School Choice: Not the Same for Every Family

This is a post that I wrote over a year ago in January 2015.   I never published it, not sure why but as I read through it just now I am feeling the need to publish it.  I still believe that homeschooling is the right decision for our family at this time, we go year by year, child by child.  There are so many choices for schooling our children and what is right for one family is not right for another family.  


Do you ever just get in a rut?  That's how I have felt lately, which is one reason this blog has been silent for the past few months.  There is also the factor that I really have not had the time!  But last night I had a conversation with friends, and it brought something out in me which made me think I had to get it out!  So here I am!

I have felt in the past that when talking to people about our choice to homeschool there may be some trepidation in their voices.  I usually would just shrug it off, but last night something that was said really got me riled up.  So here it is!

I feel like now is my time to 'defend' our homeschooling choice!  Well maybe not defend but explain. When we chose to homeschool it had nothing to do with me thinking that all public schools were bad or that homeschooling is the only right choice.  Completely the opposite!  I believe that there is no RIGHT choice!  God has a plan for each of us and that means public, private and homeschooling are all the right choice.

For our family we choose to homeschool because that is what God has placed in our hearts to do.  I also feel that if we were to send our children to public school at this time we would be out of the will of God, and that is not a place I wish to be!

We are certainly not perfect, and I absolutely have days when I dream of that yellow bus taking my children away for 9 hours!  Then the reality sets in and I realize that if my children were gone all day then there would be less time for things like this:

If you want to see a very detailed description as to how we came to the homeschooling decision you can look here.  

Ok that is all!  

End of the Year Review: The Changes We Made

Here we go again with another year end review.  This time I will be talking about each individual child and the choices we made for them this year.  Like I said in my last post, we ended up making quite a few changes through out the year.  Be sure to check out my other posts about Classical Conversations and our all together subjects.

Zach- Age 5  Kindergarten

For Zach, I really thought he would be ready to learn to read at the beginning of the year, that was not the case.  We tried for a few weeks and he just was not getting it, and that is ok.  He had just turned 5, he's a boy and his attention span at the time was really short.  At that point I just put everything away and we just did Math, which was all hands on.  Slowly as the year went on we made some changes and added things in.  We added in The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading instead of All About Reading, Zaner Bloser Handwriting the kindergarten book instead of the Italic handwriting, and Plaid Phonics A.  I love all of those choices!  Zach has just been thriving in all aspects.  He is really beginning to understand some phonics concepts, his handwriting is improving and his reading is really coming along.  During the summer we will continue on with his reading and maybe the phonics book.  All of these books we have been working through super slowly, so we will continue with all of them next year.  The one thing I did stick with for Zach is the Saxon Math K, we really enjoyed it.

Noah- age 8/9  3rd Grade

Noah has made tremendous strides this year with his reading.  He went from reading hardly anything to devouring everything he gets his hands on!  Honestly the only thing that is the same for Noah is his math.  He just finished up Teaching Textbooks 3, he did really well with it.  Although these last few months I have noticed his need for me to help him through the lessons, so next year we will be switching up our math choice for him.  For handwriting I also switched him to Zaner Bloser the 3rd grade book instead of the Prescripts from Classical Conversations, he has been working hard on his cursive writing.  We dropped All About Reading Level 3, and All About Spelling Level 1, I just felt like they weren't working for Noah anymore.  For a replacement we added in First Language Lessons Level 2.  That is going really well, we won't finish the book this year, but I hope to work a through it a bit this summer.  We also added on Nessy Online learning, we haven't been very consistent with it but I can tell its going to be a big help for him.

Elijah- age 12  6th Grade

Elijah worked so hard this year!  He made amazing progress in his spelling and grammar work.  I really didn't make any changes for him this year.  Although he didn't finish his Fix It Grammar book or the Phonetic Zoo.  We will hopefully work through them more over the summer.  I did drop the Prescripts handwriting for him and we switched to Zaner Bloser the 6th grade book.  I am not sure how much he actually got out of it, his handwriting is just not improving as much as I would like.  He is left handed and a boy and his father has really terrible handwriting so I think I will just concede that it's as good as it's going to get.   He also did not do any of the reading books I had picked out.  He just does not like to me to force books on him, on the other hand he will pick up random books and just start reading, so I guess I don't need to worry about him.  He finished up his Teaching Textbooks 6 and did really well, although it was a tough road at times!  I really feel like the Essentials program through Classical Conversations helped a lot with his writing and for a final project for him he is writing a five paragraph paper all on his own with very little help from me.  I am requiring this of him because I want him to know that he can do it!  Next year will be a big leap of independence for him and I know he needs this boost of confidence.

My final thoughts on this year:

This was an amazing year of tremendous growth for all of us!  I am so excited that we made the decision to use Classical Conversations and I feel that after five year of homeschooling we have finally found our thing!  I have been reading a lot about the Classical model of education, and I am hoping to dig more into it this summer.  Reading The Well Trained Mind is what helped me make my mid year changes for Zach, I took most of the recommendations from that book and surprisingly they worked for him!  Here are some books on my summer reading list, The Question, Teaching the Trivium, and The Life Giving Home .


**The links in this post are given to make it easy for you find the items I mention and are not affiliated links.**

Our First Full Year of Morning Time: What We Included

Here is the second part of my year in review.  This was the first year I was teaching all three of my kids.  Elijah was in 6th grade, Noah was in 3rd grade, and Zach was in Kindergarten.  This year was quite a bit different than our other years, I'm not sure if it's because I was teaching all three of them or if it was because we were doing a whole lot of new stuff.  I feel like as we are wrapping up this year I need to look back and see just how far all of my kids have come.  There were many days this year that we struggled to just get the minimum work done.  I know at this point all of us are ready for a great relaxing summer break!

I'll start my curriculum review by going over what we did together, next time I will go over their individual curriculum choices.


Morning Time:

This was our second year doing a morning time, but this was the first year we that we went full force!  Our morning time included our Bible time, hymn memorization, Bible passages, famous speeches, and documents.   For our hymns we learned How Great Thou Art, In Christ Alone, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, and Amazing Grace.  Next year I think we will learn quite a bit more than just four, I started out slow because I wasn't sure how my boys would react to them, but they really loved it!  We also learned some Bible passages, Galations 5:22-23 (The Fruit of the Spirit), Ephesians 6:11-18 (The Armor of God) and Matthew 5:3-12 (The Beatitudes).  We learned The Nicene Creed, The Gettysburg Address and we are working on the Declaration of Independence.  Also in our morning time we included history, read aloud, and our Classical Conversations memory work.  

History:

This year we continued using The Mystery of History and did Volume 2 The Early Church and the Middle Ages.  I absolutely love this history curriculum!  It is so thorough and exciting. I love how it ties in Biblical history to word history.  We didn't do any of the activities this year, we would read the lesson, Elijah would do a note booking page about that lesson while the other two had coloring pages they would use.  I also made timeline pages for each child to color and use instead of doing a big timeline on our wall.  I think they each enjoyed coloring their own timeline figures.  We also did most of the mapping activities.

Bible:

Our Bible curriculum consisted of a few different items this year.  We used the following books throughout the year The Ology, Church History A-Z, The Biggest Story and finally we worked through a Grapevine Study on Biblical Feasts and Holy Days.  I really enjoyed having different things to go through.  It kept it fresh and didn't get stale through the year.  Last year we did the Apologia Who Is God and really loved it, but it did get a little repetitive as the year went on.  So I think next year I will do something similar to what we did this year.

Read Aloud:

This year I had a great hope for our read aloud time, I had so many good books planned, but something amazing happened this year!  We went off of our plan because we found some amazing books that we just fell in love with!  We finished reading The Green Ember series, and we are working through The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series.  We did get through most of the ones I had planned and a few that we started we just didn't finish because we lost interest.  Some of the ones we didn't get through we will read either through the summer or save them for next year.  Here is the list of books that we did read this year from my list:

• D.L Moody
• Ronald Reagan
• Castle Diary
• Adam of the Road
• Rabbit Hill
• Twenty and Ten
• My Side of the Mountain
• The Door in the Wall
• The Bears on Hemlock Mountain

The ones that we started but didn't finish are The Samurai's Tale and The Trumpeter of Krakow.  I'm not sure what we didn't like about them but we just couldn't get excited about either one.  We got about eight chapters into each one before we stopped so I feel like we gave it a good try.  Oh well, not every book will be a hit and that ok!

Books that we didn't get to but will save for next year are John Wycliffe and The Wheel on the School.  I am looking forward to reading both of those.

Next time I will get into each child's curriculum and what we liked and didn't like about what we chose.  Here is a hint- we changed a lot through out the year!


**There are internet links in this post but I want to be clear that these are not affiliate links.  I just like to include links so it's really easy to find the items I mention.**

Our First Year in Classical Conversations: How it Went and My Thoughts

I guess I'm what you call a "sometimes" blogger!  I really love keeping this record for our family, I love to see how far everyone comes each year, how much they grow, and the fun things that we do.  Unfortunately I just never seem to have the time to sit down and write a blog post!  I have contemplated doing a You Tube channel, but lets be real, I hate to be on camera!

So here I am as we are coming to the end of our school year, and I really do want to do a recap of how things went this year.  This was our first year with Classical Conversations and it was amazing!  We all learned so much, made great friends and look forward to doing it again next year!  If you would like to see what curriculum we used this year you can check that out here.  

I would first like to go over how our year in Classical Conversations went for each of us.  For our youngest, Zach, who had just turned 5 at the beginning of the year, it was a challenge.  He enjoyed going every week, but really wanted me to be with him all day.  He was the youngest in his class, and so that was also a bit of a challenge, although you couldn't really tell he was the youngest by the way he interacted with the other kids.  One aspect of CC that I really love is the public speaking part, each week the kids give a presentation (at Zach's age its mostly just a glorified show and tell), I was truly wondering how he would handle that.  He did awesome!  The kid has no fear of talking to anyone and had a great time sharing what he brought with his friends.

Noah, had quite a different experience.  At the end of last year we found out that he is dyslexic and had heard that Classical Conversations is a great fit for kids who are dyslexic because it's all memorizing and verbal.  He made some really good friends but about half way through the year his tutor (that is what they call the "teacher") moved out of state, so he had to say good-bye to her.  That is very hard for our little soft hearted guy.  He was so upset and didn't want to go back.   He got a new tutor, who was great, but she did things a little bit differently. He struggles with change and if things are too hard he tends to shut down.   All in all I think he had an amazing year and learned so many things!

Elijah, who is 12, did the Foundations program, but also the Essentials program.  In the morning he was doing the same memory work that his little brothers were doing and then in the afternoon we focused on writing, grammar work, and math facts.  I am so amazed at how well he did this year, he comprehended things so well and came so far in his writing.  At the beginning of the year he struggled to write a single sentence and at the end of the year he turned in a five paragraph paper!  It is on to their Jr. High program next year for him, Challenge A, and I know that it is going to be a very challenging program for him and he will have a lot of growth.

For me, this is exactly what our family needed this year!  Classical Conversations is a great community of like minded parents who are striving to teach their children classically at home.  In our local community I found friends, support, and a great group for my kids to grow with and feel accepted.  At the beginning of the year I was determined to just sit back and take it all in.  Well when Noah's tutor left and they were looking for a new one, I was considering it.  Someone else stepped up and I really felt relieved because I didn't think I could do it.  A few weeks later, over our Christmas break, they were once again seeking out a new tutor because our community was growing.  So with a lot of prayer, I offered to do it.  I am so glad that I did!  It was a great experience and I loved it so much that I am going to be doing it again next year!

Here is my overall review of the Classical Conversations program:

Pros:  

• Community-having people to support me on the days when I want to quit
• Consistency- meeting weekly for 24 weeks with the same families
• Classical

Cons:

• Price- it is quite expensive

Honestly as far as the cons that is the only one I can think of for our family. Thankfully I am able to tutor and that covers most of our tuition, which is a great blessing!

This is getting kinda of long so I will stop for now, and continue our year in review in another post.  If you have any questions about how Classical Conversations works you can check out their website and get in contact with a local director!