Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool

I have been unhappy with what I have available for middle school math. I like linear and progressive, and I get frustrated with Khan Academy’s “solar system” approach. I want it to go in a straight line and it’s all over the place! I’m working on rewriting the math 10+ page. It won’t change dramatically, but hopefully it will be more orderly 🙂 and give some more options for different students.

I’ve also found some new middle school math sites. This site has 6th, 7th and 8th grade “summer math” courses. They each have about 100 days of short lessons. This looks like it could be used as a pre-algebra course. It a whole 36 weeks.

I’ve spent most of the day looking at these. I’ve added them to the 10+ math page and rewrote the Khan Academy section. I’ve changed it to keep them moving forward. I feel like my daughter spends all of her time reviewing on Khan Academy. I added a check list of all of the video topics for arithmetic and pre-algebra, which I’m about to check off myself, to see where my kids are in Khan Academy. I’m working on updating the check list to include all of the exercises and not just the video topics. When that’s done, we’ll have the number of exercises that need to get done for arithmetic and pre-algebra. Hope this helps add direction and purpose. You can, of course, just do your own thing. You can keep using the Khan Academy review exercises and just keep plugging along if it’s working for you.

Keep checking the Math 10+ page for updates as I get this all in its (hopefully) final structure.

I had an ultrasound this week and found out we’re having our 5th boy! I couldn’t even imagine it being a girl. I guess I’m really used to boys at this point. My oldest is my daughter, which I highly recommend because she is so helpful to me!

I’m expecting the baby around February 1st. My due date is the 22nd, but my babies always come at 37 weeks. My oven runs hot! And boy am I thankful they come sooner rather than later. I’m feeling really impatient for this baby to come. I feel like to could come today and just fit right in 🙂 I guess that comes with having six kids.

In other news, I don’t know if anyone noticed, but I started putting up Tom Sawyer on fifth grade, and then I decided to switch books, so I’m going to take down the assignments I’ve written already. No one should be that far yet (Day 95), so it won’t affect any of you. My daughter (the one who reads anything and everything) today told me that she skips the second half of the book because it gives her “bad thoughts.” She says the first half is funny, but the second half is scary. My mother is a book lover, so I feel a bit of pressure to have my kids read “the classics,” but there is other literature out there. I’ve chosen Little Men instead by Louisa May Alcott–boy antics without the murdering Injun Joe.

 

I’ve gotten all the donations in needed, and I’ve saved the files! Thank you everyone!

***PLEASE TAKE NOTE: I have just learned that the website holding all of the power point flash presentations I’ve made is going to delete them. It’s all of the phonics stories and the words for sight reading. It will cost $50 a year to keep them on the site. Obviously, I didn’t realize this when I put them there. I haven’t been able to find another place to upload them that won’t require you each to download each one onto your computer instead of playing online. Would some of you please consider donating $5, $10, so I can use the money to pay to keep these online? I have the power points on my computer; I don’t need them online. I’m doing this for you, so please consider helping me out with this.

I posted that note on the Getting Ready 1 page because it would be most effected by this. Since posting two days ago, I have gotten $25. It’s discouraging because I can see that more than 100 times a day the page gets viewed. I have learned that this site isn’t going to run for free. If you are using the curriculum and it’s helping your family, please consider giving. I paid to remove ads, and now I have to pay for file storage. These will both be annual expenses. There are enough people using this that the cost shouldn’t be an issue at all. I hate to have to ask, but I really don’t think I should pay this out of my pocket.

If you can’t donate, please don’t feel guilty. I’m not trying to put on the pressure or make you feel bad! I just need help right now.

I just put up day 90, which means I’m halfway through the school year, and it’s still August! It feels good. It’s been so much easier this year. Last year there were a lot of starts and stops in the beginning as I was trying to figure out how to organize it. I wanted everyone learning the same things, but I knew everyone had to have their own English and math. I had always used history and science as my base for English, just pulling out writing assignments and grammar and vocabulary from whatever we were reading for those assignments. But it just wasn’t going to work in this structure. I needed more order and linear progression that would work for all kids, not just the ones in front of me at the moment. I’m thinking next year will be even easier because it’s a theme I’ve taught before, four years ago when my oldest was eight. I already have some materials made, etc.

And this week I made a mental note (let’s see if I can hang onto it while pregnant) to do more acting for vocabulary practice. My second level student had a great time acting out his vocabulary words from the book he’s reading. We played charades; he acted and we guessed. It’s not the first time I’ve done it, but I think it’s the first time I’ve put it in the curriculum. Yep, “Play charades,” it’s one of the assignments 🙂

Hope your school week went well.

I just learned that my blogs sometimes have ads on them. I never knew because I’ve never seen them. They only show up if you aren’t logged in as a WordPress user. I didn’t put those ads there. I didn’t make money from them. They were put there by WordPress because I don’t pay for my blogs. They are all free.

It really bothered me to find out, and I don’t want any distractions, like ads, for your kids during school, so I just went ahead and paid to have them removed for the year. I have gotten $35 in donations and it cost $30 to remove the ads, so I did it. If I’m able to, I will keep them off in the future as well.