Well, we are 5 weeks into our school year and already a week behind. :) I say that, but, we aren't really a week behind. I label all of our schedules, routines, assignment sheets by number days (day 1, day 2, day 3...) not Monday, Tuesday.. This way, should we for some reason miss a day of work, we can just pick up with the next day and not worry about, "uh-oh, we need to make up Tuesday's work before we can do Wednesday's." Does that make sense?
We've had some family illness, a grandpa with quadruple bypass (yikes!) and a couple other unforeseen shenanigans occur. That's life, right?
Just like every other homeschool mom out there, I am constantly trying to maximize our curriculum. By that , I don't mean that I want to keep biggering and biggering. I want each thing we use to be effective for as many children as possible.
We have had to scrap Chemistry and resort to Biology (Abeka). Oscar just wasn't ready for all the math in Chemistry. Honestly, we are all a lot less stressed now that we aren't dealing with it. The Biology, by the way, I came upon for free about 3 months ago. I was given a bunch of Abeka stuff for high schoolers. I figured at some point he would be doing Biology so I hung onto the student text, tests, and test key. I never had the teacher guide. Well, guess what? The time has come! And what's more, my mother (who homeschools her younger children-I will explain that one later) had a copy of the teachers guide for the exact text I got for free! I now have a complete Biology curriculum that I paid nothing for! How did this happen? What luck, right? Wrong. God knew I was going to need it. He provided for my needs before even knew I had them. :) Isn't it great to see the Lord work?
We have also scrapped the BJU English for him. We are using Rod and Staff English 5, which equates to about 7.5 grade. It's teaching the exact same things but with much better wording. He is understanding so much more and understanding it fully- which he wasn't doing with the confusing BJU lingo.
We have also implemented A Child's Geography- Exploring the Holy Land. It was already Julia's geography but I have made adaptations for Oscar. We use the book as the spine but check out extra books, videos, and make recipes according to the region. We are currently studying Turkey. Troy was in Turkey. Which opens up the doors to the Odyssey and that trilogy, Sparta, (yes I know that is more Greece, but same region, right?), and many other things. We will be spending loosely about a month on each country. Maps, culture, people- we are going to take a look at it all- in a relaxed manner of course. I've learned my lesson in overzealousness. Can we say exhaustion?
So, there are the major changes. Do you stick with your curriculum from the get go or change it up as you go?
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