Jake wrote about Autumn.

This is my first year to completely write my own curriculum for my children.  Eight years ago when I began my home-schooling journey, I relied heavily on curriculum.  I used Sonlight at the time, which I really liked.  It is a literature-based curriculum and I absolutely loved their reading lists.

As I grew in my confidence as a teacher to my children, I began following their leading.  What were they interested in?  With each school year, I departed more and more from any set curriculum.  Last year, we just used the reading lists.  And this year, I am all on my own.

Every six weeks I sit down and plan my schooling.  This time span works well for me because it is long enough that I am not constantly planning and it is short enough that it feels flexible to me.  I can go in a different direction as needed.

Now you must realize that I am planner by nature.  It comes fairly easily to me.  So if you want to follow in my footsteps and plan your own lessons, then do what feels good to you.  It might be week to week or month to month.  I chose six weeks because we have always had movie night after six weeks of school.  We rent or buy a movie, pop popcorn, and buy a box of candy for each child as a reward.

Kyla's page on the American Beauty Berry. She quoted Ezekiel 47:12c. The berries are not poisonous after all.

Since reading about the Thomas Jefferson Education, I have been intrigued by what they call, “Kid School.”  This is for elementary to middle school aged students.  The mom chooses something to teach her kids.  It is not math everyday, then science for an hour, etc.  It is whatever she wants to teach her students.  The varied subject matter keeps the kids wondering what they will learn tomorrow.  It keeps school interesting.

When I plan, I try to do two different subjects a day in addition to Bible, history, our read-aloud, and their reader.  Sometimes we do more depending on how seamless my lesson can be.  My goal as a teacher is to make our lessons as seamless as possible.  I don’t want to compartmentalize their education.  I also don’t want it so structured that it resembles public school.

With these goals in mind, we use our Creation Journals often.  They provide a great way incorporate various subjects in one.  Let me show you some examples.  We have been taking nature walks to find and photograph different species of fauna and flora.  We bring them home and download the pictures to the computer.  Then each person chooses a specimen to research.  It can be a tree, cloud, plant, mushroom, animal, etc.

Pages on two different kinds of trees: the Chinese Tallow and Chinaberry.

We have field guides, books, and the internet in which to do our research.  Identifying our specimens are not always easy.  Sometimes it takes a long time to discover what it is.  Then we learn as much as we can about it.

We want to know what it is commonly called, its Latin name, what is it used for, and anything of interest.  Is is poisonous?  Can you eat it?  What is its purpose?

Then we draw it, add all the pertinent information into our journals, and try to find a poem, Bible verse, or other information to copy into our pages.  After we are done, we gather together in the living room and take turns presenting our newly-acquired knowledge to one another.  Therefore, everyone learns without having to do all of the research for each individual specimen.

An uplifting verse from Job about widows while studying Widow's Tears.

Sometimes we add the Spanish words for it depending on if we know it already.  When we were discussing the reasons for the seasons, it launched us into learning the same vocabulary in Spanish.  They are currently learning to describe the weather in another language.

Striving for seamless lessons is my goal when planning my version of “Kid School.”  It is a more natural approach because life is not compartmentalized into different subjects.  Not only do they learn a wealth of information in many subject areas, but they are learning research skills.  From using a concordance in the Bible or an index in a book or a simple Google search, my children are learning key skills without even realizing it.

Whether you write your own or use already prepared curriculum, remember you are the teacher.  You are in charge.  Do not be a slave to the plan.  Flexibility is your friend.  Every day is not seamless in my home, but seamless lessons are the goal I work towards.

Jake doing his MEP math.

Growing up I never enjoyed math.  It was one of the few subjects I actually had to work at to make a good grade.  So when I began homeschooling, I wanted to give my children a solid understanding of math.  I did not want them to just memorize facts and formulas as I did in school.

There are many good math curriculums available to homeschooling families.  I want to share which one we use and why I’ll be sticking with it.  It is called MEP (Mathematics Enhancement Programme).  As you probably guessed based on the spelling, MEP is from Britain.  As far as I understand, the program was originally developed in Hungary, which is a country ahead of students in the United States in mathematics.  In the 8th grade, Hungary is ranked 6th in the world in mathematics with the USA in 14th place.  To see it for yourself, click here.

This of course immediately intrigued me.  Then I find out that the whole program from Year 1 past Calculus is absolutely free.  It is all on-line; you just have to print out the student worksheet pages.  You simply download the year you need and print it out.  It sounds too good to be true.

A video documentary of Hungarian students doing math in class sold me on MEP completely.  The children at all levels seemed to truly grasp the mathematical concepts.  They were trained to do most of their figuring mentally.  I sat back and watched them work complex problems in their little heads with amazement.

I know that we live in a technological world, but as a parent and teacher, I want my children to be able to do math without the aid of calculators and computers.  I want them to be able to function when the electricity goes out or the batteries in their calculator die.

Now that three of my children have almost finished a complete year of MEP math at their own level, I have decided to use MEP all through their schooling.  MEP teaches math differently than how I was taught.  Sometimes I have to refer to the free teacher’s notes in order to figure out what the program is teaching.  I have honestly learned as much if not more than my children this year.  I actually enjoy math for the first time in my life.  My husband is amazed at the way our daughter, Kyla, can figure out math in her head.  The strategies are unlike any I was exposed to in school, including college.

Since it is a British program, it is heavy in the metric system and uses pounds instead of dollars.  Science is filled with metric units; therefore, I feel my kids are getting great exposure to this way of measuring.  Additionally once I explained to my children what pounds were, my children never had a problem with the symbol on the page.  They just pretend the question is asking for dollars.  These “problems” were not problems in my household.

I highly recommend watching the documentary produced by the BBC called “Primary Maths – How Do They Do It in Hungary?”  To view it, you do have to register at teacher.tv.  It is free and easy.  Then download the video.  If you like what you see and want to know more, go to http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mep/default.htm to see what the program offers.  Keep in mind that the program is advanced.  I placed my children a year under their grade level.  This was recommended by the MEP-homeschoolers yahoo group.  As this article could not possibly address all the information, questions, and concerns you might have, feel free to contact me or search out the yahoo groups posts.  They have a lot of information for beginners in their group’s files.