I’ll never forget when Luke was about five years old, and I had tumbled headlong into the Mommy Blogs. I read fellow moms and their beautiful blogs telling me everything from their foolproof method to potty train an eighteen-month-old in one weekend to the “right” way to let boys play with toy guns. I’m not making this up – those are both real blog posts I read.
               According to these Mommy Bloggers, I was woefully behind in teaching Luke how to do chores.
Apparently, these moms had four-year-olds who were scrubbing toilets, folding laundry, washing windows, and making their own sandwiches. I felt like a failure because Luke only had two chores at that time: picking up his toys (sometimes) and scooping doggy kibble into the dog dish. Not to mention there was a trail of dog kibble from the laundry room to the dog dish every single time, and Luke couldn’t maneuver the broom to sweep it up. (The Mommy bloggers’ kids were sweeping too.) Thankfully, the dog trailed behind him and gobbled up his mess.
               Inspired by these blogs, I decided I was going to teach Luke to do more chores. I bought a pack of disposable toilet scrubbers that you stuck on the end of a wand. How hard could it be? I sat him next to me as I folded clothes and showed him how to do it. I pulled a chair up to the counter and handed him a blunt, plastic knife to spread the peanut butter.
               In short, all of it was a disaster. After weeks of frustration and tears, we went back to just picking up his toys and feeding the dog.
               Now that Luke is about to turn fifteen, I want to share with you what I have learned about kids and chores. I also want to share where my kids are now (Haley is 12 and Ian is 10), so you can have hope.

#1 In the beginning, kids doing chores will take more time.
         The Mommy bloggers I mentioned above told me over and over again that if my kids helped me with chores, my house would be cleaner, we would have more time, and we would all be happier. This was never how it played out for me, however.
           First of all, you can’t expect your child to just do the chore. You have to teach them how. This, obviously, takes more time than just doing it yourself. Then once you teach them, it’s still probably going to take them longer than it would take you. So just get it out of your head that this will save you time.
              My mindset changed when I heard a teaching from Focus on the Family about the difference between immaturity and defiance. Sometimes we punish kids for being immature. Kids drop things, make messes, and are just more awkward in general than we are. A floor mopped by you will be cleaner than a floor mopped by your eight-your-old. Not because they’re being lazy, but because they’re eight! The point of teaching kids chores is not to make our lives easier. The point is to teach them skills for life and the importance of pitching in and working together as a family. When I made this my goal, I was far more patient with my children.
 
#2 Every kid is different
               Just because someone else’s five-year-old makes their own lunch then sweeps up their mess afterwards doesn’t mean your five-year-old is ready for that responsibility. It also doesn’t mean you are failing as a mom if your child can’t master a chore you’ve tried to teach them.
               I realized this with Luke. No matter how many times I showed him how to fold a shirt, his ended up a wrinkled ball. Now, some people would just happily let their kids shove wadded up shirts into the drawer. We were low on space, however, so this wasn’t an option for us. If the shirts weren’t folded properly, I couldn’t fit them all in the drawer and the drawer wouldn’t shut. I finally gave up and went back to folding his clothes myself.
               Was Luke being lazy? No! He was actually delayed in his fine motor skills. At that time, I was doing all sorts of PT exercises with him: threading dry noodles through the holes of a colander, lining up pieces of cereal on a popsicle stick, and picking up pom poms with tweezers. I had delayed teaching him to write, knowing he wasn’t ready. So why in the world was I expecting him to fold laundry or spread peanut butter on a piece of bread? It wasn’t a fair expectation.
               While it’s true that sometimes kids are capable of more than we realize, it’s also true that we sometimes expect too much. Stop and think about your child, his developmental level, and his strengths and weaknesses. Ditch the recommended chore charts you’ve seen online and trust your mom gut. What matters is teaching your child to pitch in, not what specific chores they are doing at what age.

#3 Your child won’t do chores the same way you would.
               Ian recently came to me and excitedly said, “Come see what I did!” I followed him to the kitchen of the house we just moved into, and he opened the door to our brand-new pantry with pride. “I organized it!” he told me.
               When I looked inside, the pantry was neat and tidy. However, while I prefer to line boxes up with the sides showing, Ian had lined them up with the front of the boxes facing forward. I realized, though, that it didn’t matter. The pantry was organized, and Ian had taken initiative, doing a chore he saw needed to be done without being asked. Not to mention my love language is acts of service! I hugged Ian, raved about his work, and kissed him on the cheek.
               When our kids don’t do a chore the way we like it to be done, we should always pause and ask ourselves an important question: “Is my way necessary or is it just a preference?” If it’s a preference, we should bite our tongues and praise our children for their work. Which brings me to . . .

#4 Teach the proper way but have realistic expectations.
               There’s absolutely nothing wrong with teaching our kids the correct way to do things. They need to know the proper settings for different loads in the washing machine. There are tips for sweeping that can make the chore more efficient. Some things can be cleaned with a Clorox wipe, some things will be ruined by that same wipe. However, we need to be really careful in how we instruct our children. We should never scold them for something they didn’t know, and our tone is extremely important. We also don’t want to pile on the criticism, or they will be discouraged and start to feel like they can never please us. I try not to give my kids more than one tip for improvement at a time, and I always praise them for their efforts. When I’ve snapped at them, especially for something they didn’t know, I have always apologized.

#5 Should you pay your kids for chores?
               This is one issue that many people disagree on, and I don’t think there is a clear black and white answer. On the one hand, people say that kids should learn that chores are something that we all have to do, so they shouldn’t get paid. Other people say that payment for chores teaches money management and ties work ethic to monetary reward. I can see both sides. Therefore, what we’ve come to in our home through much trial and error is that our kids don’t get paid for their regular chores. If they do extra chores, however, they get paid. Luke gets paid for yard work, Haley has gotten paid for scrubbing baseboards, and Ian recently made three dollars deep cleaning the trash can. Our kids also don’t get an “allowance,” they only get paid for actual work.  
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So where are my kids now?
               You’ve probably noticed just from reading this that we’ve come a long way from frustration and tears over folding laundry. As a matter of fact, all of my kids not only put away their own laundry, they know how to DO their laundry. They all know how to do dishes, scrub the toilet, and sweep. Luke knows not only how to make a peanut butter sandwich, but he also can cook a few simple meals. However, it didn’t happen overnight. Slowly, over the course of years, I added responsibilities, choosing tasks I knew they were capable of. Then I taught them, slowly, and with lots of mistakes, how to do those chores. My kids, even now, are immature at times. They still make messes, they can be lazy, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t nag sometimes. But I’m teaching them how to pitch in and work hard, and I know now that it’s a slow process.
              Just this weekend, my husband and I were awakened by the sound of a lawn mower. A big grin spread across my husband’s face despite the noise before 7 am. “I’m so proud of that boy,” he said. I wish I could go back ten years ago and encourage that worried mom that Luke wasn’t “behind” after all. I wish I could tell her that she was doing just fine. Since I can’t, I’m telling you.

             You’re doing just fine, Mama!

​             Much love, Melanie.           

   *Disclaimer: this post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission for any purchases. However, all opinions are my own.*
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    As a Christian, I want my children to remember that the real point of Christmas is to celebrate when Jesus set aside his deity to become our Emmanuel (God with Us). The fact that he humbled himself and came as a vulnerable human baby, and a poor one in a manger at that, is the greatest example of his sacrificial love for us besides the cross. During this season, I want to point my children to Him. 
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    Years ago, when I used to go to MOPs (Mothers of Preschoolers), I heard a children’s pastor share how to center our children on Christ during the holidays. She recommended a book called The Family Book of Advent. A few weeks later, I saw it on sale for only $1.99 in the Christian Book Distributors Catalog. I wasted no time in ordering it. Unfortunately, it is no longer being printed. (I guess that’s why it was so cheap!) You can, however, still find a few copies on Amazon, ranging in price from $12-$16 new or $3-$8 used. Here’s a link: 

    If you can get this book, I highly recommend it! If not, I want to share with you the very first activity in the book. Get a bottle of clear colored soda. Whisper to your children that you have a surprise and take them outside. Then tell them this: “The children of Israel were waiting for a Messiah (shake bottle really hard), and they waited (shake the bottle) and waited (keep shaking). They were so, so excited (shake some more), and they kept asking, “When? When will he come?” (shake bottle every time you say when) They waited longer (keep shaking), and waited some more (shake again). Finally, it was time for the Messiah to come!” Now open the bottle and let the surprising mess delight your kids!

    The point is to let your kids know that you understand their excitement - and so does God! The most exciting thing about Christmas though, is that Jesus came!

    That’s just one example of the great activities in this book. Along with the book we also do an advent wreath. I grew up Methodist and have fond memories of lighting the advent wreath every Sunday. In our house, though, we light the candle every day at every meal. You can easily make your own advent wreath if you have a Hobby Lobby nearby. They sell advent candles with the appropriate colors as well as inexpensive table wreaths and embellishments. If you are unfamiliar with the colors in an advent wreath, they are:

    Week One:  the hope candle (purple)
    Week Two: the peace candle (purple)
    Week Three: the joy candle (pink)
    Week Four: the love candle (purple)
    Christmas Day: the Christ candle (white - ours is larger and sits in the center of our wreath)


    The order can vary, and sometimes the love candle is called the faith candle instead, so make changes if you’d like. The point is to celebrate Christ throughout the month of December. 

    In our family, we read that days’ devotional from The Family Book of Advent at breakfast, then we light the first candle as we say a little rhyme. I wish I could tell you where I got the rhyme, but I don’t remember. My mom used it when she taught kindergarten at a Christian school. Since I can’t give credit, I won’t include it, but a simple Google search brought up many prayers you can say with your kids as you light the candles. Then, we sing that old children’s Sunday school song “Peace Like a River,” because the verses all correspond with the Advent candles! “I’ve got hope for the future . . . I’ve got peace like a river . . . I’ve got joy like a fountain . . . I’ve got love like the ocean.”

    At lunch and dinner, we don’t do the devotional, just the candle lighting, rhyme, and song. Every single year, I am skeptical that the hope candle will make it, but every year it does! (Kind of fitting, isn’t it?) When my entire family, including my parents and siblings, sit down for Christmas dinner at our house, we light the wreath, finally lighting the Christ candle. 
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    I’m always surprised at the number of people I know who have never done an advent wreath. Maybe it’s because I have a lot of friends who grew up Baptist or in a non-denominational church. Rest assured that you don’t have to be Catholic or Methodist or any other specific denomination to try an advent wreath with your family. Lighting one used to be common practice in many cultures, especially in Switzerland and Sweden. 

    However, if you don’t want to mess with making a wreath or lighting candles, another option is a Jesse tree. I have many friends who have done a Jesse tree, though I have never done one myself. Ann Voskamp has a devotional to go along with a Jesse tree called Unwrapping the Greatest Gift that looks really good:

    To make a Jesse tree, you can get an actual tree (I know some families who get a small, table top tree) or you can make a poster of a tree. Recently, there have also been kits for sale to do a Jesse tree. Here’s a helpful youtube video:

    Another idea is, instead of doing Elf on the Shelf, do one of these options instead: (Disclaimer: I am not anti-Santa, though some of these products may have that flavor. Each family should do what they feel is best according to their conscience. We do Santa in our house, though we don’t do Elf on the Shelf. I do not judge anyone for how they choose to handle Santa one way or the other. However, I firmly believe you can do Santa and still keep the focus on Christ. It doesn’t have to be one extreme or the other. That’s my two cents on the matter.)

    Finally, there are advent calendars. These can be made of simple cardboard, felt, or they can be more elaborate and made of wood. Each day, you open a door to find an item inside. We all probably know about the ones with candy inside, but there are also faith-based ones in which each door reveals another piece of a nativity scene. 

    No matter how you choose to do it in your home, all it takes is a little planning to point our children to the true “reason for the season.” Merry Christmas to you and yours!

* Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you click on the titles in gray, it will take you to Amazon. I will receive a small commission on any purchases. However, all opinions are my own. *

I confess that I’m a bit of a grammar nerd. I’m not saying I diagram sentences on the weekends for a good time, but I have always found diagramming to be a fun, educational puzzle. I don’t go around with a red pen in hand, correcting bad grammar on signs, but they do drive me crazy! Christmas card season is especially aggravating with all those unnecessary apostrophes. (It’s “Merry Christmas from the Tillmans” NOT “Merry Christmas from the Tillman’s.” There’s no apostrophe! You’re not owning anything!)

For that reason, I’ve learned over the years that my favorite grammar picks are not necessarily the right fit for everyone. Grammar seems to be a subject a lot of parents are nervous to teach. When homeschoolers find out I used to be a high school English teacher, a lot of them will ask me for curriculum suggestions.  

The problem is, since I don’t need much in the way of a teacher book or script, I can use certain resources that may be a challenge for some parents. For that reason, in this post, I’m not going to share “how we do grammar” like I normally would. Instead, I’m first going to give you my professional tips for doing grammar well with your kids. Then, I’ll share my absolute favorite, well-scripted resource for grammatically-challenged parents. Then, I’ll share my personal favorites that I think takes the pain out of grammar for the students and makes it a lot more interesting. 

My Grammar Guidelines

#1 No busy work! Think back to your own school days. Was there anything worse than having to copy twenty sentences from your grammar book for homework? Language arts was my favorite subject, and I even hated those assignments with a passion. Not only that, studies have shown that it is ineffective. Anyone can find the verb when you have to look for it twenty times or more! It never translates to long term knowledge. 

#2 No dry grammar books! I bet your grammar book was pretty boring too, right? Dry explanations followed by random sentences on mundane topics. Yawn. No wonder most people hate grammar. 

#3 No disconnected grammar. The point of teaching grammar (and yes, it is a very important subject, but that would be another post) is to improve writing and reading skills. A good grammar curriculum will incorporate these through copywork, dictation, narration, writing practice, and examples of beautiful writing from the classics. (More about all of this later as I highlight my favorites!) 

My Favorite Scripted, Open-and-Go Grammar Curriculum:

Any parent can open this curriculum, follow the script, and give their child a solid grammar foundation. Even though this is marketed as a classical resource, it fits very well with the Charlotte Mason model as well. It is very gentle in its approach, and it utilizes narration, copywork, and dictation. There are also beautiful age-appropriate poems for students to memorize. If it takes your child longer than 1st through 4th grade to finish the four levels, don’t panic. As an English teacher, I can assure you that it provides plenty of solid grammar even through sixth grade. I am also a huge advocate of Charlotte Mason’s caution to not over-tax the student and to go at their own pace. Remember, mastery is the goal, not finishing the set of books by the fourth grade. Don’t be afraid to break some of the longer lessons into shorter sessions in books 3 and 4 in particular. 

One other note: if you are also using Writing With Ease from the same company (which I also highly recommend), feel free to skip the narration lessons in the grammar books. However, if you aren’t using a separate writing curriculum, these are important to have your child work through. 


My Other Grammar Picks:

I first discovered Daily Grammar Practice (DGP) as a high school English teacher, and I loved it so much, I purchased it with my own money. I saw a huge improvement in my students after implementing it. Her introduction to the program makes me want to stand up and slow-clap because she, as a fellow high school English teacher, was also fed up with dry grammar books filled with busy work that never seemed to work. This curriculum has students analyze one sentence for an entire week, but it is different from other “sentence a day” programs because students do multiple things with this one sentence. On Monday they label the parts of speech, on Tuesday they label the sentence parts, on Wednesday they label the phrases and clauses, on Thursday they punctuate the sentence, and on Friday they diagram it. The sentences get increasingly more complex, and new concepts are introduced in an intentional order. When I taught high school, my students thought they were getting away with “not doing grammar.” Little did they know they were getting a short lesson every day that packed a lot of punch! 

However, you get no punch if the teacher doesn’t know how to go deeper. The teacher's book lists important concepts in each week's lesson, which are easy for me to explain and supplement being the grammar nerd that I am. For other homeschoolers, this is just a good way to supplement another curriculum. As Burnette calls it, they get a daily grammar vitamin!​

These very simple workbooks give students passages based on classic literature to proofread. Scattered throughout these passages are mini-lessons on different grammar concepts. I love that students aren’t forced to mark or copy pages and pages of dry sentences. On the other hand, parents weak in grammar may not be able to give further examples or explanations to what is provided in the book. In our homeschool, once my kids finish First Language Lessons, they do Daily Grammar Practice plus G.U.M Drops through middle school (these only go through 8th grade). They do the passages on their own, then I go over it with them. For the mini-lessons, I teach it on our white board first, then they do the short exercises on their own. There is no teacher book, but answers are in the back.

This is another fellow English teacher after my own heart! This text is written to teenagers in an engaging and hilarious way. My son actually laughs out loud as he does his grammar lesson! Dry can never be used to describe this book, that’s for sure. Sentences in the exercises are laugh-out-loud funny, and avoids busy work. It also incorporates reading passages and writing exercises. I’ve seen some bad reviews on Rainbow Resource and Amazon from parents who think there’s too much potty humor, but that sort of thing has never bothered me. If you spent seven years teaching high school and middle school, it wouldn’t bother you anymore either! That’s the humor of adolescence, after all. 

This book is non-consumable, so your student would have to write the answers on notebook paper. I don’t need an answer key, so I didn’t bother purchasing the teacher’s edition with the CD. Therefore, I can’t give an opinion on how helpful it is. In our homeschool, my kids graduate to this after finishing level 8 in G.U.M Drops, and we continue to do DGP.

I have not used this yet in our homeschool, but I did use it when I taught at a classical private school. I really like how this book gives the history of the English language. Very rarely does a curriculum explain the “why” of grammar, but this book does. This is far from busy work! Most of the examples are from classical literature and the Bible, and there is a short writing exercise to practice the grammar concepts with each lesson.
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However, this is definitely a book for those with a good foundation in grammar. I would only recommend it for high school students as a way to keep grammar concepts fresh in their minds. The answer key is a must, as the writing examples are very complex in structure. However, don’t hesitate to use this with your teenager. For higher levels, it’s a great way to keep their grammar skills sharp without assigning dry, busy work. 

I had the privilege of being the private English teacher for two homeschoolers. I taught them from their freshman year through their senior year. I used this book with them their senior year, and we had a lot of fun reading it. I know, that sounds crazy, but we really did! This book was a bestseller when it came out, believe it or not. It’s strictly about punctuation, not a complete grammar course, but by senior year, that should be all you really need. I also had the girls do the level twelve book in DGP. 

Since this is a book, not a curriculum, there are no assignments or exercises. I created my own short writing assignments to go with each chapter. Obviously, there’s no teacher book or answer key. However, the author does a great job of explaining in easy terms how to use punctuation correctly. (It was a bestseller for a reason!) 

One other thing: be aware that the author is not a Christian, and this book isn’t meant for kids. I don’t remember specific objectionable material, but I do remember thinking that I was glad the girls were older. The author has also written picture books for kids about grammar concepts, but I have never read them. 

So there you have it: a list of grammar favorites from a certified grammar nerd! I’ll be completely honest: most of these are not loved and adored by the majority of homeschoolers. On the flipside, the popular grammar choices, as you probably noticed, are missing from this post. I get that not everyone shares my enthusiasm, and that’s okay. I want my kids to love language just as much as I do, so I chose to use my strengths, put in a little more time and effort, and go with resources that bring the English language alive. 

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  *Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links to Amazon. If you click on the gray colored curriculum name at the top of each section, it will take you to Amazon, and I will receive a small commission for any purchases. However, all opinions are my own. Also, the websites for each company will have much greater variety and updated editions. Order through Amazon at your own risk. * 

     When homeschooling, your life will be made much easier if all of your children do subjects together. Bible, geography, history, science, and any supplemental subjects like the arts can easily be done with multiple ages at once. If you have children who are very close in age, or more specifically, in the same place academically, you can even do language arts and/or math together. For example, my third and fifth grader do vocabulary together and sometimes they read the same book for literature. 
    However, for the most part, it will be impossible to lump your children together for the core subjects of math and language arts (phonics, grammar, spelling, vocabulary, writing, and reading). Children simply progress at vastly different rates in these subjects, so making an individual plan for each child is almost always a must.
     Learning styles always differ vastly as well, so for our family, that means that each of my kids is in a completely different spelling curriculum. Believe me, I didn’t plan it this way! Once I picked a spelling curriculum for my oldest, I had no plans to change things for the other two. My children, however, and their vastly different personalities and learning styles changed my plans. (You’ll find that is the key to homeschooling well!)

Luke: Age 13

    When I started my homeschool journey, I was greatly influenced by my time teaching in a classical private school. I followed The Well-Trained Mind like a homeschool Bible. That book recommends this spelling curriculum, and we used it at the school where I taught. To be honest, it didn’t seem all that great, but it was classical . . . right? I mean, I guess it teaches phonics rules for spelling, but it’s really just your typical spelling workbook:

      Thankfully, Luke did fine with it. However, he is the most natural speller of my three kids. I’m not saying he’s perfect, but language arts is the subject that comes most naturally for him. He consistently gets As and Bs on his spelling tests, so I figured it was working ok. In retrospect, I think he would do fine no matter what spelling book I got for him. 

Haley: Age 11

    My daughter Haley is the complete opposite of Luke. Language arts is her most difficult subject while math comes easily. I also noticed that the math manipulatives helped make sense of concepts for Haley, while they really didn’t seem to do much for Luke. She also loves to draw, make crafts, and participates in the performing arts. 
    Spelling Workout was a complete disaster for my hands-on, creative daughter. Nevertheless, for some reason, I kept plugging along with it, thinking maybe she just needed more practice with the lists each week. So we’d drill and drill and re-test, but it never clicked. She failed every spelling test and started to believe she was a failure, too. When that happened, I realized something had to change. It wasn’t her - it was the way I was teaching it. 
    I had heard great things about All About Spelling, but every time I looked into it, it seemed overwhelming. Then I watched a YouTube video of a mom doing a lesson with her daughter, and I realized that it wasn’t so difficult after all. The best part? It was completely hands-on, had no workbook, and there were no tests. It was just what Haley needed after feeling so defeated with her previous curriculum. ​

     All About Spelling has a placement questionnaire on their website to help you figure out which level to start with. When I filled it out, I discovered Haley needed to start over at the very beginning. I was slightly panicked, I won’t lie, as she was already in fourth grade. However, I knew she needed a strong phonics foundation, so we started at level 1. 
    I’m so glad we made this change! Haley loves spelling now, and she is filled with confidence. She flew through Level 1, and even though we had to slow down after that, she is still thriving. I also noticed a huge improvement in her reading, which she had previously struggled with. 
    If you have a creative or hands-on learner, I highly recommend this curriculum. I have also read that it helps kids with reading disabilities like dyslexia. Whenever a mom shares with me that her kid doesn’t seem to “get” spelling, I always recommend All About Spelling. 

Ian: Age 9

    Ian is my analytical, precise thinker. He takes his time, he likes things to be neat and organized, and he doggedly keeps trying until he masters something. For all of those reasons, Traditional Spelling has been perfect for him. 
    Remember how I said that I was never all that impressed with Spelling Workout? Well, I was at a homeschool convention when I noticed this brand-new spelling curriculum on display at Memoria Press’s booth. The woman working the booth raved about it, as she and her kids had been beta testers on the program. I flipped through the book, loved the classical approach that I felt had been lacking in Spelling Workout, and ordered it on the spot for Ian, who was about to start first grade at the time. 
    Even though it is a workbook and test approach, it is more phonics based than Spelling Workout. The “colorful letters” exercise each week reinforces the concepts in an analytical way that I knew would click for Ian:

    I have tweaked the curriculum a bit to work better for us. Since I wasn’t using Memoria’s phonics curriculum, I ignored all the parts in the teacher book that referenced it. They claim you need to use both together, but you really don’t. I only pick one of the suggested games to do each week instead of all three. On Monday and Tuesday, the workbook page is plenty of work without a game. We don’t do the dictation page on Thursdays either because I do a “spelling bee” with all three kids. (It’s not really a spelling bee, since they have different words, they just spell their words orally in order to win chocolate chips!) We use the dictation page for his test instead. I like how it tests his knowledge of phonics sounds at the top of the page. Here’s an example:

    This curriculum admittedly would not work with every kid (like my Haley, for example). However, if you have a really analytical thinker who learns by mentally “dissecting” the parts of things, this curriculum will work well for them. Ian consistently makes As on his spelling tests with Traditional Spelling. 
    One more caveat with this curriculum: Memoria Press currently offers levels 1, 2, and 3, and they recommend that the books be used in those grades. However, each book has 34 lessons, which is really difficult to complete in one school year. Also, when Ian was still doing phonics, we didn’t do both spelling and phonics every week, we alternated. The words in levels 2 and 3 are plenty challenging for upper elementary, so in my opinion, just these three books can take you all the way through the fifth grade. I’m hoping they will add more levels, but if they don’t, we’ll just switch to Spelling Workout in middle school. 

    So, there you go! That’s spelling at our house. I hope by sharing my children’s learning styles and how these different curriculums have worked for them, I have helped you come up with a game plan for spelling in your own homeschool. Are there any other spelling curriculums you have loved? Share them in the comments!

    *Disclaimer: this post contains an affiliate link. All opinions are my own.*
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     As some of you who follow this blog know, I used to be a high school English teacher. For some of you, that may give you frightening flashbacks of papers covered in red ink, dull recordings of Shakespeare as you fought to stay awake, and your dreaded weekly vocabulary quiz. Ah, the age-old vocabulary quiz. I remember as a student cramming during lunch to walk in and ace my vocabulary quiz for Mr. Smith every single week my senior year. However, I don’t remember a single word he taught us. 
    When I became a teacher myself, I vowed not to be so old school (I sort of chuckle at my younger, more naive self, but she meant well.) I used purple ink instead of red, we acted out a lot of Shakespeare, complete with plastic swords and collapsible daggers, and I decided something had to be better than those old-fashioned vocabulary quizzes. 
    Now, I can’t guarantee that I was beloved by the kids and had them on the edge of their seats, but I can share a thing or two that I learned about vocabulary. Are you ready, homeschoolers? Are you excited?
    Ok, you’re probably about as excited as my students were when I swore to them that sentence diagramming was fun. (I really think it is!) Just bear with me, though, I promise this is good stuff. 

#1 Workbooks and quizzes don’t work. 

    Yeah, I said it. Even though I knew this from what I learned in college and personal experience, I still made this mistake with my oldest son. When Luke hit sixth grade, I felt that he had to “get serious” about vocabulary. So I got him a workbook, and he slogged through it. This year, I added tests. When he failed his third test in a row, I wanted to kick myself. I knew better. And, as the saying goes, the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing while expecting different results. So I tossed the second workbook with only two lessons completed, and Luke went back to join his brother and sister in their “word a day” program. 
    Before we leave lesson #1, let me say one more thing. Some kids will seem to do fine with a workbook and even ace all their tests. I was that kid growing up. However, these kids are just good at short term memorization. It won’t transfer to long-term knowledge. 
    So before we head to lesson number two, go ahead and toss those workbooks! I’ll wait . . . 

    #2 Students can only learn about five words at a time. 

    This rocked my world when I learned it in my English methods class as a college student. Those lists we all had growing up with 10-20 words on it? We didn’t actually learn them! Study after study has proven this to be true. In the long run, it’s better for your kid to learn an average of one word a day, or five words per week. They will really, truly know those words as opposed to spitting out 10-20 for a quiz then immediately forgetting them. For early elementary, we did a word per day from this book:

    There are coloring pages at the end, and we used these to make a book of all our words. We have now finished both volume one and two of this book. Now that my kids are a little older, we are using English from the Roots Up, but we’ll get to that later. 

    #3 Students retain a new word better if it’s connected to their lives.

    This is true for us as adults, and it’s true for kids too. When I taught high school, I would introduce five new words in a way the kids could connect to: songs, movies, tv shows, or human interest news articles. The Faith Hill song “This Kiss” uses the word “centrifugal;” an article about the ten year anniversary of the death of Kurt Cobain used the word “dissonance,” and the movie Bring it On uses the word “alacrity.” (Um, let me pause and clarify that I do not in any way recommend the movie Bring it On. I actually got in trouble for this as a teacher. I said the word was in the movie, knowing it was popular at the time, but a kid misunderstood, went home, told her parents I said to watch it, they rented it, and well . . . yeah, not good.)
    Anyways, the point is, connecting the words to these things helped my students remember the words and what they meant. It’s actually easier to do this in your homeschool because you know your students! Just talk about the word, ask if and where they’ve heard it before, and connect it to your child’s life.

    #4 Students retain a word better if they see it used in context.

    Reading a definition and reading a word used in a sentence are two completely different things. Therefore, your child’s reading is a great place to learn new words. Some people like to keep a vocabulary journal nearby when their kids are reading so they can jot down any new words that the child learns. There are people who love this, and that’s great. I personally found that it slowed down the pace of our reading too much and took away from the joy of it. When I’m reading with my kids, and we come across a word I think they may not know (or they ask me what something means), I stop, define it, then we just keep on reading. It’s amazing, however, how that simple act embeds that word in their long term memory. Kids who read more have bigger vocabularies - that’s been proven time and again. 
    If you want to be more structured with it, you can find lists of vocabulary words for many, many books either online or in teaching guides. Just remember, again, not to overwhelm your student. Pick just five words from that week’s reading to study more in depth. 

    #5 However, just reading alone isn’t enough.

    As I share all of this, I don’t want you to think that a strong vocabulary is built by accident. You need something formal to monitor your child’s progress and retention. When I taught high school, I still gave a weekly vocabulary quiz. The quiz was very simple for me to type up because all it had on it was a list of the five words for the kids to define, a space for the kids to choose two of the five words to use in a sentence, and another blank space for them to get extra credit by sharing any new words they had learned that week and where they discovered them. At first, my students freaked out about this type of quiz. It was too hard! I some ways, yes, it was hard. They had to actually know the words! There were no word banks or multiple choice so you could make educated guesses. I admit, even I was nervous that my students would all fail. Amazingly, most of them didn’t. We talked about the words all week, read them in sentences, heard them in songs. By the end of the week, they knew those five words like the backs of their hands. Once, a kid told me, “I will remember what lackadaisical means for the rest of my life.” Mission accomplished. 
    
    For your homeschool, a quiz like that may not be necessary. Just make sure your child can explain what the words mean and can use them in a sentence. You could do this orally, through a game, or by having them use the words in a story. In our first word of the day curriculum, my kids drew a picture of the word and used it in a sentence. Now, we play games with the words, but I’ll get to that in a minute. 

    #6 Learning Greek and Latin roots will multiply your child’s vocabulary. 

    When I first started homeschooling, I thought this meant my kids had to learn Latin and/or Greek. We did Song School Latin 1 & 2, which was fun, but going beyond that was more than I could handle. As I thought about what was most important about Latin and Greek, I realized it was the way it aids in figuring out the meanings of new words. Therefore, I shifted my focus from studying the languages to learning the roots. Think about it: if you learn one Greek or Latin root, you can figure out the meaning of many, many English words. The workbook I got for my oldest actually used Greek and Latin roots, it just didn’t do so in a memorable way. A dry and dull workbook isn’t the best way to get this foundation. 
    

    That brings me to . . . 

    One year, I taught 5th and 6th grade humanities once a week at a homeschool hybrid called Veritas. In that program, we used a book called English from the Roots Up by Joegil Lundquist. I absolutely loved it, so I got it for our homeschool. Unfortunately, it’s no longer in print, so finding it is tough. If you can find it, great! If not, you could also use Rummy Roots or another game called Word-Fact-Oh! Roots. Whatever you use, I highly recommend your children record their roots and the words that they make in a notebook. 
    Here’s what a page in English from the Roots Up looks like: 

    Greek roots are in green (g=green), Latin roots are in red (Rome = red). The author of the book recommends making index cards with the root on the front and vocabulary words on the back. Because I didn’t want to deal with keeping track of cards, my kids write these down in a special vocabulary notebook. They color the root red or green at the top with the meaning beneath it, then they write the words underneath. A lot of words combine multiple roots, and we write those sort of like math equations. Here’s an example of a page in one of my kids’ notebook:

    Here’s the most important part: we only do one word per day with a maximum of five words per week (sometimes less!). I don’t necessarily teach them all the words on each page - some are obsolete or extremely rare. Some roots, we’ll learn only three to five words, other pages we will learn six to eight. But we never do more than five in one week! 
    Once we’ve learned all the words we want to on one page, it’s time to play. I put the roots on strips of index cards and affix magnets to the back of them. I stick them on our whte board, and the kids are challenged to build words and tell me what they mean. We can play all kinds of variations of games in this simple way. How many days we review this way depends on how quickly my kids master the words. Sometimes we only play for a couple of days, other times we play with our roots and words for an entire week. The point is always mastery, not just covering a long list of words. 

So rest in peace, workbooks and weekly quizzes. We don’t need you. 

    For Bible, we only use The Child’s Story Bible by Catherine Vos and a Bible in a simple translation for our “further study.” Most of the cards have a corresponding chapter in The Child’s Story Bible. I have really enjoyed this children’s Bible because it is written in a conversational tone that kids can understand while also being extremely thorough. Almost the entire Bible is covered. 
    For history, our main texts are  A Child’s History of the World and The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia. I also highly recommend The 100 Most Important Events of Christian History because it has information on historical events that are difficult to find elsewhere. For the final two sets of cards, when the focus shifts to American history, I can not recommend enough the series A History of US by Joy Hakim. It is incredibly well written and fascinating, with tons of photographs and primary sources. The cards list this resource often. I know it’s pricey, but I found a great deal on a used set. ​

#7 We don’t waste money on the lab kits.
    Apologia actually doesn’t sell lab kits, but Home Science Tools and Nature’s Workshop Plus! sell kits that include most of what you need, ranging in price from about $70 to $125, depending on the kit. Yes, that’s a lot of money, and I just don’t think it’s worth it. All of the materials are easily purchased on your own, and a lot of it is stuff you may already have around the house. I also found that the materials were extremely cheap and sometimes didn’t work (like dead batteries). Plus, I ran into the same problem that I had with the notebooks. Because I spent all that money, I felt pressure to do every single experiment. I want the freedom to skip experiments if we want to without buyer’s guilt. 
    The plus to having the kit, of course, is that you won’t have to worry about collecting materials ahead of time. Mostly. You’ll quickly find that not everything is included, and if you don’t pay attention to the “what you provide” sheet included with the kit, you may still end up unable to perform an experiment. All around, I still say don’t waste your money. 
     The supplies you will be asked to use most often are the following, so make sure you have them on hand:  a yard stick, measuring tape, empty plastic liter bottles, balloons, masking tape, paper plates, baking soda, vinegar, salt,  juice glasses, large drinking glasses, glass casserole dish, large bowl, straws, string, clay, stopwatch, thermometer (just a regular one - not a celsius one), and empty glass jars (like what jam or spaghetti sauce comes in).  As you can see, you probably have most of this stuff already!

A Few More Thoughts:

    I said above that we do experiments on Fridays, but so far in Flying Creatures, we haven’t done any yet. This is because all of the experiments are bird related: testing out different types of bird baths and bird seed, making a bird feeder, leaving out nesting materials for the birds, and building a birdhouse. Since we started in January, I am waiting until the weather warms up. So, we’ve just been reading, doing Try This! activities, and bird watching (we’re using the Audubon Society’s free app - and it’s amazing!). Soon (maybe next week), we’ll spend several weeks making our yard ready for the birds and butterflies! I was also excited to see that our Hobby Lobby carries butterfly gardens, so we’re also going to watch the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly.
     Then there’s an idea I just read on Instagram (though I’m not sure I have the guts to try it) where you spend a month on each subject. So instead of doing geography on Mondays, history on Tuesday and Wednesday, and science on Thursday and Friday year round, I would do geography every day in January, history everyday in February, then science every day in March, then cycle through again. The point is: you can set up a schedule that works for your family and tweak it as needed. 
    One last plus to using Apologia: it is so popular and commonly used among homeschoolers that you can easily find the books used at extremely low prices (and sometimes free!). Be sure to check with your local homeschool groups and used book listings online before you pay full price. 

    I hope you have as much fun exploring God’s creation with Apologia as we have!

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​     Today I’m starting a new series. I’m going to highlight each curriculum that we use, go over the pros and cons, and then share with you how we use it in our house. The last part, I’m hoping, will be the most helpful. No curriculum is perfect, remember? (See my post on that HERE.) Anything you use will need to be tweaked, and I want to make that process easier. And speaking of easy, I want to give you shortcuts and tips from someone who has already made all the mistakes! 
    So let’s dig in by starting with the math curriculum we use: Math U See.
    *Disclaimer* I am only speaking about elementary age with this curriculum. That’s because I haven’t yet used the middle and high school courses: Pre-algebra, Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Geometry, Precalculus with Trigonometry, Calculus, and Stewardship (money management). 

The Pros

#1 - It’s hands-on

    There’s a reason that it’s called Math U See - they want kids to tangibly manipulate the math concepts so they can truly understand them. This is very important developmentally for elementary school. Children at this stage think concretely. Symbolic thought is difficult until ages 10-12, depending on the child. Many adults (politicians especially!) erroneously believe that using manipulatives in math is harmful for children. They believe that it is a crutch that keeps them from learning. The opposite is actually true. Removing manipulatives too soon is actually more harmful. Looking back, I believe this is what hindered me as a child in the 80s when manipulatives of any kind were completely removed from math classrooms. Math U See does encourage you to take away the blocks eventually, but you do that when the child is ready. I actually have seen my kids understand a concept faster because of the blocks, and in a deeper way than I did at their age. They aren’t just temporarily memorizing how to do a problem, they are really learning how the math works.

#2 - Mastery is encouraged, not finishing books at certain ages. 

    If you’ve read my blog at all, you probably know I am big on mastery, not just simply covering material. I love that about Math U See. The teacher book and DVDs are constantly reminding both the parent and the child not to move on to the next concept until they have mastered the previous one. For this reason, the books are not labeled by grade. The levels are Primer, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, and Zeta. After Zeta, you continue on to the appropriate middle and high school courses listed above. A lot of people skip Primer and go straight to Alpha. However, I did Primer for my older two in kindergarten. Haley flew through it and ended up starting Alpha halfway through the year. With my youngest, I did Primer in preschool, mainly because he has a winter birthday versus a summer birthday like his siblings. The Math U See website has a test so you can figure out what level is best for your child. 

#3 - Memorization of math facts is emphasized.

    I know what you may be thinking - but I thought you said math should be hands-on! Yes, I did, but that doesn’t mean memorization is a bad thing, either. Memorization with understanding is actually freeing. When kids can add, subtract, multiply, and divide super fast in their heads, higher math concepts are much less taxing. And believe me, your kids will be able to do this mental math in their heads with this curriculum because of number four . . . 

#4 - Tricks and patterns are taught for faster mental math.

    I’ll make a confession here: thanks to Math U See, I can do math in my head much faster. It taught my kids so many tricks that had me thinking, “why did no one ever show me this?” For example, did you know that nine and eight are jealous of ten? They want to be ten themselves! The number nine has one mouth, so he slurps up one from every number to be a ten. Eight has two mouths, so he slurps up two. Thus, 9+7=16 and 8+7=15. Maybe you had better teachers than me, but this blew my mind! And then there’s how to remember 8x7=56. Look at it backwards: 5,6,7,8! Those are just a few examples. There is also a memory song CD that is really catchy to help you learn addition and skip counting (aka multiplication). 

The Cons

#1 - It is a spiral curriculum.

Okay, first off, you may not know what that means. But believe me, you won’t homeschool for long until you hear this word tossed around. What it means is that concepts are practiced over and over again. The idea is that you don’t want kids to forget previous concepts. That’s great and all, but the problem is that kids don’t get enough practice with the new concepts. Each lesson in Math U See has five practice sheets and one “enrichment” sheet in the workbook. Practice pages A-C gives kids about twelve or fifteen problems on that lesson’s concept. Pages D and E gives them only maybe three or four problems on that lesson’s concept followed by eight to twelve review problems. It just isn’t always enough practice in my opinion (and in my husband’s) for the new concept being taught. Then, to make things even more frustrating, the lesson test (included in a separate booklet) is set up just like review pages D and E. Which means your child could get all the problems correct that cover that lesson’s concept yet still fail the test because they got the “review” questions wrong. 
Want to know something, though? All homeschool math curriculum is spiral. So this is one you just have to deal with no matter what. (See the next section for how I recommend dealing with this.)

#2 - Division is introduced late.

    In Math U See, Gamma covers multiplication, and Delta covers division. Whereas in traditional math - where kids will learn their multiplication tables, then go on to simple division, then start multiplying large numbers, then learn long division - Math U See focuses on multiplication for a whole book. That means your kid will learn their multiplication tables, then learn how to multiply bigger and bigger numbers in one book, and only then move on to division. In some ways, this set up makes more sense cognitively. There’s just one tiny problem: standardized testing. Most kids will have never done division or even know what it is when they take their first standardized test as third graders under Math U See. I can imagine what you’re thinking: Melanie, that’s terrible! Why use this curriculum? Again, I will address that in the last section of this post. 

#3 - Place value notation is used to teach multiple digit addition, multiplication, and division.

    What the heck is that, you ask? Oh, I bet you’ve seen it on many a Facebook post by frustrated parents trying to help their public school kids with their math homework. Math U See doesn’t use the boxes that I have seen in those social media posts, but it is similar. Here is an example: