With The Suttons
Welcome to my blog !I hope you find some useful homeschool and DIY projects for your family.
What We Are Reading This Week : June 7, 2020 - June 13, 2020
Reflecting On Our Last Two Years of Homeschool
We finished our 5th-grade year and now we are in between grades. At the end of the school year I like to reflect on how that year went for us. I thought I would share my top three reflections.
1. Breaks are a necessity.
Not only would I get burnt out having school every day but so would my child. I didn't realize it in the first year. I wanted to keep going on the same days that public schools were in session. Now I realized that those kids and teachers are probably burnt out before they get a winter or spring break. The winter break where I live is only 2 weeks and the spring break, if they are lucky is 3 days. They do get off federal holiday's and once a month there is an in-service day. That was just not long enough for us. It is okay to take breaks to avoid that oh so wonderful burnt out feeling.
When we would take a nice break, my kiddo was able to refocus. That is why this year we are implementing year-long schooling, starting July 6th. I am hoping this will help us spread it out more evenly.
2. You are home, not in a classroom.
The first year and for the first half of this year I still acted like we needed to be in a classroom. We are at home, so the rules are probably more relaxed than they are in a classroom. Once I started to relax and go at our own pace everything went much more smoothly. We would even take our schoolwork outside just to change up the scenery on nicer days.
3. Find the curriculum that works for you.
Oh, this one I am still struggling with. It is okay to change your curriculum. If it doesn't work, try something else. We still have yet to find a writing/grammar curriculum that my son likes. We have tried two so far. I probably should have switched in the middle of the year when he would complain because he hated writing so much. This year we are trying our third. I am hoping doing a video/online program as we do for math will help. I am crossing my fingers and dotting my I's that we finally found a curriculum that he likes. Also, if you have a curriculum that works, I say stick with it and don't branch out. "Why break what doesn't need to be fixed," is what my Grandma has always said.
What are some of the changes you are making to your 2020-21 school year? How has your homeschooling changed over the years?
Keeping My Home School 6th Grader Organized
Since we are having a break between 5th and 6th grade, I brainstormed ideas that I hope will help keep everything together and organized. My plan is also to help give him more independence by giving him his assignments for the entire week instead of the day.
I have my planner that I will share at another time that is now planned out till September.
I do not have his language arts in his planner yet, I need to dive more into the curriculum calendar for that before I add it. (You can read more about our curriculum choice for 6th grade HERE)
DIY Folder Organzier for Homeschool
I remember one of my teachers having something very similar to this in case we lost assignments and I wanted to recreate my own. Do you ever remember anything from your childhood that is so ordinary but clever? This was one of those moments.
File Folders
Tape
Directions:
Our 6th Grade Curriculum at a Glance
Please note, there are no affiliate or referral links in this post. This is just the choice we are using.
I have decided to do Level 6 of Build Your Library. We really like this curriculum. However, I wish it was slightly meatier so I will be creating mini unit studies on the books, interactive notebooks, and note booking. We haven't done any official type of note booking in our home school yet but I do want to include more writing. I will be either creating my own, using teachers pay teachers, or finding free resources online from other wonderful families. I read Emily is going to be updating level 6 and that should be out by the fall time. We will be using the current version just because it aligns well with the older version of level 5. I do want to do a weekly update when we start school, so you can follow along with what we are doing and what I added.
We also will be using Teaching Textbooks for math. My son and I both really enjoy the online set up of it.
We have yet to find a writing/grammar curriculum that we like, so this year we are trying Essentials in Writing.
We are not a real fan of the Real Science Odyssey, so this year we are going to try something new. My son wants to learn about Earth and Space. I have heard good things about this curriculum so I thought we would try it out. We decided on Elemental Science: Earth Science & Astronomy for the Logic Stage.
I am also going to add TeaTime. My goal is once a week in some sort of variety to fun to basic. He will also be doing a free typing program I found. Watching that boy type hurts my soul, so I would like him to have some basic typing skills.
This is our 6th-grade choice in a nutshell.
Why We Homeschool
So I homeschool because I like being around my children and the freedom that comes with being able to go outdoors on beautiful days to when we can go on vacation.
So Here I Am Again
Since I am restarting this blog, I do plan on saving my previous post. You need to show where you started to keep track of your own progress.
So let's restart.
Hi, I am Victoria!