Mid-Year Curriculum Tweaks 2014-2015

While I'm not an advocate for hopping from one curriculum to the next in a speed-dating dump-and-move-on style, I do believe that sometimes what seems like the "perfect-for-us" curriculum in September, shows itself to be not-so-perfect by late fall. Often tweaks need to be made and in rare cases, a PLAN B needs to be purchased. 

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To be honest, I don't think I've ever had a curriculum that needed to be completely scrapped. I've always tried to at least salvage parts. This year, proved to be a first however...I pretty much abandoned an entire curriculum...well, most of it anyway.

Midway through the year, I've made one major change and a few minor tweaks. And here they are...

Bible

Greased Lightning received the Jesus Storybook Bible for his Gift of Myrrh this Christmas and both he and The Newbie have been using it for their morning devotions ever since. The older three children and I each take turns throughout the week to read them one story from this new Bible at the start of each day.

Morning "Circle Time"

What we were doing

We began the year diligently learning sign language during our morning "circle time" using several books that we rotated in and out from the library. But, after awhile it just seemed like our time would be better spent elsewhere. 

What we're doing now

We still continue to do all of the other activities that I had originally planned for our morning time, but we end our "circle" slightly sooner. Then, we all grab our current "just for fun" book, spread out around the living room, and read...including momma. (I realized that if I truly thought reading was important, I needed to give it an important time slot in our day. I didn't want "extra" reading to be delegated to "extra" time. I felt that was giving reading a not-as-important ranking. Reading for pleasure shouldn't be an add-on to the day. It should be the core of the day. If I can ignite a love of reading in each of my kids, they will be able to learn with or without me. And isn't that one of the primary goals of home education? To breed life-long learners?)

We usually read for about fifteen minutes and then go around the room and share a little bit about the book we are currently reading or decided to read THAT day...the characters, the plot, the themes, the genre (We've had great discussion about what the word genre means and were able to add it to our GREAT Vocabulary Challenge just before Christmas.)

Quick side note: In addition to this early morning reading time, the kids still have to read a "Mom-assigned book" sometime in the day. You can learn more about how I select the books and what this reading time looks like here>>>

Science

I breezed through our first-semester of Creation Science: Dinosaurs. Then, I was faced with the mammoth (no pun intended) task of teaching Simple Machines using a homespun unit of living literature-style books, videos, and Lego Eduction: Simple and Motorized Mechanisms.

The books, I understood. The videos, I completed had a handle on. The Legos? Sadly, as the mother of five Lego-loving kids, I have no idea how to build anything...as in A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G...out of Legos. I didn't have them as a kid. I've never played with them as an adult. Sad, but true.

When faced with the thought of not only having to help my kids build things out of Legos, but also help them build moving mechanisms out of battery-operated Legos, I panicked and differed to the master lego builder...The Hubs. It was decided in a very democratic, "Here! You do it!" kind of way that The Hubs would spend every Monday night doing the Lego project activities with the kids. I host a women's prayer time/Bible study at our house each Monday night which provides the perfect time for the kids to have dad time. He loves doing it. They love doing it. And I absolutely love NOT doing it!

History

What we were doing

As was my original plan, I started the year with Tapestry of Grace Year 1, Unit 4 (Roman History). This was a brand new endeavor for us. (Up until this year, we had always used Truth Quest history and had loved it!) In an effort to find a curriculum that would grow with my children and be a bit more multi-level-learning-friendly, I decided to try out TOG.

I wanted to love it. Honestly, I did. 

But, I just couldn't. 

We struggled through it for about a month until one day I had a what-was-I-thinking moment and decided to pull the plug.

I still believe it to be a really good curriculum. It just wasn't good for us. At least not in this season. I've kept the rather pricy teacher's manual and will maybe revisit the idea in a few years when I have high schoolers. (Please see my full review of TOG for further details of its pros and cons.)

What we're doing now

I spent the better part of a weekend in late September writing out my own Ancient Rome unit study that will take us all the way through the end of the year. With the help of The Usborne Encyclopedia of the Ancient World, I divided Ancient Rome up into the following six time frames:

• Early Rome
• The Roman Republic
• The Birth of an Empire
• Everyday Roman Life
• The Birth & Life of Christ
• The Early Church
• The End of an Empire

I used the Truth Quest Ancient Rome guide, the TOG Roman Unit guide, and a handful of resources that we already owned and compiled a list of books, videos, and projects in chronological order. We have been slowly working our way through my homespun history guide and are loving it! 

Art

We spent the first half of the year doing weekly art projects from my Art Ideas Pinterest Board and working our way through a few of the video lessons on my Art Tutorials youtube Playlist. That was working just great! But after viewing a few of the free lessons offered by Home Art Studio, I decided to try out the entire third grade course. Since we do art together, I thought the third grade video lessons would present a nice middle-of-the-road skill level. And they have. 

PLAN Bs are always difficult. Change is always difficult. But, in the end, each one of the changes I've made to our curriculum, no matter how great or small, have helped to create a more perfect-for-us school year.