Mid-Semester Check-In

It is time for a mid-semester check-in. I don't know if any of you homeschool like I do, but by the time I get to the midsemester, I have usually chunked half of my choices, and added in another set of new ideas. Sometimes it is curricular, sometimes it is scheduling, sometimes extras. We are in our eleventh week of school for the '09-'10 schoolyear.

Some things I like:
Tapestry of Grace, Y1, Ancients. A combo of the dialectic and upper grammar level is just what ME needs, including alot of higher order thinking, reading, and summaries. I have been making mini-books for her to lapbook, and we completed her first one. The thinking and accountability questions are perfect for making lapbooks. Lapbooks have become an important part of her therapy, since she does not visualize color or shape.

Daily Paragraph Editing, 6th grade

Daily Geography, 1st grade (we do it one time a week)

Mini-luk for pre-logic- all three of my schoolers are required to do mini-luk at least one time per week. They think it is a game. I bought mine from www.timberdoodle.com

Some things I don't like:
Trying to combine Story of the World with TOG for the little people. My little ones think they should have a read aloud everyday and do something hands-on everyday for what they heard. I don't like many of the TOG choices for lower grammar, and I don't feel there is enough reading for LG.

Not fitting in Science for my first grade science lover. Note, mom is not a science lover so this could be the problem.

What I plan to change:
I have decided to do a broad brush-stoke overview of the Ancients for EJ and LG. This means I will pick and choose what books to read from TOG. I will continue to let them listen to SOTW on CD. Then I am going to also do American History for Primary Grades with the Rea Berg guide and Beautiful Feet Books. I know, I know, I am mixing metaphores, from Ancients to American history, but, it drives me crazy that my first grader has no frame of reference for anything American. This is just cultural literacy. Plus we are hoping to go to Williamsburg, et.al, this spring and I want her to have an idea of what is going on.

We are beginning the Great Science Adventures by Zike and Simpson. Hopefully this will meet the first graders need for science and creating, as this is a lapbook based science program. I let her choose from the eight books and she chose Discovering Earth's Landforms.

Spell to Write and Read is still a part of our family, but I have decided that I am going to continue teaching EJ until we have gotten to the section where she has learned all the phonograms and words up to that level and then I am STOPPING. I know that is not how the curriculum was written, but I dislike giving up 45minutes of my day per child for this program. It is very effective, but not designed for multi-level families. I feel such a relief to know we will probably be done by Christmas. For language arts then, I will require much reading aloud from EJ, combined with copywork and writing. I plan on retesting EJ in the fourth grade to see where the holes are, and at that point we can pick up SWR if needed.

So that is my mid-semester philosophizing, what's your plan??