This was our first year of formal homeschooling lessons. For the most part, the children were willing to participate in the lessons each day. Our days had a very loose rhythm, but lessons had to be scheduled around the kids waking up and my meetings at work. Sometimes we started the day at 8am, and other days we started at 11am. There were many days that we didn’t finish everything scheduled for the day, but we picked it up the next time it was scheduled. We kept everything very relaxed, began learning narration and how to work with one other. Overall, this year was a fantastic success.

Reading

I wrote a detailed post about the beginning of our reading journey that covers most of the ways that we used these three curricula.

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons – I recommend this for any children who are natural readers and need a simple guide. Eliam thrived using it and could read basic Level 1 books when we were done.

Delightful Reading 2 and 3 – The Delightful Reading programs were excellent, and if they counted toward our charter school, I would have continued using them. The lessons were engaging, and both the kids were making good progress using them. I love that they use high quality poetry and literature for the children to read from an early age. 

All About Reading Level 1 – We will continue to use these as long as we homeschool through our charter school. It covers all the basic steps for learning to read, and the lessons are varied with plenty of physical activity. I do not like the primers that come with the lessons. The stories are not memorable or engaging. However, this is a small drawback compared to the curriculum as a whole. We already have Level 2 and will begin that when we start school again on July 1.

Math

Elementary Arithmetic 1 – Teaching math is not my strength. Even when I helped homeschool my brothers and sisters years ago, I was easily frustrated because I understood the concept but struggled to explain it to whomever I was teaching. This ended up to be the case in our homeschool again. I loved this curriculum and highly recommend it, but it didn’t completely erase my shortcomings in this area. The kids loved doing the math lessons, especially when we got to use manipulatives or write on miniature white boards. We didn’t finish the book in the year, but one thing I love about Charlotte Mason style of learning is that we will just pick up where we left off. 

Poetry

This is the one subject area that I did not do well. I tried to use the instructions for Brave Writer Poetry Teatimes, but I did not have them consistently. I also tried to create my own lessons on Gwendolyn Brooks, but the kids did not take to them the way that I hoped. For next year, I will purchase a curriculum and hopefully stay more consistent with it.

Science

Outdoor Secrets – We loved outdoor secrets. The stories, the hand on activities, and the living books that went with each topic were fun. We didn’t finish this one either and will likely continue it next year until we have completed the topics.

We also did a lot of science that was not in the curriculum. We visited the Oakland Zoo frequently, which led to fun discussions and additional research. The kids also loved doing experiments, so we would look up random ones online and try them.

History and Bible

Genesis to Deuteronomy – This was my favorite subject each day. I loved the Bible lessons. I didn’t read the commentaries to the kids because they were long, and each lesson is intended to be about 20 minutes, but I read them for myself, and they were incredibly helpful for the lesson discussions the next day. We would read the references from the Bible, and then we would read the corresponding story in the Action Bible. We would then complete the charts that went along with the lesson plan. 

The supplemental history readings were excellent. We all thoroughly enjoy Pharaoh’s Boat and Boy of the Pyramids. We liked that one so much that we will probably return to it as a family read aloud at some point. We will do Joshua to Malachi next year.

We skipped the Visits to Africa days because I used the one described below instead.

Geography

Africa! Amazing Africa! This curriculum was also one of our highlights. Each day we did geography, we would work on identifying the countries on the map. I worked from North to South, and then did the corresponding country in the curriculum as we learned its location. We loved the books and the videos. Anna Hibiscus was one of our favorite books, and I recommend getting the audiobook version, which we borrowed from the library. If I wanted more books on a particular country, I used Stories of Color to find them and borrowed them from the library. I was able to find almost everything on the list either through our library or through interlibrary loan. I’m sad this is the only world geography based packet that she has, so we will switch to Thistles and Biscuits country studies next year, aiming to complete one each month.

Artists and Composers

Gentle and Classical Primer Art and Music – We used this for the three composers and the first two artists, replacing Kandinsky with Henry Ossawa Tanner. I purchased the digital version, which was perfect for the composers, but the printing for the artist studies cost almost as much as purchasing the printed version. I will order them already printed from now on. These were great introductions that were written on the right comprehension level for my kids’ first foray into this arena.

A Humble Place – Our third artist for the year was Henry Ossawa Tanner. I loved this artist study because I borrowed his full biography from the library for me to read while we used the picture versions for the kids. We learned so much together, especially because we had studied Monet immediately before, so we already knew about the Paris Salon. 

Habits

Laying Down the Rails – This was a game changer for us. We worked through Obedience, Attention, and Truthfulness. Not only did the lessons themselves help me know how to teach these habits to the kids, the concepts behind them have been helpful in a variety of areas. I have learned to deeply focus on one area at a time, mastering that before moving onto the next. I have also grown in my patience with the kids, understanding that there are many areas we may need to work on, but none of them will progress if I try to address all of them simultaneously.

Christmas

Treehouse Schoolhouse – I loved this Christmas curriculum so much. It was expensive to purchase the printed copy and all the books that go with it, but I plan to use it every year for the month of December, so we decided it was a worthwhile investment. I am looking forward to building our Christmas traditions around it, and I wrote a complete review of our experiences here. 

Purim

Kindle Togetherness – I plan to include the celebrations of more Jewish holidays in the coming years. Purim was a particularly easy and fun one to start with. Many of the holiday traditions were easy to do including groggers and hamantaschen. We learned the Esther story, and this will also become an annual family.