2018-2019 Catholic Homeschool Curriculum Review

This post has been sitting unfinished for long enough! Now that we have just finished our first term of the new school year, I figure it is time to finally wrap it up and share with you all my reviews of last year’s curriculum choices.

After being at this homeschool game for 7 years now, I’m so much better about choosing curriculum that work for my family, my kids, and most importantly, ME!

Enjoying some Virginia Lee Burton stories together. Whether your 35 or 3, you can’t help but love them!

Just for kicks, you can go and see my 2018-2019 Homeschool Curriculum picks here:

2018-19 Curriculum for 2nd grader and Kindergartener

2018-2019 Curriculum for 6th grader

But today, I’m looking back and telling you what worked and what didn’t. Shall we get to it?

6th Grader (Lowell)

MATH

Saxon 8/7 – (WIN!)

We continue to like Saxon, but as Lowell moved into the last fourth of the book (Pre-Algebra content), we realized he needed more practice in each lesson on the new content than what a Saxon lesson provides. The new concepts were just not sticking, so it was time for a new approach.

Pros: Solid spiral approach, lots of review, constant retesting on old material
Cons: Not enough practice on new material

Luckily, we have Husband’s old homeschool math books. We looked through our stash and moved right into…

Merrill Algebra I – (WIN!)

Each lesson of Merrill provides lots of practice on the new concept, and all the units of the chapter build upon each other. Each chapter has a review test and chapter test, but there are only 2 semester tests that provide testing on material from multiple chapters. I will be pulling problems from the chapters for quarterly tests (boo to extra work for mom!). Who cares that the book’s copyright is 1978? Math is math!

Pros: Lots of practice on new material, chapter tests to ensure material is well learned before moving on
Cons: Not much review, only 2 semester tests provided.

Writing

Lepanto Grammar – (so, so) We used this last summer to review the basics of a good paragraph. It doesn’t give a lot of hand holding to students who are not naturally writing inclined.

Writing and Rhetoric 1 & 2 – We completed the 1st book of Writing and Rhetoric in 5th grade, and we were part of the way through Book 2 before hitting 6th grade. We gave this program a good try, but I just was not seeing the progress in writing I wanted to see and finally found another program before the 2018-19 school year began.

Enter one of my favorite finds of homeschooling…

Institute for Excellence in Writing (DOUBLE WIN!)

I’d heard so much about this program, and had visited their website multiple times only to be overwhelmed. I finally put on my big girl pants and studied their flow chart for choosing the correct writing program for your student, and we made the big switch. (In case you are wondering, we used Student Writing Intensive B to begin.)

This program has made all the difference for our homeschool! I can’t recommend it enough to friends, family, and readers who write in looking for a writing solution for their homeschool.

Anthony Pudewa lectures the students on new material and has wonderful checklists for accessing writing that make the writing process incredibly simple for any student. We started Student Writing Intensive B last August, completed it in March and then moved on to other IEW materials.

Does it require some teacher time? Absolutely! And writing is one of the subjects that the student will need you as a teacher and facilitator. I automate as many subjects as possible so I can fully devote time to the subjects where my students need me most (writing, math help, religion discussions).

We spent about 30 minutes a day together either watching the lecture or working on his writing projects. Many days, I could just set him to work and he was confident enough to write without my help ( a HUGE leap from long hours spent staring at a blank page). I would then go over his rough drafts with him and help him do his final edits.

Pros: Lots of hand-holding, lots of variety of writing styles, encourages structure, style, and creativity
Cons: I honestly can’t think of one!

Seton English 6 (WIN!)

We love the thoroughness and ease of implementing the Seton English workbooks and plan on using them this year and probably for many, many years.

Seton Spelling 6 (WIN!)

Again, I’m all about automating subjects if you can, and Seton Spelling workbooks help me automate Spelling (besides the short time spent giving and grading his weekly test). Lowell is not a natural speller, but he has progressed nicely over the last few years of using these books.

Latin for Children B (Classical Academic Press) – (WIN!)

Lowell continues to enjoy the switch from Latina Christiana to Latin for Children. The DVD lectures are better quality and quite a bit more entertaining. It’s a solid program we are sticking to for the foreseeable future.

Image result for our lady of victory living in gods church

Religion

Our Lady of Victory Living in God’s Church (Book 6) – (WIN!)

We continue to enjoy the OLV religion series. The stories are sweet and Husband and I like the way the material is presented over other programs we have seen. It is also orthodox, solid, and rigorous.

The only downfall to this program is the text can be difficult to break into “schedu-able” chucks (see how I just invented a word right there?). Last year we got around this by creating a syllabus at the beginning of the year where Lowell can just check off each day’s work. This year we are doing it even more simply by saying he needs to read 10 pages a week.

You can purchase a syllabus from OLV, which I did the first year, but I prefer to schedule our religion into 3 days per week.

Pros: Solid, Catholic, rigorous
Cons: Book is not broken down into manageable chunks (create a syllabus to get around this), so many questions/activities it can be hard to break down what you actually want your child to complete

Gospel of Mark Bible Study Unit (WIN!)

This was what I chose to do for my 6 week unit teach our co-op last year. I so enjoyed pulling together Biblical geography, books of the Bible memory work, scripture memory, and scripture study methods. Lowell got to participate in this, and I was glad that I could spend my time teaching this to the other kids as well!

(I’d love to make this into a course to offer here on the blog – let me know if you are interested – it will give me the motivation I need to do it!)

Other

Reading List– (always a WIN!)

I love making reading lists for my kids, but we have finally accrued enough books that I can set Lowell loose with a bit of guidance.

I pull books for him to read and keep on his bookshelf in his room. He can also choose his own as long as it is quality literature. Book choices cover math, history, science, geography, and classic literature.

There is a minimum of 1 hour required reading everyday nearly 7 days a week/ 365 days a year. Of course, he reads a lot on his own outside of the time too!

Typing – (WIN!)

We continue to use and love Typing.com, the free resource for learning typing. This was his last year doing typing. Next year we’ll take on programming.

Image result for seton our catholic legacy

History

Our Catholic Legacy (WIN!)

I fall in the guided unschooling camp when it comes to history in the younger grades, but I did want Lowell to work through this Seton text to help round out his history studies and prepare him for upper level history.

Pros: Broken into manageable and easy to schedule chunks, history from a Catholic perspective
Cons: A bit of dry textbook, but that isn’t always a bad thing!

Story of the World Audio and Columbus and Sons (WIN!)

This is very informal study, but my children have learned more about history than I ever did in school! They often request Story of the World in the car and I often read Columbus and Sons to them over lunch.

Piano – (Hoffman Academy) (QUADRUPLE WIN!)

We continue to L.O.V.E. this program. There isn’t as much oversight as a real piano teacher would give, but the price and accessibility cannot be beat!

There is no way our family could have scheduled regular piano lessons the past few years, but my son can easily hop on the computer and do 30 minutes. I love, love, love this program….and so does my son!

1st/2nd Grade (Christian)

Age wise, Christian was a 2nd grader this year, but he really lost a year of development physically and academically when he was battling epilepsy, so he was more of a 1st grader by capabilities.

I am happy to say, that I think he ended the year at a mid-year 2nd grade range – which means we gained some ground!!!

Reading – (oh, so many different resources …I will only highlight a few)

Ready2Read (WIN!)

My sister-in-law turned me on to this program. I was very against it at first because it requires an IMMENSE amount of prep work, but it was worth it in the end. It really help Christian focus and practice a lot (which he seems to need even more so than the average beginning reader) in a way that wasn’t just sitting at the table. He moved through all 3 levels this year!

” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Explode the Code (WIN!)

We just started Explode the Code after finishing Ready2Read. I’d heard a lot of good things about these workbooks, and they do provide a lot of practice and repetition of phonics. Our plan is to use these coupled with lots of readers, sight word flashcards, and phonogram flashcards to finish out Christian’s reading instruction. ( I like these workbooks in combination with the Ready2Read program with my next child!)

Little Angel Readers (WIN!)

I love Little Angel Readers! We don’t use the workbooks, but the stories are so systematic in the way the introduce new phonics rules, that Christian has been able to get lots of reading practice with them!

Reading Eggs (so-so)

Reading Eggs is so-so. It takes too much of a sight reading approach for my liking, but it was a fun way for Christian to practice reading and also his math skills with their Math Seeds program.

Math

Abeka (WIN!)

I continue to love these workbooks for the younger grades before transitioning my students to Saxon 5/4. They are colorful, in manageable chunks, and have lots of review.

I’ve heard there are some anti-Catholic sentiments from this company, but I guess I plan on turning a blind eye to that for now.

Image result for preparing to receive jesus

Preparing to Receive Jesus (CHC) (WIN!)

Christian and I both enjoyed working through this program. We did it in the evening so we could light a candle, have tea, and some alone time together to make it special. He and his younger siblings also did Catechesis of the Good Shepherd this year too.