Tag: christian light education

Time4Learning

A few weeks ago I signed Angelica up for a monthly subscription service called Time4Learning. It covers language arts and math, with an optional science curriculum.

It is kind of cool because it covers things that we hadn’t even thought to do, but are expected of Kindergartners now, like solid shapes, what an author and illustrator are, table of contents and other parts of a book etc. It reinforces other things, like letter sounds and prepositions. Today we reached a lesson with listening comprehension, and practicing that might be especially good for her receptive language issues, even if those issues make it harder for her to do the activities. It has begun teaching her rhyming, which we hadn’t gone over yet. So it is keeping her education well rounded and giving us ideas on what to teach outside the workbook curriculum. There are quizzes after every few lessons, and it keeps a record of grades that I can see at the parent portal. She actually asks to do these videos sometimes, whereas it has been awhile since she has asked to do the workbooks. She likes the interactivity of it I think. They aren’t the most compelling videos, but she likes having something to watch and listen to.

I am realizing that maybe instead of Christian Light Education workbooks, or in addition to them since they are so inexpensive, I probably should have gone with my instincts and paid for the video series put out by BJU. Videos seem to be her thing. I think there are still workbooks that go with it, which is good since she needs to practice writing. But maybe she would rather watch a video than listen to me teach the whole time. I am going to look into a computer game curriculum. I don’t know if there are any, but something engaging like that with lots of teaching and clicking might be good for her. Every one has their own learning style, and on top of that she is not exactly a traditional learner. So anything I can find that she can at least mostly follow along with, will enjoy, and will hold her attention is worth investigating.

1st Week of Homeschooling

Our curriculum arrived in the mail at the end of last week, and we have worked diligently on one lesson a day since then. We are using the Christian Light Education curriculum. Specifically, the one with workbooks. It’s nice and easy because everything that you need to do in one day is laid out in one lesson in the workbook. So we get math and language-arts covered. I know where to start and I know when to stop. As a first-time homeschooling mom that is absolutely great. And the curriculum seems pretty good too. At least so far. As students go through the workbooks they frequently have to review and reuse information they have learned in previous lessons.

I decided to start Angelica with the kindergarten 2 curriculum. Kindergarten 1 seemed a little bit to basic for her age. The first grade curriculum is much more comprehensive with social studies and science, but I think the language arts and math would have been right over her head at this point. So I ordered the curriculum for the second half of kindergarten and so far we are just going along. There have been some difficulties though, and we are wondering if it has something to do with her language comprehension – or something else. Hopefully it is nothing. The first week of school can have some bumps for every kid, whether homeschooled or in public school. But between her speech issue, her problems with directions, and her difficulty playing with age-appropriate board games we are going to just check up on Angelica with a developmental pediatrician.

English is definitely Angelica’s strong suit so far. She has trouble with the math. A lot of trouble with the math. She’s having a hard time remembering how to count, although we have worked on this for a very long time – well before we started officially homeschooling. And sometimes she will get the counting right and then the next time she goes to count she will have it completely out of order. We are trying different methods to teach her, from singing to using manipulatives and toys. We will just have to see what works.

We are still using supplemental materials as well. We are using a Pre-K science book and soon we might start a geography book. I’ve been saving these books since she was two. And then of course we have flashcards of the letters and their sounds. We are using those and in a few months might start with sight word flashcards. And pretty much daily we use her dry erase letter and number tracing book. That’s really what’s teaching her how to write. She’s practicing her writing in her workbook, and she’s making some improvements each day, but it’s the dry erase book that lets her practice over and over again and gives her bigger letters to trace. Angelica makes some really beautiful letters in her dry erase book. She seems to have more fun with it too. It is so colorful.

I can’t wait until she knows how to read and I can start getting her science books to study, and books to really get into history. I suppose I could try to get some supplemental materials for those subjects now, but they’re kind of hard to find for her age group and honestly I think she’s got enough on her plate with the language arts and math. That’s a lot of learning to do each day.

I’m trying to be careful not to burn Angelica out. So far she seems to do school willingly, and even look forward to it. I want to keep it that way. Of course, school requires some level of discipline. You can’t just do school when you feel like it. Even if she gets up one morning and doesn’t want to do it we still need to work our way through the lesson, but I choose times to use the supplemental materials very carefully. So far though she has been eager.