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How We Build Unit Studies
Unit studies are a fun way to pick a topic that your child is interested in and base all your schooling around that. Some families exclusively do unit studies as their way to home educate. As you might be aware, we typically use the Charlotte Mason method of education (though we aren’t purists). We have found a wonderful curriculum that works well for us. However, sometimes my daughter becomes so interested in a topic, that we find a way to weave it into our schooling. We did this a lot in previous years, but we’re doing it again right now! I thought I would spend some time sharing the process of…
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Our 4th Grade Curriculum Choices
Remember how I previously mentioned that I would blog a lot more after we had moved? Apparently I lied. Normally I would do a post before the beginning of the school year with all the curriculums we plan to use and subjects we hope to cover. Three months later, I am finally making the time to talk about it. Hopefully you can excuse my lateness. (This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you if you purchase a product from a link on this page. To read more about this, check out our disclosure page here. Thanks for supporting Beautiful Minutiae!) Curriculum Choices…
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Homeschool Year in Review – 3rd Grade
It’s been a while since I blogged about our specific homeschooling plans. Normally I would do a wrap of the year in May or June, but a move put me a bit behind. So, here is a recap of our homeschool year … better late than never! If you’d like to read more about why we decided to homeschool, check out this post. (This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you if you purchase a product from a link on this page. To read more about this, check out our disclosure page here. Thanks for supporting Beautiful Minutiae!) This is a stack of our…
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Curriculum Review: Brave Writer’s Jot It Down!
Time for another curriculum review! If you’ve been a reader for a while, you’ve likely noticed our love for Brave Writer. In fact, as we’ve grown and explored our homeschool style, we’ve switched up every area of our curriculum except for Brave Writer! Brave Writer is a language arts program. It’s unique in the way it addresses the different aspects of writing. They offer literature guides (Dart for ages 8-10, Arrow for ages 11-12 and Boomerang for junior high and high school) that teach the mechanics of writing (grammar, punctuation, etc) through copywork and amazing read alouds. You can check out my review of the Arrow guides here. For helping a child…
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Curriculum Review: Life of Fred Elementary Math
Today I wanted to take some time to review one of our favorite curriculums – Life of Fred! Math was my least favorite subject growing up. I was homeschooled from the middle of third grade all the way to the end of high school and our math curriculum was usually Saxon math. If you were homeschooled, you probably have some form of loathing to this day toward Saxon 😜 One of my biggest goals in homeschooling was to find some way to make math fun. While I haven’t been entirely successful with that (math doesn’t come as naturally to Claire as some of her other subjects), Life of Fred has…
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Our 3rd Grade Curriculum Choices
I probably sound like a broken record, but I can’t believe it’s almost time to start school again! This year, I will have a third grader, which is even harder to believe! Why this child keeps growing up this quickly is beyond me, but I wish I could freeze time. Second grade was one of our best homeschool years yet! We’ve finally settled into a groove of what feels natural, both with my teaching style and Claire’s learning style. If you’re interested why we chose to homeschool, check out this post (This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you if you purchase…
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Charlotte Mason Style Exams
Would you be surprised to hear Claire gets so excited when I tell her it’s exam week? It’s true! Usually exam weeks are her favorite. What is a Charlotte Mason style exam? We do exams quite a bit differently than traditional schools in our home. There’s no multiple choice, fill in the blank or pages and pages of tests to complete. Our exams are intended to be a celebration of everything Claire has learned, rather than trying to figure out all the things she doesn’t know. This avoids the temptation of teaching to a test or Claire only memorizing/studying for a test, then forgetting everything after the test is over.…
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Homeschool Year in Review – Second Grade
Most of our read alouds from second grade It’s hard to believe another year has passed! Claire has completed 2nd grade and is moving on to 3rd. I love reflecting on our school year – what went well, what didn’t go so well, curriculum choices, growth that happened, etc. As in previous years, I’m taking you along for the ride (you can read kindergarten here, first grade here). (If you’re curious as to why we homeschool, you can check out that post here) Like first grade, we did do a bit of switching around with curriculum midyear. I like to reassess what’s working and what isn’t about halfway through the year. By…
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Our 2nd Grade Curriculum Choices
It’s hard to believe I have a second grader! Well, I suppose it’s getting a little easier to grapple with, because we’ve been back to school for about a month now. Maybe that sounds crazy, but we were off school for half of April, all of May and all of June. We unintentionally took our summer break early 😜 I thought I would share our curriculum choices this year, as I have in previous years. I’m always curious to see what other homeschoolers use as curriculum, so maybe you are too. Either way, it’s fun documentation for me to look back on. If you’re interested in my first grade curriculum…
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Mid-Year Homeschool Update [First Grade]
Hey, everyone! I gave a tiny update in my catching up post (you can read that here, if you’re interested). I promised a more indepth update soon. It’s not as soon as I wanted it to be, but here it is! (If you’re interested in my beginning of the year post, check that out here) (If you’re interested in why we decided to homeschool, you can read a post about that here) What’s Been Working Well Routine While it’s not playing out the way I might’ve hoped, we are settled into a good routine. In my beginning of the year post, I really wanted to try to get lessons done in the morning. For kindergarten, we had always done lessons after lunch. We’ve met those two routines in the middle. Right now, we typically begin school late…