Homeschool 2020 - What's Working for Us
This post contains products and links to those products. I am not affiliated with any program that reimburses me for influencing, posting, reviewing, or sharing their products. I am simply a homeschool mom who has finds these things extremely groovy. I am sharing them because I’m currently waiting on the 2020 election results and I need to keep my hands busy so I don’t eat too much Halloween candy.
HELLO to all my homeschool parents, COVID-school parents, public school parents, and everyone in between.
I’ve been getting a handful of people asking me for advice on curriculum lately, so I’m here to type up a grand list of WHAT WE BE UP TO. A collection of the things that have MADE THE CUT in our home this year.
First, let me lead off with a description of my children and their learning styles. The best part of homeschool is deciding what works for YOUR family. So if your kids sound anything like mine, I am here for you. If your home dynamic is drastically different, you should definitely utilize personal revelation to help you figure out if anything listed below is worth your checking into.
ABIGAIL: As many of you know, Abby is now 5-and-a-half and reading up a storm. She is greatly driven by charts and rewards, and very visually influenced. If I write something on the chalkboard, she has dialed in before I even try to draw attention to it. She once memorized an entire scripture that I had written up there just for my own sake and repeated it back after it was erased.
Abby also has a love/hate relationship with written curriculum. We have used The Good and the Beautiful for math in the past, and though she always begs me to pull it out so we can work on it together, she is frustrated and bored after 10 minutes. She thrives best when SHE decides what to do, when to do it, and what order to do it in. She does not appreciate having to follow things in a prescribed order.
This is a blessing for me, because I am the same way. This is why UNSCHOOLING has appealed to me so much from the very beginning. Boooo, structure! Begone, scripts!
Abby is highly social. She has been known to sit in on adult conversations and politely chime in with precious tidbits of her own advice, without guile. She remembers names, she remembers if you mentioned you’re going on vacation (and she will ask you about it the next time she sees you) and basically, Abby’s learning style is REAL LIFE IMMERSION.
Recent wins with Abby: READING, of course. Her reading really took off like a shot at the beginning of September. She reads rapidly, with great inflection, and conquers longer words with ease. Her emotions are under better control now that she is older. And I feel comfortable letting her be more independent; making her own sandwiches, etc.
GWEN: Gwen just turned three. SHE HAS NO CHILL. She is impulsive and energetic. If there is ANYTHING in front of her that she could touch, eat, drink, color on - she has to. She can’t hold herself back. In stark contrast, I frequently find her in her own little world with a pen and paper, carefully drawing tiny shapes, and she cannot hear her name being called. So, basically a mini-me.
She’s snuggly, as she always has been, and a VERY hands-on learner. She’s also extraordinarily brave - shoving unfamiliar food into her mouth, riding on a pony, jumping into water. Her attention span is freakishly long when it comes to puzzles - 20 minutes or more!
Recent wins with Gwen: I CAN LEAVE HER ALONE WITH BOOKS NOW. It’s been months since the last tearing-up incident, and more and more books are lingering in bed with her with no damage done. She has gained the attention span to allow me to read longer books to her. Her comprehension is increasing daily. She’s still frantic and random in most of what we do together, but every day she is learning a little better to sit down and listen to instructions.
So let’s dive into what we’re doing in our homeschool!
THE MORNING 5: My girls are banging on all cylinders the second they come out of their rooms. They are rushing to jump into anything that pops into their heads - Dress Up, going to the park, writing a letter, getting out a game… all before they’ve even gotten dressed or eaten breakfast. I’m constantly fighting to solidify their morning habits so we can then MOVE ON with our day.
So I created the Morning 5 - Make Your Bed, Say Your Prayers, Get Dressed, Use the Potty, Eat Breakfast. Abby functions better when she can see things in a list. We put all our efforts into accomplishing those five things FIRST. Then we’re not scrambling between wanting to start an activity and a certain 3 year old still being in her nighttime diaper. Our rule is - NOTHING ELSE until we’ve done our MORNING 5!
OUR CHALKBOARD: I did an Instagram Story highlight about how I made this giant chalkboard for less than $30. If you follow me on Insta, go take a look! But I’ll tell you here too: a giant piece of Masonite board from Lowe’s (about 8ft in length) is $8.99. A bucket of chalkboard paint is $10. I used painter’s tape around the edges to give the appearance of a “frame” that was still wooden in color. We have yet to hang this puppy up on the wall, but it is alive and well and serving us even while sitting on the floor.
The chalkboard is a central part of our homeschool when it comes to scriptures, quotes from General Conference, poems, and songs that I want to write on my girls’ hearts. It also helps centralize our schedule for the day. I write the date, the Morning 5, our scripture study, and then any activities, errands, or projects we need to tackle that day.
THE BOOK OF MORMON FOR YOUNG READERS: My mom bought this study aid for us a few years ago and it has been a GAME CHANGER this year. I know 2020 is almost over and next year we’ll be studying the Doctrine and Covenants, but I plan to keep using this as we read the Book of Mormon continually as a family.
It’s a happy medium between the Illustrated Stories from the Book of Mormon (which simplifies the scriptures down to a summary; one or two lines per illustration) and the Book of Mormon itself. The scriptures are still written verbatim (I’ll get to why I think that’s important in a minute) but charts, pictures, journal prompts, timelines, quotes from prophets, and other helpful graphics adorn each page. It takes much of the pressure to be a “natural scriptorian” off my shoulders, and provides me and my girls with tools to help us easily understand the scriptures.
I think it’s very important for young children to hear the scriptures read in their purest form, even if they understand very little. The scriptures contain complex language not found in today’s writing. Being exposed to this from an early age gives their minds a jump start on processing larger, older, more mature words. I think kids need a mix of hearing the scriptures read to them while they are eating (a full mouth is a quiet mouth!) as well as having doctrine explained to them in a simple and loving way, according to their questions.
DAILY THEMES ON ROTATION: I’m a very spontaneous person, so I prefer to create “guidelines” for myself rather than plan everything to the letter. I created a theme for every day of the week. This ensures that I’m giving all the important subjects in my children’s lives equal focus, while giving me the freedom to make up what we’re going to do each day. They are as follows:
Sweet Spirit Sunday, Musical Monday, Tell Me A Story Tuesday, Write It Out Wednesday, Thinking Thursday, Friendly Friday, & Sparkly Saturday.
Sweet Spirit Sunday is a day for us to rest and be together, to go to church, and listen to soft music.
Musical Monday usually involves learning a new song, playing freely on instruments, having a dance party, or getting technical with music notation.
Tell Me A Story Tuesday is the day we visit the library. We load up on books, sink into the couch together, and read until Mom gets a sore throat. Then Abby usually keeps story time going.
Write It Out Wednesday is about the different parts of the writing process. We color to work on motor skills, we practice some letters, we write messages to each other in creative ways. We retell, summarize, and spin stories that we’ve already heard. We illustrate. We Marco Polo and text our friends.
Thinking Thursday is when we dive into STEM. We ask questions and get those questions answered. We do math worksheets, and we watch “How It’s Made” videos. My objective on this day is to follow their curiosities and open up new doors for them.
Friendly Friday is a day for friends! Even in the middle of a pandemic, no child can survive without other children. We tend to hang out with the same families, and we are always completely forthcoming about any exposures or symptoms before we get together.
Sparkly Saturday is all about making our home S P A R K L Y. Folding laundry, cleaning, vacuuming, doing outside chores that need doing. Then we spend the rest of the day having fun!
BRAIN QUEST: This clever, stimulating workbook is available at Costco (and Amazon) for all elementary grade levels. Abby, as mentioned before, is very chart- and goal-oriented, but also loves to be able to set her own schedule and skip around as she pleases. She is currently working on the 1st Grade workbook because I flipped through a few at Costco and that seemed like the one that would maintain that challenging threshold she so desires in her learning. Gwen has been having fun with the old Pre-K one we have, but I don’t think she’s ready to dive into it quite yet.
KIWICO SUBSCRIPTION BOXES: I bought 6 months of this back when we got our stimulus checks, and then forgot to cancel so I got 6 more months. I don’t mind one bit. We love when these little green boxes arrive. Each one contains all the materials necessary to build something step by step. We’ve gotten a doctor kit, a mechanical arm, a mechanical sweeper that eats pom poms, a kaleidescope kit, and many more projects and activities besides, in the past 6 months. Gwen has a hard time keeping her hands to herself during these activities but they are always educational, always easy, and always stimulating and fun. Plus they come with many more educational materials relating to the concept being taught by each project, like stories and extra activity ideas.
MUSIC NOTATION: Music is such a powerful way to teach so many subjects at once - language, social skills, gospel studies, mathematics, artistry, movement, history, and most importantly, joy. And music was put on the earth as a teaching tool to help mankind because it enters so easily into the heart.
I found a folder of old pieces of sheet music that my piano teacher used (circa 2003) to teach me to read music. I erased the note names I had written in and whited out what I couldn’t erase. Now I can make copies of these pieces and focus on helping my children recognize the different components of a musical piece (which, in this photo, I am in the middle of listing on a post-it). Staff, clefs, key, time signature, note value, rests, dynamics, accents and other markings. This is another moment where the chalkboard comes in handy. And thanks to our copier I can copy these as many times as I want to!
We also have a glockenspiel that allows us to play simple songs right at our kitchen table. On our real piano, I put special piano key stickers that show the note name and where it appears on the staff. I think this has been just as helpful for me as it has been for Abby and Gwen, if not more so! Haha! (I took 3 years of piano lessons from 2002-2005 and can fumble my way through a hymn. I’m much better at sight singing than sight playing, thanks to high school choir.)
WELL-EDUCATED HEART: This resource - this movement - deserves its own separate blog post, but I’m going to try to condense it into this one, and keep my enthusiasm for it reined in enough to be understood. The Well-Educated Heart was created by Marlene Peterson, who many many years ago felt prompted to begin collecting, compiling, and organizing a library of literature, inspiring artwork, poetry, music, and the other creations of human history. She felt in her heart that MOTHERS would be the ones to lead out and change the world; that we would be a key factor in rescuing the goodness of humanity.
Because of the internet, we each have access to the greatest books and creations of human history. What a privilege for our children!!!! This website is at the base of everything I do in our school. It’s an organized library of good, uplifting material, most of which is free or public domain. There’s a library of beautiful fine art and a rotation of historical literature and other topics that’s further broken down into Elementary, Middle, and High School levels, with a collection of enrichment materials and activities to go with the topic. Recipes, music, movies from Sweden. Paintings of the American Revolution. Poetry from the Civil War.
The most important component of the Well-Educated Heart is the Mother’s University. Teach a mother, open up her heart, inspire her, help her, and you will have lifted an entire generation. A gigantic portion of the content on this website is FOR MOTHERS. It helped me tap into my influence and power, and ignited my own studies, which inspires my children.
Please, the next time you’re in the kitchen or folding laundry, pop on the Catch The Vision introduction on your phone (this site has an app too!) and give it a listen. You’ll understand right away that this is no ordinary homeschool group.
So those are the biggest components of what we do! We have a fun game here and there, a useful teaching tool, a book we love to read together. But unschooling isn’t about following a curriculum, or a prescribed order or grade level. It’s about real life experience and immersion in curiosity. It’s about doing the things we like to do, learning about the things that we’re curious about, and making decisions on our own.
“The way kids learn to make good decisions is by making decisions, not by following directions.”
From left to right: Come Follow Me for Primary: 2020 - Book of Mormon. A Girl’s Guide to Heavenly Mother by McArthur Krishna & Bethany Brady Spalding, The Book of Mormon Journal Edition, Book of Mormon Stories, The Book of Mormon for Young Readers By Kelli Coughanour, The Book of Mormon, The Gift of Self by Marion G. Hanks, The U.S. Constitution and Other Writings by Canterbury Classics, The History of the World in Bite-Sized Chunks by Emma Marriott, Minna’s Patchwork Coat by Lauren A. Mills, Anxious for Nothing by Max Lucado, and my composition notebook journal.
If you want to learn more about the unschooling style of learning, I suggest this blog post for a crash course, as well as this one. It really delights me, and even though we’re only a year into it, I can tell that I chose the right course for me and our family. If you want to ask me anything, drop a comment below! I’ll probably do another whole homeschooling post in a month or two and talk more about my philosophy and desires.
I am by no means a perfect parent, or even an exceptional one. I am simply a strong-willed mother who throws off outside pressures and expectations with wild abandon. I enjoy being the “overlord” of my children’s education AND allowing them to fill their own plates at the Curiosity Buffet. Gently pushing them to do hard things AND seeing their enjoyment when we focus on what’s fun. I make the rules. But so do they. We have defined our homeschool for ourselves and get so much satisfaction from that.
I hope this post has been helpful. I am always open to questions and discussion!
Love you all!!
xo Amber