single week.

    Back in the spring, I chatted with a staff member at Memoria Press and we decided that it would be best to keep Harbour in the regular program until we receive a formal diagnosis on learning disabilities. I’m not sure that we made the right choice, but it’s so hard to know.

    It might be something I have to decide book by book. The First Grade Enrichment Guide is going really well, but the spelling book is waaaaay too advanced for Harbour. In this case, Simply Classical Spelling might have been a better choice. And StoryTime Treasures — we haven’t started them because Harbour is supposed to finish the First Start Reading books first. Maybe I should use the Simply Classical version instead when we get there? I’d really like to get my hands on the student book or the teacher’s manual, just so I can compare the two.

    At least I know that if we choose to switch to Simply Classical Level 2 instead of starting Memoria Press Grade One, there will be overlap in the picture books — I’m happy that I haven’t wasted my money!

    I’m also glad to know that switching to Simply Classical is even an option. It’s one of the things that I really love about Memoria Press — whether my kids are struggling, at grade level, or in need of something more challenging, there’s an MP curriculum to acommodate us.

    Links: view the Memoria Press First Grade and Simply Classical Level 2 curriculums.

    MEMORIA PRESS: SIXTH GRADE

    Harbour and Forest ended up going slower than I expected, but River? River is absolutely thriving with Memoria Press. I’m so glad that we made the switch. I feel like everything is coming together for her, homeschool-wise.

    Originally, we planned for her to use Memoria Press for:

    • Christian Studies II,
    • Famous Men of the Middle Ages,
    • Literature,
    • the read-alouds. 

    After I received our curriculum for review, I was so impressed by the quality of the books that I also purchased What’s that Bird and the History of Medicine for science, and, of course, First Form Latin, as I mentioned at the beginning.

    I’m so pleased with the books that we have. The pace of our learning is perfect — not too fast and not too slow. I like the way our day is structured. I like that my daughter is able to do much of her work independently, and I like how easy it is for me to check her work even if I haven’t been teaching her the lessons myself. Teacher’s manuals — where have you been all my life?!

    (1) Memoria Press Latin: Christian Studies II

    Christian Studies II is exactly what I’ve been looking for in a Bible program: basic Bible literacy. This curriculum teaches the Bible stories as they are without adding extra interpretation.

    I don’t want a course that’s bogged down with creationism vs evolution or Ken Ham’s ideas about the flood. I don’t want a curriculum that preaches penal substitution theory when telling the story of the cross. I don’t want a curriculum that is a devotional dressed up as a textbook. I just want my kids to know the stories and to know them well.

    (2) Memoria Press Latin: First Form Latin

    Latin remains my daughter’s favourite subject. She’s learning vocabulary and tenses, diagramming sentences, and doing the translation.

    She’s particularly happy about learning different verb tenses, even though I find them hopelessly confusing. But I get where she’s coming from — learning a new language in just present tense makes you feel like a babbling two-year-old. Throw in some imperfect endings and your sentences suddenly sound a lot more sophisticated. 

    I like the mix of grammar and vocabulary, and I really feel like she’s retaining a lot of what she’s learning. I do wish that she was farther along in her lessons, but I’ve decided not to push it. We’ll get as far as we get and then just pick up from there next year. She’ll need to finish eventually if she ever wants to read her new copy of Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis — that’s probably more motivation than my nagging will ever be.

    (3) Memoria Press Science: Birds & Medicine

    Memoria Press’ science — can I tell you for a minute what a relief it’s been for me? For years, I’ve struggled to find a science curriculum worthy of the enthusiasm of my science-loving daughter, but she has utterly hated them all. She wants to freely read about science on her own, not be force-fed scheduled lessons and simple experiments. I’m afraid I might have killed her natural curiosity with all the curriculums we tried.

    In contrast, the Memoria Press approach to science is far more basic. In their words:

    Before you can study nature, you have to know what nature is. Memoria Press’ science program has two goals prior to high school science. First, we introduce students to the world of nature by studying the things it is made up of—birds, insects, trees, mammals, and the heavenly bodies. Second, students are given a narrative account of the development of the sciences—they are given science in a story form, in a way they can best understand it. “

    https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/nature-science/
    And also read: https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/nature-science/

    Nature study? A narrative of historical development? Doesn’t this just delight the Charlotte Mason in me! And the lessons are only once a week too, which delights the overwhelmed homeschooling mom in me.

    River and I invited one of her friends to do the curriculum with us, which makes the lessons that much more enjoyable. We just finished up the bird study the week before Christmas. It was a nice routine — each week, the girls carefully coloured two or three birds in their Peterson Field Guide colouring books while I read out loud from the textbook. Then we’d do the study guide orally, frequently reviewing questions from earlier weeks too. These girls are good — I’m impressed at how many facts they’ve tucked away during our simple weekly study.

    River knows almost every bird in our flashcard deck now and she is getting better at identifying them by sound. The bird calls still stump me, but I’m determined to learn them all by summer.

    Now that Christmas is over, we’re moving from birds to Exploring the History of Medicine. I’ve read ahead in Tiner’s book and it’s fascinating! Did you know that before Hippocrates (of Hippocratic Oath fame), doctors were sometimes hired to create poisons to kill their patient’s enemies? Yeah — good stuff. I think both girls are going to enjoy reading this book with me.

    (4) Memoria Press History: Famous Men of the Middle Ages

    Famous Men of the Middle ages is scheduled once a week. To be honest, I feel a bit lost this year without our history being at the centre of our homeschool lessons. I’m used to doing some Story of the World every single day. Even last year when we bought Memoria Press’ Famous Men of Rome to try out, we covered a chapter a day.

    To make matters worse, I didn’t realize that River has been dawdling through her lessons and now we’re WAAAAY behind. But that’s okay, because guess what? Now we’re upping FMMA to twice a week and all feels right in the world again. In fact, I’m bringing back Story of the World too, if I can figure out where to stick it in our timetable. (Memoria Press recommends reading SOTW over the summer break, but when I gave the book to River in June, she put it down somewhere and we STILL haven’t found it back.)

    (5) Memoria Press Literature: Study Guides

    The other subject that I feel that I let slide too much is literature. River hates the workbooks! Which just makes me laugh, because I was the exact same way back in school. Much like my daughter, I wanted to read the books purely for the love of a good story and NOT pick apart the themes that I was fairly certain my teachers were making up as they went.

    However — and I never would have admitted this at the time — I also remember how much more I appreciated the books we studied after we had picked them apart. That’s why I’m cracking down on literature studies now and making sure that we do them right.

    I let River read Adam of the Road and A Door in the Wall without using the study guides, but now that we’re at Robin Hood, we’re doing it together. To make sure literature isn’t forgotten, I’ve moved it to the beginning of our day when I have free time.

    Now our mornings start off with our read aloud (we’re currently doing Little Women — yay!), then we go over a quick grammar lesson and some poetry or picture study, and then we finish by either reading the next chapter in Robin Hood or doing the next lesson in our study guide. This is different because River used to start the day with Latin and Math and we finished the day with literature — meaning it was often neglected as other activities came up. Now we ease in with tea and books and it’s a much, much nicer way to begin the day in general.

    As for the guides themselves, well thank goodness for them! I would never be able to keep the character straight without them. Robert Fitzooth is Robin Hood? William Scathlock is Will Scarlet? Since when!? I don’t think either of those names ever came up in Kevin Costner’s movie, and if it wasn’t for the reading notes, I’d be completely lost.

    Incidentally, I made my daughter watch trailers of the old Robin Hood movie so that she would know how to properly read all of the Sherrif of Nottingham’s lines — in Alan Rickman’s voice (or, to an eleven-year-old Harry Potter fan, in Professor Snape’s voice). Honestly, I don’t see how his lines could be read any other way.

    Oh man, we are way too lowbrow for classical education lol.

    The one thing that surprised me about doing Robin Hood with Memoria Press is that we’re moving so slowly through the book. One day we read a chapter, the next day we do the study guide. It’s not “one chapter a week” like Charlotte Masoners do it, but it’s still a really gentle pace.

    Link: view the Memoria Press Grade Six curriculum.

    Organizing our Day

    Someone asked on my Facebook page which subjects I combine for my kids. I don’t combine anything, but that’s only because my kids are each three and a half years apart in age. If my kids were closer together, I would absolutely stick them in the same grade and work through the material together. Just because a book is scheduled for Grade Six doesn’t mean it won’t work for Grade Five or Grade Seven — in fact, many of the books on the Memoria Press website give a grade range of a few years.

    Given that we’re aren’t combining anything, you can imagine that we have a lot of books. A LOT. I’ve found the only way to keep my sanity is to have a milk crate for each grade. Ideally, I go through the schedule and pull out the books I’ll need for each child each day. The books go in the appropriate crate and I work from that for the rest of the day. In practice, the books get mixed up a lot, but it’s still a pretty good system. Latin isn’t in the Grade Six crate? Oh well, check the JK one instead.

    The crates aren’t pretty, but they’re stackable and durable and easy to haul from room to room. They work, and when I’m deep into our homeschooling day, that’s all I really ask of them.

    Curriculum as a Tool

    It’s easy to get caught up in things being perfect when you’re homeschool. The perfect storage system, the perfect book collection, the perfect workspace.

    I’ve been working on this post for months — months — and I think the reason that it took me so long to publish is that I’ve been embarrassed, I guess, that we’re not doing everything “perfectly”. Nothing is on schedule. We’ve dropped things. We’ve added things. Homeschooling life is messy. How do I write about a curriculum if I can’t teach it properly?

    The thing is, Memoria Press works for us. It works really well. It is meeting the needs of each of my kids, and isn’t that what matters? A curriculum is ultimately a tool and it’s important to remember that it’s there to serve you — not the other way around.

    Memoria Press takes my grand lofty ideas of education and it makes them doable, you know? I look at the curriculum and I’m not overwhelmed. I like what we’re learning, and I love the leisurely pace.

    I thought that I had abandoned Charlotte Mason when I switched to Memoria Press, but I almost feel like Memoria Press has given me the tools to accomplish the goals that Charlotte Mason first inspired in me. Nature study, great books, classical music, beautiful poetry. It’s “the feast” that I envisioned, with a few workbooks on the side. It’s not too much or too little or too hard or too easy. I’m sure Goldilocks would approve.

  • How to Homeschool: Start for Under $100

    Homeschooling can be expensive — especially if you panic and buy the first curriculum you see! However, it’s possible to start homeschooling for under $100, leaving room in your budget to buy the perfect curriculum once you’ve decided on how to homeschool your children.

    “How do you do it?”

    It’s a question that I get asked about homeschooling a lot, usually with disbelief. I usually mumble something about it not being too bad — that it’s easier that packing a lunch every day. I’m not the best at speaking words outloud. Honestly, I should just print up some cards with a few links to my blog listed and hand them out when people try to talk to me. And you all thought the homeschooled kids were the ones lacking social skills…

    Here’s the thing though: homeschooling itself isn’t that hard. You know what’s hard? Being home all day with nothing to do. Believe me, I dread summer vacation just as much as every other mom. But being home all day with a solid learning schedule is actually fairly easy — especially once you’ve got a good curriculum that tells you what to do and when.

    “Great,” you might be thinking. “What curriculum should I buy?”

    That is the $100 question. Well, actually most curriculums cost a whole lot more than $100, and that’s why I wanted to share some thoughts about how to homeschool when you’re just starting out.

    One quick caveat: there might be strict laws concerning homeschool in your province or state. When that’s the case, find a local homeschooling group (searching Facebook is probably easiest) for advice as these tips may not work for you.

    How to Start Homeschooling for Under $100

    Finding a curriculum that works for you and your kids can be an exercise in frustration. Some people luck out and fall in love with the first program they use, while others need to kiss a few frogs before they find a curriculum to commit to. And then there are people like me, who pretty much fall in love with every curriculum in every style and then live with the deep regret of only having three kids to try the various curriculums out on.

    So this is what I recommend: just focus on a few core subjects at first. Ignore the rest for now, unless you discover that unschooling is your true calling. The rest of us, though, can relax and know that all the familiar subjects will be back soon enough.

    This is how I would do it.

    Step 1: Start with the bare minimum.

    For your own peace of mind, you’ll want to cover the basics like math and reading. With that in mind, find curriculums that are inexpensive but reputable, such as the following:

    All prices are USD unless otherwise indicated and current as of September 28, 2018.

    Math

    Math curriculums vary widely and can get pretty spendy, so don’t commit right away. Buy something inexpensive but solid.

    I’m a huge fan of Math Mammoth. We’ve tried more flashy curriculums like Beast Academy and more hands-on curriculums like RightStart, but somehow Math Mammoth always wins in the end. My kids prefer workbooks over comic books, I guess.

    They’re not the only ones that like it. Math Mammoth is one of Cathy Duffy’s Top Picks and it’s listed in the fourth edition of the Well-Trained Mind — which is just to say that smarter minds than mine agree that it’s a decent curriculum.

    An entire grade is $37.50, but you can buy it in two halves for $18.75 each if you don’t want to commit to an entire year. The curriculum is a downloadable PDF too, so you can reuse it with your other children in the future.

    Compare that to $159 for Math-U-See Alpha or $211.96 for RightStart Level A — both very good, well-respected programs that I have purchased in the past, but both on the pricey side. Especially once you add in shipping in Canada and currency conversions.

    It’s entirely possible that you might not love Math Mammoth; you might find a math program that you like better. That’s great! But in the mean time, you will have been well-served by Math Mammoth and you’ll only have spent $18.75 plus the cost of ink and paper.

    History

    Wait — history? Okay, so I don’t think that history is an absolute must-do subject if you’re trying to stick to the bare minimum, but I’m going to throw it on the list anyway because I absolutely love Story of the World. SOTW is a fascinating four-volume series in which history is told as a story, and it’s so delightfully schooly feeling.

    The books themselves are about $11 on Amazon — cheaper if you buy the kindle version. We love listening to the audiobooks in the car, and I think they’re worth every penny (usually $25 on WellTrainedMind.com, though today they’re marked down to $16.00). You can even purchase the activity book if you’re feeling ambitious, though you can probably tell from the photo that we don’t use ours as often as the main book. 

    A lot of the popular curriculums use Story of the World for history — Ambleside, Sonlight, Bookshark, Timberdoodle. Classical Conversations. Well Trained Mind, of course (same author). Memoria Press doesn’t schedule SOTW, but instead recommends it as a summer read. So who know? You might end up needing it anyway.

    SOTW is aimed at grades one through four, but many people use them for the older grades as well. If you are using the books with younger kids, I’d pre-read the chapters first, given that history has a lot of beheadings and wars and what not. Some kids are more sensitive than others. 

    Just a note — some Protestant Christians prefer Mystery of History because it starts with the Genesis Creation story and includes more Biblical content. MOH is more expensive than SOTW, though. I haven’t personally tried this series, but I have friends who really love it. And Cathy Duffy says it’s one of her top picks. (I don’t actually know who Cathy Duffy is, but I often just do what she says). There’s also the Story of Civilization series from Tan Books — it’s a new series written from a Catholic perspective, and the audio versions of these books are even available on Audible. I’m jealous.

    Phonics and Reading

    If your child is already reading, then focus on books — really, really good books. Have your child read at their own level and listen to books written at a higher reading level — family read alouds and audiobooks are both good for that.

    I like to take booklists with me to the library so I know what books to take out, and there are a lot of book lists to choose from. Classical Academic Press has a site call ClassicalReader.com that has great suggestions. I like how you can search by grade or level or genre. A lot of homeschooling parents also just look at the books for each grade in the Sonlight/Bookshark curriculum for ideas. We used Wayfarers for years, and you can see the entire booklist for each subject if you download the sample from lulu.com.

    If your child isn’t reading yet, you might want to try a reading program. All About Reading is very popular, and I’ve heard a lot of good about Logic of English. They’re both expensive though.

    At our house, we’re having really good luck with First Start Reading from Memoria Press — the first four books and the teacher manual will set you back $42.95 US, so yes, it’s a bit pricier. They’ll get you started, though, and if you decide to switch to another program later on, you can always sell the teacher’s manual and the unused workbooks on homeschool swap sites.

    Even cheaper? I know a few people that simply used the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons quite successfully. It might even be at your library.

    Okay, that’s math, history, and a bit of English. What about science, or geography, or … I don’t know, foreign languages?

    Add them in once you’ve decided what homeschooling style your prefer.

    Step 3: Find out what type of homeschooler you are.

    So how do you figure that out? Quizzes! I can never turn down a good Internet quiz, and I’m happy to have found a couple that I found that will introduce you to different homeschooling styles.

    What Kind of Homeschooler Are You?

    On this quiz from Eclectic-Homeschool.com’s, I scored:

    • Score for Waldorf Education: 9
    • Score for Traditional Education: -6
    • Score for Unit Studies Education: -6
    • Score for Montessori Education: 19
    • Score for Thomas Jefferson Education: -8
    • Score for Unschooling: 5
    • Score for Classical Education: 19
    • Score for Charlotte Mason Education: 15

    Pretty accurate, I think. We started off Waldorf, then moved to Charlotte Mason, and now we use a Classical curriculum. And I’ve always liked those Montessori maps with the flags, though I’m too cheap to buy them.

    The site also includes a Homeschool Philosophies: A Resource List to find out more about the different philosophies, complete with books to check out and blogs to follow. It’s a pretty good list; I’m impressed.

    The Homeschool Style Quiz

    Funny enough, I scored highest for Traditional Homeschooler on the quiz from homeschoolon.com, even though the first quiz scored me a -6 in that style. It’s all for fun though, so take both tests — accurate or not, the results will introduce you to various homeschooling methods.

    Not a quiz person? A third resource that can explain different homeschooling styles is on SimplyCharlotteMason.com — SCM has a brief introduction to five styles of homeschooling (Traditional, Classical, Unschooling, Unit Studies, and Charlotte Mason) post that I found helpful when I started out. Sonya Shafer also offers a free ebook on the SCM website that promises to help you determine which style will suit your family best.

    Personally, I would do it all: download the ebook, take the quizzes, read the descriptions of all the answers, and then decide what ring truest for you (no matter what you score). Something is going to make your heart flutter — go and read more about that method.

    Step 4. Research homeschool curriculums.

    Once you’ve decided on a style, it’s time to pick your curriculum. Google your selected homeschooling style and get ready for a long list of choices. Take your time — remember there’s no rush.

    Once again, I’m big on holding off on a commitment as long as possible. Yeah, this coming from someone that got married at 22. 😛

    My best piece of advice is to download samples from the curriculums that interest you and use those samples until them as long as you can. I can’t count how many times I’ve found the “perfect” (science, always science) curriculum only to find that it just didn’t work well for me or for my kids.

    Some curriculums only give one day’s worth of samples (*shakes fist angrily in the air*), but some give you up to four or even six weeks! Use every last bit of each sample and be sure you love it before handing over your money.

    Don’t feel that you need to commit all at once to an entire program either. When I was considering Memoria Press last year, I simply bought a couple MP books for each of my girls to work through. It gave me a better sense of how we would do with the complete curriculum before diving in. So. Many. Baby steps.

    Overwhelmed? It might be helpful to join a Facebook group or two dedicated to the particular style that you’ve chosen — just do a search like “unit studies homeschool” or “charlotte mason homeschool”. You might want to search for something local to your city or province/state too, if you haven’t already.

    Another option is to check out the curriculum that people around you are using. Homeschooling families are really good about helping each other out, and there might be local moms that will let you come over and flip through a curriculum. They might let you observe their family for a day. They might even let you borrow their books for awhile!

    I’ve also found that homeschooling support groups are a good place to go for advice — the real life, in-person groups more than the online ones. I don’t know why, but I find that people give more honest reviews in person. You know, “I liked this part, but that part was hard” or “My oldest loved it but my youngest hated it because…”. Those honest reviews are available online too, of course, but sometimes they get lost amidst the glowing reviews left by die-hard fanatics.

    Can you Continue to Homeschool for Under $100?

    Can you homeschool for less than $100 in total? I’ve been told that you can, with a really good library near by. There are a few free curriculums online that I know of, like Easy Peasy All-In-One Homeschool, Ambleside Online (Charlotte Mason), and Mater Amabilis (Catholic Charlotte Mason). I haven’t tried them personally, but they all have Facebook groups full of people that can help you get started.

    Personally, I’d rather pay for a solid curriculum. I know that I have limited time and a low stress threshold, so I prefer to have a curriculum that is entirely scheduled out for me. Time is money too, right?

    That being said, I keep things as low cost as I can. I search for used curriculum and I’ve even been know to buy books that I’ll need a year or two down the road. I buy most of my used curriculum on Facebook, but I’ve also had great luck on Kijiji (or Craigslist, which I think is bigger in the US). Some people have found great deals on eBay. Look around, used curriculum is everywhere.

  • The Curriculum that Convinced Me to Try Classical

    I cannot wait to show you the books that I got from Memoria Press last month.

    Prefer video? I posted over on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/unhurriedhome/videos/2501952999830348/

    Disclaimer: Memoria Press sent me a box filled with curriculum to use with my three kids (three?!?!) in exchange for some posts on my blog (yay!). You can trust that all opinions are my own and that my blog posts will be a true reflection of our experience. There will be a few follow-up posts throughout 2018/2019 so that I can share how the curriculum works out for us over the year.

    Right now I’m 100% in the honeymoon phase and I’m madly in love with everything Memoria Press sent.

    My kids are so sick of me gleefully dragging them into the homeschool room to rummage through piles of student workbooks and teacher guides and flashcards. But I can’t help it. Curriculum to a homeschool mom is like coffee to a … homeschool mom. OK, homeschool moms love a lot of things, I guess.

    Wait — Memoria Press? Isn’t that a classical curriculum? If you’ve been following my blog for the last few years, you might be confused. Click on back to my previous post — I wrote about how we started out this past school year with Charlotte Mason, switched over to a living books curriculum right before Christmas, and then discovered Memoria Press in the spring. After reading every last page on their website, I bought a few of their books to try out with my girls and I was so impressed with it all: the glossy covers, the clean layouts, the clear instructions for sleep-deprived parents. And everything just works so well for us — even for Harbour, who has really struggled with school up until this point.

    In fact, before I show you the books that Memoria Press sent me, let me show you the ones that I bought a few months ago. These are the books that ultimately won me over to their curriculum and their educational philosophy.

    Memoria Press Kindergarten

    Harbour has been using the First Start Reading set, the Kindergarten Enrichment Guide, and the Simply Classical Recitation schedule for a couple of months now. I’m delighted with them all.

    First Start Reading by Memoria Press

    There are five student books in the First Start Reading (FSR) series, plus a big teacher’s guide. We are nearing the end of the first book, FSR-A, which focuses mostly on the consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words that have an “a” in the middle. You know: mat, had, nap, etc.

    Honestly, I wasn’t sure about buying yet another reading program. We’d already tried All About Reading, Logic of English, and Reading Lessons Through Literature. They all either got too hard too fast, or the lessons themselves were so long that Harbour literally wandered off before we were even halfway done. Every. Single. Time.

    First Start Reading has been slow and steady and never overwhelming; I can’t think of one single time that Harbour looked at a page in her book and just threw up her hands in defeat — which happened a lot in the past. We are actually making progress, and I can see her getting faster at recognizing words. It’s so exciting.

    We’ll be working with these books straight through the summer. I wanted so badly to be finishing off FSR-D by September, but I know it’s not going to happen. It’s okay though. I’ll simply adjust next years’ curriculum guide to accommodate our progress. We’ll get there eventually.

    Kindergarten Enrichment Guide from Memoria Press

    In addition to First Start Reading, we’ve been using the Kindergarten Enrichment Guide. It is wonderful. It features 34 pictures books and has a week’s worth of lessons to go with each of them. It is absolutely the perfect curriculum for Harbour and I can’t say enough good about it.

    I love the books that we’ve read so far. Some of my favourites have been Hubert’s Hair-Raising Adventure (hilarious), The Important Book (so sweet), and Frederick (charming). Oh, and How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, of course. That book has been a long-time favourite at our house.

    Each week’s lesson plan includes two parts: the literature part and the enrichment guide. Take How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World as an example.

    Part One (the literature part) includes:

    • an overview of the story
    • an introduction to the author and the illustrator, Marjorie Priceman
    • some pre-reading instructions (finding a map and looking up the countries that the baker will visit)
    • vocabulary: 24 words to go over, like “ingredients”, “Sri Lanka”, and “acquaintance”
    • discussion questions about the story and the pictures, complete with asterisks that tell me when to turn the page and how many pages to flip (I love that they do this for me)
    • follow-up questions for after the story is finished
    • a mini-language lesson (noting how proper nouns like country names required capitalization)

    Part Two (the enrichment part) includes:

    • History & Culture – this week is about countries: what they are and how to find them on a globe. There’s also a suggestion to bake an apple pie, which of course we did. By happy coincidence, we canned apples for River’s science lesson on that same day. Tastiest project day ever? I think so!
    • Science – taste a variety of apples and make a tasting graph
    • Art – look at Still Life with Apples by Vincent van Gogh
    • Music – The Star-Spangled Banner. We skipped this one, given that we’re Canadian. I do like how the lesson covered proper etiquette during the anthem.
    • Poetry – The Pledge of Allegiance. Again, we just chose another poem.

    I love how full of ideas the Kindergarten Enrichment Guide is. It doesn’t feel overwhelming to me though. Sometimes I spread the vocabulary across all five days of the week. Sometimes we don’t squeeze in all five enrichment activities. I’m not worried about it, though. I’m just enjoying the richness that this guide has brought to our homeschool. I can’t wait to start on what Memoria Press has planned for us next year.

    Speaking of next year … it’s time to show off the books we’ll be using! Let’s start with my three-year-old. He’ll be turning four in September, right in time to start Junior Kindergarten.

    First, can I just tell you first how ridiculously excited Forest is? On Monday morning, he opened his eyes and insisted that we get started on his school lesson. I mean before he even got out of bed, he was demanding that we do school.

    FOREST (Junior Kindergarten)

    I’ve never used a Junior Kindergarten program before, and I have to laugh because it’s usually the first-time homeschooling moms that buy school books for their JKers. Most moms have given up on a JK “curriculum” by the third kid — they figure that counting worms in the garden is good enough, so please go do that already while I teach your sister long division, okay?!

    Not me, though. I’m bucking the trend and doing JK with my last kiddo instead of my first. No, wait — okay, I did have a few Waldorf-inspired curriculums back when my two girls were younger, but those programs were super relaxed and, well, Waldorf-y: Go outside and play in the rain. Fairy tales are for everyone! Monday is purple. That kind of stuff.

    It was nothing like the books that I have now. These are positively academic in comparison.

    When I showed Forest the books last Friday, he looked at me with wide eyes and said in the most wonder-filled voice you can imagine, “I’ve been looking everywhere for my school books. I didn’t know they’d be in this box.” And then my heart melted and I promised we’d start school once the weekend was done. Which is why he insisted on Monday morning that we get a move on, I guess.

    So why am I using an actual JK curriculum this time around? I discovered that while I’m great at piecing together school lessons on the fly when I’m just teaching just one kid, everything kind of falls apart when I have to teach two. Last year when Harbour started school, I learned that I really need a solid curriculum that does all of the thinking for me for both grades.

    This year I’ll have three kids and I need to have as much planning done for me as possible. I mean, I know that Forest could just skip JK all together, but he wants to do school, and instead of spending two hours a week on Pinterest searching for half-way decent printables, I decided that it’s just easier to have everything done in advance.

    This is what Forest will be using:

    Memoria Press: Junior Kindergarten

    Junior Kindergarten Curriculum Manual
    Alphabet Book 1
    Alphabet Book 2
    Alphabet Coloring Book
    Numbers & Colors Book
    Numbers Coloring Book
    My Very Own Scissors Book

    Forest is absolutely enamoured with the scissors book. I seriously should have bought two because there is no way I’m going to be able to keep it away from him until September.

    Part of me is a teeny bit worried that these books are too advanced for him, but if that’s the case, we’ll just adjust the activities. Instead of writing letters on paper, I’ll have him trace sandpaper letters with his finger, or paint over chalk letters with a paintbrush and water, or shape the letters with playdough. In my mind, Junior Kindergarten is still just for fun, so I’m not going to stress over it.

    Harbour (Grade One)

    Harbour will be doing Grade One in the fall. I seriously debated putting her in the Simply Classical stream, which is a modified curriculum that was created for kids who have learning disabilities. But does she have a learning disability or is she just a late starter? I don’t know yet. After going back and forth, I finally just called the Memoria Press office and spoke with a rep. She recommended that we use the main program until Harbour gets a formal diagnosis because it’s easier to switch from Memoria Press to Simply Classical than it is to go the other way. That’s fine. We’re going to use the Grade One curriculum instead of the Grade Two curriculum, and if I even find that’s too much, I won’t hesitate to slow the schedule down.

    As it stands, we’ll probably be off to a late start with the reading and spelling books anyway. I’m trying to get through the first four First Start Reading books this summer, but I know now that they won’t be finished by September. That’s okay, though. We’ll keep plugging away and eventually things will get done.

    This is what Harbour will be using:

    Memoria Press: Grade One

    I made a few changes from the suggested package. I opted for Copybook I instead of the scheduled Copybook II, because writing is still hard and I’d like to start slower. I also decided to leave cursive until next year.

    Harbour is most excited about the Crafts book; I’m most excited about StoryTime Treasures.

    The Art Cards are really neat too. I think I’ll have to laminate them right away because they’ve already been handled by all three kids and I can see them getting bent and dirty pretty quickly.

    River (Grade Six)

    Forest and Harbour are pretty much using Memoria Press exclusively, but River will only be doing half of her lessons with them. It’s just that she’s doing so well with her current Latin and writing programs, and I don’t want to mess with success. Honestly, I’m a bit bummed about that, because the Memoria Press Latin curriculum looks amazing. Oh well, her Latin is just a two-year program — we can switch over after that. And next year we get to start Greek too!

    The Memoria Press books that we are using this year includes the literature guides, the Famous Men of the Middle Ages, and the Christian Studies II. Normally in Grade Six, students do Christian Studies III, but since we’re just starting out, I thought we should start closer to the beginning. Not right “in the beginning” though — we’ve done Genesis and Exodus at least twice now. It looks like Book II starts with the Israelites going into Canaan with Joshua, and that sounds like a great place to start. I stupidly ordered the wrong flashcards though — oops! I’ll have to order the right ones when I buy more books.

    After seeing the books in person, I’m sold on the idea of doing a few more. I’m considering both geography and science, because I like the content and, more than that, I like the pacing of the programs. The science program we’ve been using is great, but it has a lot to do every day. I need something simpler. Same for geography.

    I’m still making my final decision. For the meantime, this is what we have for River so far:

    Memoria Press: Grade 6

    I am most excited about the literature guides — we haven’t done actual novel studies in homeschooling yet. I’m going to read the four novels over the summer so that I’m ready to discuss them in the fall. I’m guessing that River is going to enjoy Famous Men of the Middle Ages the most, given how much she’s enjoyed Famous Men of Rome recently.

    I wish we could get started right away! To tide me over, I’ll be spending the next three months reading up on Classical Education, pre-reading the River’s literature and history novels, and searching for used copies of the books that Harbour and Forest need for their lessons.

    September feels sooooo far away, though I’m sure it will come quickly. And I can’t wait.

    Love curriculum posts? Me too! Find more over at iHomeschoolNetwork.com:

  • Why We Moved from (Mostly) Charlotte Mason to (Pretty Much Just) Classical

    Why We Moved from (Mostly) Charlotte Mason to (Pretty Much Just) Classical

    I never expected to end up with a classical homeschool curriculum for my kids. I certainly never expected that I would love it so much. But I do. I love talking about the Greeks and Romans and learning Latin and reading old books and I’m so in my homeschool happy place right now.

    A few people have messaged or emailed me to ask why we’ve switched away from Charlotte Mason, and I feel sorry for those people because they always get an absolute novel of a response from me as I work out my own thoughts in the reply.

    Just like the novel you’re going to get here.

    Where We Started:  A Charlotte Mason/Classical Blend

    We’ve used Wayfarers from BarefootMeandering.com for a few years now. It’s a wonderful curriculum and I’ve written several positive reviews about it here on this blog. The one issue I’ve had with the program is that it relies on a Charlotte Mason method of narration to demonstrate comprehension. For my non-homeschooling readers, that just means that my oldest daughter reads a chapter and then tells it back to me as best as she can. I mean, there’s more to it than that — there are full books written about the method — but that’s it in a nutshell.

    I like narration in theory, but it wasn’t working all that well for us at home. And it’s not that my daughter needed practice narrations (save your emails) — she’s really good at it. Her narrations are long and detailed and I’m constantly amazed at the amount of information that she effortlessly absorbs.

    It’s just that already back in Grade 4, I noticed that River was missing key details sometimes, like the name of the country where the novel takes place — a problem if, say, the book is specifically chosen to teach geography.

    I began to wonder what other important details my daughter might be missing. I didn’t know because I wasn’t reading the books myself. I felt a bit uneasy, but we plugged away and finished our year, and then when it was time to pick Grade Five curriculum, we stuck with Wayfarers.

    I like Wayfarers. It’s a blend of Charlotte Mason and Classical styles, with an optional dose of unit studies thrown in. Purists in CM Facebook groups sometimes turn their noses up at anything that blends philosophies, but I’ve never been great at following rules anyway. Charlotte Mason-ish has always been good enough for me.

    Starting Grade Five

    Our school year started off great. The first two days, I mean — when we had an indoor waterpark almost all to ourselves.

    Here’s our first-day-of-school photo:

    Then we got sick, and then we got sicker. Honestly, I’ve never been so sick in my entire life, and that illness lasted a solid six weeks. I actually coughed so violently that at one point I went in for x-rays to make sure that none of my ribs were cracked. Harbour was sick too, though her illness wasn’t as long or severe, and even poor Forest ended up with pneumonia on his third birthday. It was awful.

    That’s all to say that I was feeling a bit frazzled by the time we made it to full school-mode sometime in mid-October. We chugged along awhile, but we were really behind and we were barely keeping up, let alone catching up. What’s more, my doubts about narration returned. I decided that we needed to jump ship and just try something totally different. 

    My thought process went something like this:

    We like Charlotte Mason’s focus on living books.
    ↓
    Is there another curriculum that’s known for great books?
    ↓
    Sonlight. Obviously. Do it already.

    Quickest decision of my life.

    I found someone selling a full Sonlight Core at a ridiculously good price about an hour and a half from home. I took that as a sign and I bought it. (Tip: if you’re selling a like-new Sonlight curriculum online, don’t let your teens price it for you.)

    From Wayfarers to Sonlight

    When I arrived home with my giant box of Sonlight, I immediately pulled out all of the books and spread them around me on the floor.

    WOW.

    Now I know why Sonlighters make such a big deal about “boxing day” — it really does feel like Christmas! Piles and piles of shiny books and a ginormous Instructor Guide with all the questions and answers that I could want!

    We transitioned into the program easily. We had Core G – World History Year 1 of 2, which is designed to move students through Ancient History and Medieval Times in one year. That seemed a bit fast to me, and given that it was the beginning of December at this point, I decided that we would cover just half of the core for this year. Then we could finish the second half next year, or move back to Wayfarers if I was overwhelmed with regret. 

    I wasn’t though. How can I describe Sonlight? It was marvellous. I assigned the readings, and then we worked through the questions in the book. I felt super organized. It was the most stress-free homeschooling we’d ever experienced. Switching to Sonlight was the best thing that I could have done for myself, especially after that rocky start to the year.

    Which makes it all the more surprising that I resold the entire core last month already.

    I know. I didn’t see that coming either.

    Our problem is simply that River doesn’t love historical fiction, and that’s kind of Sonlight’s modus operandi. It’s not that she hated the books, but she didn’t love them. And there were a lot of them. Most of all, River missed the classics that were included in Wayfarers, like Nesbit’s The Book of Dragons or The Secret Garden. I tried to do both, scheduling them on top of the Sonlight books, but it just didn’t work. 

    I started looking around for something halfway between Wayfarers and Sonlight — something that didn’t rely solely on narration to show comprehension, and something that relies on a variety of reading selections rather than just historical fiction.

    Something like Memoria Press.

    From Sonlight to a Classical Homeschool Curriculum

    I’ll be honest — I completely dismissed Memoria Press at first. It’s classical. We’re Charlotte Mason. Classical homeschool curriculums are rigid and inflexible. We’re laid back and awesome. Memoria Press has workbooks with questions that students have to answer. We do narra– oh right.

    So I gave it another look.

    I started reading through the Memoria Press website and I kinda just fell in love with it all. I looked through the Grade Five package to see what my daughter would have been reading this year if we had used their curriculum. I saw The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and Heidi and Lassie. River would have loved that. 

    Then I clicked over to see what Harbour would cover in Grade One, and that’s when Memoria Press won me over.

    Harbour is seven and she would be finishing up Grade One if she went to a traditional school. However, her reading skills are very basic, and her attention span, while improving, is still pretty limited.

    I’ve already decided that she’ll do Grade One again, regardless of the curriculum that we choose. That’s the challenge — which curriculum!? Wayfarers would be way too much for her. Ditto Sonlight. Before finding Memoria Press, I had been leaning towards Five in a Row as a possibility, plus a strong phonics program.

    When I browsed the Memoria Press website, I discovered Simply Classical, a modified classical homeschool curriculum that Memoria Press created specifically for children with learning disabilities. It’s a gentler form of the main curriculum, but it’s no less lovely. I downloaded a copy of the Simply Classical book by Cheryl Lowe and it inspired me to give Harbour an education filled with wonder and beauty, even though it might be at a slower pace and cover less. I don’t have to settle.

    Given that everything looked so promising, I ordered a couple books to try out. I ordered First Start Reading A (FSR-A) and the Kindergarten Enrichment Guide, and I love them both. I also purchased the Simply Classical Level 1 (SC1) recitation schedule, and I’m surprised that I like that part of her school day. No, really. It’s nice to start off in the morning by reciting a prayer, a Bible verse, and then facts. Harbour can now list off her address and phone number, how many letters are in the alphabet, how many types and forms of letters there are, what the five vowels are, and right now we’re working on the seven continents. I don’t know who’s more proud when she recites her facts — me or her. It’s been so good for her confidence. 

    I will write more about the reading program and the enrichment guide, I promise. (Update: I did! Click here!) Just know for now that they gave Harbour and me a fresh start with her school and I can’t wait to start Grade One in the fall.  

    With the success of Harbour’s books, I decided to go ahead and order a book to try out with River. I bought the Famous Men of Rome books, which was perfect, really. We had begun our year with Wayfarers learning about Ancient Mesopotamia, we covered Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece with Sonlight, and we’d finish up doing Ancient Rome with Memoria Press.

    I had no wild delusions of getting through everything by the end of June — this set is meant to be used over a whole year and I bought the books in April. However, I thought reading even part of it with River would give me a good idea of what a year of Memoria Press would look like.

    River really resisted the book at first, but it wasn’t the book itself. She loves the Greek myths so much that she was personally offended that the Romans stole their stories and renamed their gods. It didn’t take long for the epic stories to draw her in though, and I know she’s thoroughly enjoying it. We’re doing the workbook out loud, given our short time frame, and her answers to the questions are long and animated. There’s also a lot of, “oh, but listen to this part too” and “mom, you have to hear this.” I can’t believe I ever thought these books were dry and boring.

    I could never have imagined back in September that we’d be sold on a classical homeschool curriculum by the end of the year. It’s not the philosophy that won us over at first — it was the various high-quality curriculums that drew us in. Classical Academic Press introduced us to Latin, and now we use their Writing & Rhetoric series for composition. Latin is now through Visual Latin, and I’m pretty sure it’s River’s favourite subject, thanks to the teacher, Dwane Thomas. Memoria Press is our newest curriculum discovery, and it’s the one that’s officially pulled us over to the classical side. I wonder, though, if Wayfarers isn’t a bit responsible, nudging us down the classical path this whole time.

    Want to know more about the books we’re using from Memoria Press for our classical homeschool curriculum? Click on over to my next post to see all the AMAZING books that Memoria Press sent us.

    Don’t miss another post! Sign up for my newsletter here. 

    Why We're Switching from Charlotte Mason to a Classical Homeschool Curriculum

     

  • Using Scent to Create Daily Rhythm

    I love the idea of gently guiding children through a daily homeschooling routine using more than just words. For example, parents could use essential oils to reinforce a daily rhythm by picking one or two blends and briefly diffusing them at the same time each day. 

    Do you use essential oils?

    I love them because (a) they make my house smelly pretty and (b) very few of them give me a headache or a sore throat, unlike the standard scented stuff you find in most stores. I can’t even walk down the detergent aisle of my grocery store without feeling lightheaded. Heaven help me if I actually need to find something in that aisle — my throat feels all scratchy by the time I escape to the frozen foods. My kids are the same way. It’s funny — in my more sleep-deprived moments, I feel almost guilty for not inundating them with chemical scents because they aren’t building up a tolerance to them. But of course, that’s ridiculous.

    After years of making sure that every product I buy is scent-free, it’s nice to live in a home that smells beautiful again. In fact, at one point I was so enamoured with essential oils, I decided to become a certified aromatherapist. Of course, if I knew that home parties with MLMs were about to take off, I would have skipped the schooling and signed up with doTerra or Young Living instead. It didn’t matter though — I was too busy doing 100 other things to either finish the aromatherapy courses or offer home parties.

    Our Sense of Smell is Powerful

    Did you know that your sense of smell is tied to your memory? I’m sure you’ve had it where you catch a scent and suddenly you’re far, far away for — just a second?

    I get that sometimes when I smell the smoke of a wood burning stove on a cold winter day: suddenly I’m walking across a bridge at Christmas time in a small town in the south of the Czech Republic. The memory is there for maybe a fraction of a second — vividly — and then it’s gone.

    Our sense of smell is powerful.

    Recently I’ve been thinking about how parents can harness that power by using essential oils as part of their homeschooling routine. Just the simple act of choosing one or two blends and briefly diffusing them at the same time each day could create a subtle but memorable cue. I love the idea of gently guiding children through a daily routine using more than just our words.

    It’s kind of like how I use different styles of music throughout the day to reinforce our daily rhythm: we play classical during lesson time because it helps us focus, but then we play contemporary (ok, Disney. OK, Disney Princess hits.) in the afternoon while we do our chores and we want something energetic.

    You can use oils in the same way.

    Essential Oils as Part of a Homeschooling Routine

    Imagine this. It’s about time to start school and you want the kids to get ready. Sure, the smell of coffee might get you up and moving, but your kids might respond better to something else. What if five minutes before you call them, you diffuse something bright and citrusy? Just for a few minutes, each and every morning. That way when you do call them to the couch or the table, it won’t be (as much of) a surprise. I don’t know about your kids, but mine seem shocked that we have to do school again. Like, every single day.

    Or how about this: do you do a quiet time in the afternoon? I’m so jealous — I can’t ever make quiet time stick on our schedule. But if I did have a quiet time, I might set the mood by diffusing something relaxing, like lavender. I remember when my oldest daughter attended a Waldorf kindergarten, the teacher put lavender lotion on each child’s hands at rest time. It was such a sweet and gentle way of calming the kids down, and I’m sure that the scent of the lavender had a powerful effect over time.

    We do our family chore time in the afternoon. We have essential oils in our cleaners, so I don’t bother diffusing. But if I did (and I’m including this because I know that there are people out there who read the ingredients of essential oil blends the way other people read novels), I would pick Germ Destroyer from Plant Therapy; it has Spruce Hemlock, Marjoram Sweet, Lavender, Rosalina, and Lemon. I actually diffuse that one a lot, because I love the way it smells.

    Bedtime is another great time that you could choose to diffuse. If you have a child that has a hard time transitioning from playtime to bedtime, you could pick an oil that’s calming and just let the air fill up with the subtle scent of nighttime.

    My only caution is that you research your oils before diffusing them because some oils aren’t safe for younger children. I’m actually pretty lazy in that respect, so I order my oils from Plant Therapy. Plant Therapy puts “KidSafe” right on the label when their essential oil blends are safe to use around kids ages 2 – 10 years old — that way I’m not second guessing myself when I diffuse oils in my perma-sleep deprived state.

    Once you’ve selected your oils, you don’t need to make a big deal about using them. Just pick the time of day that you want to use an essential oil to reinforce a mood and then diffuse it. I wouldn’t even say anything out loud. Over time, I’m betting that the kids will catch the scent in the air and sense that it’s time to be alert or quiet or tired. It’s all about creating subtle cues throughout the day that help guide your children.

    Want some more ideas on how to gently introduce a rhythm into your homeschooling routine? Check out the other posts in my series:

    Five Laid-Back Ways to Add Structure to your Homeschool Days

    Check out the rest of the iHN Hopscotch posts here…

  • A Homeschool Uniform

    This week I’m posting five different laid-back ways to add structure to your homeschooling life. Today, I’m suggesting that you embrace a homeschool uniform.

    Wait — really?

    Honestly, it’s not something I ever would have come up with myself, but last year my oldest daughter River told me that she would like to have a homeschool uniform.

    You couldn’t have paid me to wear a uniform when I was in fifth grade.

    River insisted, though. She said that a uniform would make her mornings easier because she wouldn’t have to decide what to wear. Then she said that a uniform would make her lessons feel more like “real” school. And then she said that some of her friends wear a uniform when they homeschool and she thinks that’s neat.

    It’s true. One of my favourite homeschooling friends has her kids doing school work in full uniform at her dining room table each morning before I even have all three of my kids out of bed. She’s kind of my hero.

    When I asked her why her kids have uniforms, she told me that it helps her kids distinguish between school time and free time. She also likes that her kids look like they’re in private school and so they get fewer questions when they go out during school hours. The final bonus is that the clothes double as “fancy” clothes when the kids need to get dressed up.

    Makes sense. But choosing a homeschool uniform doesn’t really feel “laid-back”, does it? I think it could be —  but first, we need to let go of our ideas of what a uniform has to be.

    We don’t have to put our kids in a collared white shirt buttoned right up to the top, and we don’t have to put our kids in navy blue jumpers (even though they would look super cute). Homeschool uniforms can be absolutely anything we want them to be.

    For example, last year, after hearing that some homeschooling moms use a family uniform on field trips, I thought I would give it a try. I picked tie-dye. I thought that the brightly-coloured shirts would make my family stand out in a sea of kids at a busy science centre. It worked, kind of. But then my middle child wandered off into another room entirely, and even a shirt made of fluorescent tubes wouldn’t have helped me see her once there were several concrete walls between us. Next time I’m just going to stick one of those Tile Mate key finders on each of my kids. That will be our uniform.

    Just like my tie-dyed shirts, your uniform can be anything that you want it to be. It could be a plain white t-shirt with your school motto ironed on the front. Or, better yet, your Hogwarts house motto. In Latin, of course. To be extra pretentious.

    Like this.

    Hey, I’d wear that.

    Or maybe you’re not into Latin or random Harry Potter references for some reason. You could go even less formal and just pick some pyjamas that are different from the ones your kids sleep in. No judgment here. The idea is simply that you have a set of clothing that you specifically associate with school time.

    Another thought: why not try a uniform of sorts for yourself, the homeschooling parent? You could embrace the idea of a “mom uniform” that was all the rage seven years ago, or you could take a cue from Waldorf teachers and wear something like a simple apron during school time.

    I actually have one of those waldorf-y aprons. It’s in tatters because the straps got caught on the agitator in my washing machine, but I refuse to throw it away. I love it. I have every intention of sewing another six or seven of them once I find a pattern that I like as much. Goodness knows I have enough linen in my stash.

    I don’t know what it is about that apron, but when I put it on, I immediately feel more patient and kind. I know that sounds crazy, but I’m not the only person to notice this. In a post called The Kindergarten Apron, Waldorf teacher Annie Porter writes:

    “An apron can also influence the posture, attitude, and warmth of the teacher, influencing the manner in which he or she moves in the circle, sits at the table, walks, stands, and interacts with other adults. This is an interesting experiment that each teacher can try, as an exercise in self-observation.”

    She also writes,

    “I have also found that the simple act of putting on my apron is a step in my morning routine that helps me prepare myself for teaching. In donning the mantle of the kindergarten teacher, I am physically enacting the meditation

    Dear God,
    Make it so
    That as far as my personal ambitions are concerned,
    I may completely extinguish myself,
    And Christ make true in me
    The words of Saint Paul:
    ‘Not I, but Christ in me,’
    That the holy spirit may dwell in the teacher,
    This is the true threefoldness.“

    I love this meditation. The act of putting on an apron or whatever uniform you choose can change your frame of mind and influence your children.

    OK, really at this point I might just be trying to justify buying another apron from Etsy. I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to think that I’m doing my children an injustice by not having a few of them. Right?

    I suppose that if I do that, I’ll have to give in and let River have a uniform as well.

    What about you? Do your kids wear a uniform? Do you? How has it helped your homeschooling days?

    Check out the rest of the iHN Hopscotch posts here…

  • How Meal Planning Helps Anxious Kids

    This week I’m writing about simple ways that you can add structure to your homeschooling life.

    Look. I know that children — my children — thrive on structure, but as a hopelessly disorganized homeschooling mom, I struggle to give my kids that structure that they crave. It doesn’t come naturally to me.

    If my kids went to school, routine would be imposed on our home from the outside in. For example, if my kids went to school, they’d need to be out the door by 8:30 am, and they’d need to eat their lunch at lunch time. They’d need to do their homework before dinner, and they’d need to be in bed by 9:00 at the absolute latest.

    One of the joys of homeschooling, though, is that we can do things when and where we please. That makes me happy, but at the same time, that lack of structure can feel like chaos to kids who crave familiarity and security.

    Ugh. I mentioned that this doesn’t come naturally to me, right?

    Given that, I try to look for easy, doable ways that will infuse our lives with little bits of structure. And you know what I discovered? Creating a seven-day meal plan that we use over and over and over is one of the very most effective and beneficial ways that I can bless my whole family with predictability. Why?

    • I waste less time trying to figure out what on earth I’m going to cook that’s going to please at least one of my children.
    • I can spend money more wisely when I’m buying the same products more consistently.
    • My husband can see what’s coming and plan secret trips out to McDonald’s accordingly. (Honestly, how does anyone not like quinoa???)
    • The kids feel so much better when they know what’s coming ahead of time.

    That last point is key.

    Predictability

    Meal times are really, really stressful for us sometimes, and even just knowing which three meals are scheduled for the day allows my kids to feel a bit more in control.

    Back when River was preparing for her Celiac test, I made a seven-day breakfast and lunch menu that we repeated for six weeks. It was amazing. Normally meals in our home include a good dose of negotiation because no one ever wants what I’m making. Ever. Not even waffles from scratch with homemade whipped cream. But when I put a 7-day menu plan on the fridge, my kids were far more willing to eat the foods that were listed. I think that the reason was two-fold: they could see that their favourites were coming up soon, which made eating the lesser loved food more tolerable, and there were fewer surprises at the table, which meant fewer explosions.

    I loved that breakfast/lunch schedule. Unfortunately, we abandoned it when River started her gluten-free diet again — it was too hard to come up with fourteen different wheat-free meal ideas, and it was too depressing to list scrambled eggs every other day.

    I’m not a scrambled eggs fan.

    We still eat a LOT of scrambled eggs.

    It’s really time for me to do another list up. I generally like to do a solid four weeks at a time, but last year I did a meal plan to last all of 2017. 365 days. It was pretty great, when I used it. But then at some point in the year, we switched to a mostly vegetarian diet and all that meal planning went right out the window. Womp, womp.

    Structure in a Meal Plan

    On Monday’s introductory post, I mentioned that River went to a Waldorf school where they served the same exact food each day of the week. I looked it up and the schedule is as follows:

    Sunday: Wheat
    Monday: Rice
    Tuesday: Barley
    Wednesday: Millet
    Thursday: Rye
    Friday: Oats
    Saturday: Corn

    I know homeschooling Waldorf families that serve their kids a bowl of grains every day, following this schedule. That’s a pretty neat way to infuse the week with a sense of rhythm.

    Of course, we can’t follow this list to the letter because of River’s gluten-free diet, but I do find it helpful nonetheless in my own planning. I’ve been trying to do more baking for her using a variety of grains. So Monday we might eat rice with dinner, and then Tuesday I could bake a loaf with almond flour. On Wednesday I can make a flat-bread using soaked brown rice and millet, and on Thursday I can just use our favourite store-bought blend that uses chickpea flour and a mix of starches. Friday is oatmeal in the Instant Pot, Saturday might be cornbread (okay, probably corn chips) and Sunday might be quinoa. I like how having a weekly grain schedule reminds me not to rely on one or two grains for all of our meals.

    Want to keep it even simpler? Just do Taco Tuesdays or Friday Pizzas. Sunday Sundaes, even. Anything that creates a regular routine is helpful for kids that crave structure in their lives.

    I’m planning to bring the structured weekly meal plans back this month now that I know enough meat-free meals to fill out a schedule. But between you and me, I’m probably going to ditch making breakfasts from scratch for a while. I’m absolutely burning out, cooking three meals from scratch every day for picky eats that are just as likely to reject everything that I make. I’m just going to write in Cheerios on the meal plan for every single morning, and as long as we don’t post photos of our breakfast on Instagram, I don’t think anyone will know. 😉

    Find more ways to add structure to your homeschool days each day this week with my contribution to the iHomeschool Network’s 5 Day Hopscotch: Five Laid-Back Ways to Add Structure to your Homeschool Days

    Check out the rest of the iHN Hopscotch posts here…

  • Use Music to Give Your Homeschool Days a Rhythm

    Until River was about 3 or 4, we played the CBC on our radio pretty much all day long. (The CBC is Canada’s public broadcaster, like the BBC in Britain.) I was working on a degree in Political Science at the time, and I liked to keep on top of what was happening in the world. And, quite frankly, I preferred CBC’s shows to Raffi or Sharon, Lois and Bram. I’m just not a fan of Baby Baluga, I guess.

    But as River got older, I realized that the radio wasn’t appropriate anymore. OK, I didn’t so much “realize” it — more River herself told me that she hated the radio: “it’s always about someone dying or killing someone else.” Yikes. Just hand me my worst-mother-of-the-year award already.

    These days I’m far more mindful of what we having playing in the background, and now the music we play intentionally reinforces the overall structure of our day.

    Morning: Classical Music

    For example, I still listen to the CBC in the morning, but I switch to classical when school starts. When the classical music is playing, I find that I’m less distracted and I focus on my kids better. I like that the kids are exposed to wonderful music, and both my girls have told me that they enjoy it.

    My first choice for music is CBC Radio 2, which runs the program Tempo every day from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm. The host Julie Nesrallah shares interesting tidbits of information before each piece of music, and I really do enjoy both the music and her stories. In fact, there have been several times that I’ve gone to switch the station back to Radio 1 when the kids aren’t home, and I find myself standing in front of the radio, unwilling to change the station because the music is just too beautiful.

    Of course, there are days when I’m not comfortable with the radio playing at all. CBC Radio 2 still has regular news updates, and if the news is particularly frightening on any one day, I switch over to Spotify. Finding a good playlist is so easy on Spotify — I just pick a composer from the classical music section and we’re treated to their greatest hits.

    Afternoon: Contemporary Music

    As school wraps up in the afternoon, we switch from classical to other styles of music. Often, I let CBC Radio 2 handle this transition for me with the show Shift with Tom Allen; it starts out playing classical and then gradually moves to more contemporary styles of music. By the time I hear Arcade Fire or Mumford & Sons, I know that we’re done school for the day.

    When we’re doing family chores, I like to switch the music to something more energetic. Spotify has some really fun playlists — I’m a fan of the Electro Swing one in particular. My kids usually pick a Disney playlist if I give them the choice, and I’d be fine with that if only they’d let me sing along at the top of my lungs. Bathrooms are more fun to clean when you’re singing along with the Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast.

    You guys, can I just tangent* for a minute and say how much I LOVE Spotify? I asked you on my Facebook page a year or two ago if it was worth paying for a subscription given that you can just use it for free (with ads). Every single person that responded told me that they loved their subscription so I signed up for a trial and never looked back. I just pay by the year now.

    I love that Spotify makes different playlists for me based on what I listen to most. I love that I can find custom playlists for pretty much anything. I love that there are separate playlists for Advent and for Christmastime and for Lent and for Easter. I love that there is a playlist called Folk for Kids — Charlotte Mason homeschoolers: you’ll want to bookmark that one. I love when companies like Memoria Press use Spotify to enhance their curriculum. I love that there was a playlist called Happy 90s and that every song on it made me feel so, so happy. And so, so old.

    *Tangent. It’s a verb now. As of today.

    Evening: Jazz Music

    I keep the fun music on right until dinnertime, and then, when I remember, I switch the music over to jazz. This Jazz – Classical Crossover playlist here is a favourite.

    Bedtime: Lullabies

    Until recently, bedtime was cued with music too. I set my computer to automatically play the lullaby Stay Awake every night at 7:00. You probably know the song — it’s a cover of the song from Mary Poppins by the Innocence Mission (Now This Day Is Over). Every night when I heard the song play, I would remember to get Forrest ready for bed. I’m terrible with time, especially when I’m tired. Hearing the song was such a help, and far less annoying than an alarm.

    Harbour had a song too: Always from the album Blink by Plumb. It’s quite possibly the sweetest mom-to-child song ever? I don’t know, the whole album is lovely, and Harbour loved that song in particular.

    Stay Awake at 7:00 and Always at 8:00. The songs actually drove my family crazy, especially when they were watching Netflix and the music started up. I didn’t care though — I liked having an audible reminder to send the kids to bed, and I think it was a peaceful way to signal bedtime. I only stopped them recently because my computer is old and grumpy and the auto-tasks slowed it down too much.

    Classical to contemporary to jazz to lullabies. I don’t know that my kids even realize that the music they hear in the background is intentional, but I believe that it affects them subconsciously. It also helps give that extra bit of structure to a day without making me feel bored myself.

    Find more ways to add structure to your homeschool days each day this week with my contribution to the iHomeschool Network’s 5 Day Hopscotch: Five Laid-Back Ways to Add Structure to your Homeschool Days

    Check out the rest of the iHN Hopscotch posts here…

     

  • Five Laid-Back Ways to Add Structure to your Homeschool Days

    Do you pick a “word of the year” each January? I tried it last year, and my word was STRUCTURE. It was a good word, I think. In fact, it was such a good word that I made it my word of the year this year too. And I fully intend to do it again next year.

    Structure can imply rhythm when I’m in a hippy-dippy “our days need a flow” mood.

    Structure can mean schedules for when I’m in a “get organized or I’m going to go insane” mode.

    Structure can mean rules for when I’m in a “leave your muddy boots in the middle of the kitchen floor one more time and you won’t be seeing the outdoors again until June” kind of mood.

    Structure incorporates the spiritual disciplines and the church calendar that I am currently fascinated by.

    Structure means less brain power wasted on everyday decisions.

    And, if MagnaTiles wants to throw me a little money, I’m happy to make “structure” include the awesome buildings that my kids have created with their favourite new toy. Just sayin’.

    I’ve never been good at structure. To be honest, I’m not big on doing the same things over and over and over again. I’m the kind of person that can’t stand driving home the same way twice.

    I didn’t realize how much my kids craved structure until I attended a Parent and Child program at the local Waldorf school with River when she was two or three. The teacher told us that kids like the security of a routine, which is why we ate the same snack each week and read the same stories each week and sang the same songs each week — always in the exact same order. I scoffed. My kid was going to hate it. It certainly wasn’t the way things were done at the city-run Mother Goose mornings or the libraries’ toddler book clubs or our church’s Sunday School program.

    But little River LOVED it. She loved knowing exactly what to expect each time, and if we so much as sang out a song out of order, she was the first one to correct us. None of the kids at Parent and Child were bored at all.

    I wish that I had taken that lesson and enthusiastically applied it at home, but like I said, I’m not good with repetition. I’m trying to do better, though. I can see how my kids eat it up when I add a bit of extra structure here and there. And I have to admit, the more I embrace a regular schedule or rhythm, the smoother our days become.

    Structure Prevents Decision Fatigue

    It makes sense, of course. Having a structure in place frees up your mind for other important tasks. Like figuring out where your three-year-old hid your seven-year-old’s Easter candy. I’m sure we’ll find it any day now.

    Did you know that when Obama was president of the US, he wore pretty much the same thing every day? It was all about cutting back on the number of decisions he had to make each day. He said, “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”

    And yeah, my daily decision to wash either a load of towels or a pile of diapers is clearly less important than what any POTUS needs to deal with, but I’m just as susceptible to “decision fatigue” as anyone else. What will the kids wear, and what will we eat for breakfast? What will we do this morning? How much TV should the kids watch? Will we have a snack while we’re out? What should we do for breakfast? Or lunch? Or supper?

    Coming up with a set of rules and routines in advance helps eliminate so much of the day-to-day decision making. It’s also strangely helpful in parenting, as my kids seem to accept what’s written on an official schedule taped to the wall more readily than what comes out of my mouth.

    All this week, I’ll be posting pain-free ways to add rhythm to your home. None of these things make me want to pull my hair out, but together they give my kids a sense of structure and safety.

    Monday: Add Structure to your Day with Music
    Tuesday: How Meal Planning Helps Homeschooling Kids
    Wednesday: Why You Should Try a Homeschool Uniform
    Thursday: Using Essential Oils as Part of your Homeschooling Routine
    Friday: An Easier Way to Assign Chores

    I’m not good with repetition. I’m trying to do better, though. I can see how my kids eat it up when I add a bit of extra structure here and there. And I have to admit, the more I embrace a regular schedule or rhythm, the smoother our #homeschool days become.

    Check out the rest of the iHN Hopscotch posts here…

  • Wayfarers + ELTL: STILL My Picks for our Charlotte Mason-Inspired Homeschool

    Update (April 29): Intersted in Wayfarers and ELTL? I’m writing a review of the year RIGHT NOW. Join my Facebook page to be notified when it’s published.

    Last week my nine-year-old asked when we’d be starting school again.

    “Why, are you ready now?” I asked, half-jokingly.

    “Yes.” she replied, dead serious.

    My first thought was: “but I haven’t even done my 2017/2018 curriculum pick post yet!”, followed immediately by: “the house is way too messy to do lessons in!” But how do you say no to a child that’s ready to learn? I knew I had to get my butt in gear, so I picked the easier of the two tasks.

    Welcome to my 2017/2018 Curriculum Pick post.

    Now you might be nervous because you remember that last year’s post was an insane seven pages long. This post is actually more pages — but it’s purely for ease of navigation. I promise you that I used far fewer words this year. Just the good ones.

    A quick introduction: River is almost 10 and she is going into Grade 5. Harbour is 6.5 and she is starting Grade 1. Forest will be 3 soon, and mostly I’m just trying to keep him from painting the walls while I’m teaching the other two. For the purposes of this post, I’ll just call that “preschool”.

    The vast majority of our curriculum is from Barefoot Ragamuffin: English Lessons Through Literature, Reading Lessons Through Literature, Handwriting Lessons Through Literature, Pathways, and Wayfarers: Ancient History. You could say I’m a fan. You can read up on why I love ELTL in my post Adding Poetry to Our Day, and you can read a more detailed introduction to Wayfarers in my Curriculum Picks of 2016/2017 post.

    Jump Ahead: Our Curriculum Pick for 2017/2018

    Introduction
    Math    : Beast Academy and RightStart
    Language Arts: Barefoot Ragamuffin and Brave Writer curriculums
    History: Wayfarers: Ancient History
    Geography: Wayfarers: Ancient History
    Science: Science in the Ancient World
    Bible: Episcopal Children’s Curriculum
    Foreign Languages: Speaking French with Miss Mason and François and Latin for Children
    Miscellaneous: Wayfarers: Ancient History

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