Our 2022-2023 school year ended a couple weeks ago and I’m finally making time to blog the year-end review. I’m going to try and keep this short and sweet and then write up full reviews on each individual curriculum shortly! If you don’t want to read all my mumbo-jumbo feel free to scroll down to the infographics for quick info.
So let’s get right into it:
Kindergarten: At the beginning of the year I didn’t have a lot of set plans being as we follow more of an interest led approach to education for Kindergarten. We are required by the state of CA to hit certain requirements so I did know I was going to utilize the Little Social Studies Thinkers Curriculum Bundle. This were a hit! So easy to prep and use from a teaching standpoint and she enjoyed the quick stories and worksheets. In my opinion, they did include some teaching on ideology I don’t align with but it was very easy to simply pass over those specific points. Truthfully, I never choose to not teach other viewpoints. I love to give them information on all sides of a topic and let them come to their own conclusions, BUT at the young age of 5 & 6 she’s just not there yet to discern. I don’t even necessarily feel some of the views needed to be added into the curriculum in the first place (I don’t consider my Kinder a Republican or Democrat or anywhere in between at this age) so it just felt out of place. Moving on to Math, we began the year using Zearn. A completely free online platform that teaches math thru quick video instruction. It includes everything you need to teach math, all the worksheets, etc. It’s a great all-in-one program! I personally really liked it but I will disclose that both she and my 2nd grader got tired of the videos and wanted to eventually add in some other supplemental math activities. They are both Kinesthetic learners and I found with my Kinder that The Good and the Beautiful Level K Math Course was really perfect in regards to that! She enjoyed all the manipulatives to play with and the beautiful, colorful pages. We purchased the course workbooks and Math Kit but you can also access the course for free here. 10/10 would recommend! Onto Science, we came across Generation Genius* a couple years ago for my (used-to-be) 2nd grader so I quickly remembered and starting using it with her. She LOVED the videos! They are super fun and engaging (almost Blippi-esque but enjoyable for older kiddos, also). You can print coordinating worksheets or take digital quizzes online after each video. They include lesson plans, learning guides, and additional reading material or activity suggestions and projects. I liked that I could search for each individual standard by state and know exactly what she needed to learn. We will absolutely be continuing with G.G. in the Fall! Last but not least, Language Arts. We started out just getting acquainted with each letter and it’s sound. I plan to post a few weeks of my “plan” I designed for her, which worked out really well. Mostly worksheets & YouTube videos as well as fun games (like ABC Memory). Moving into 1st grade she can now name each letter and letter sound and is reading beginner readers and writing 3 and 4 letter words on her own. We used Spelling You See every so often and I found that helpful in pulling together the concept of writing individual letters and using them to make words. Kindergarten is a really fun, sweet time that I enjoy getting to move at a slow pace and let them guide themselves into the areas they find exciting. She is a particular little artist so every day she just ate up all types of mediums. Clay modeling, drawing, painting, sticker books, you name it! She can’t get enough of that and so it’s easy to create a lesson out of most any subject. LOTS of books and read-alouds and then just allowing her to re-tell the story in her own words and make some artwork about it. All in all, she is still in the stage of life where she loves to do “school work” and never gives me a fuss about it. (Keep watch for that short Kindergarten lesson plan I will upload soon!)
2nd Grade: I want to start off by explaining that my 2nd grade daughter is quite the pickle!! Gosh, I love her to the moon and back, but she absolutely doesn’t like to be told what to do! She hates schoolwork (especially Math) and she’s just all-around defiant of any and all responsibilities. Haha! To say that schooling with her is a challenge is an understatement. We semi-quickly learned the Christian Light Education workbooks we set out to use for Language Arts wouldn’t stick. She got thru quite a few, however, so I will give her that! At least half the school year was spent on finishing 4 to 5 short workbooks. She rarely complained to do them which was nice, so I had a hard time grasping some of the teaching concepts even with using the Teacher’s Guide (I find this odd because English is my stronger suit). Also, I felt it was too hands-on for myself when I’m also very much a teacher who encourages independent learning (a necessity with 5 children). Making the time daily to sit with 1 child for an extended amount of time on any particular subject is almost unheard of and so it needs to be a curriculum that’s easy to prep and give out and trust that it won’t require too much of my undivided attention. Once we were both over using CLE she moved on to watching YouTube to learn Language Arts concepts and copywork for reinforcement. We tried The Good and the Beautiful for her since it was so successful for my youngest’s math (as well as, which I haven’t gotten into yet, very successful for my 3rd grader’s Language Arts curriculum), but that lasted only a short time and never went further. It seemed too involved in her case and I needed something straight to the point to keep her small amount of attention. We came across the Easy Grammar Daily Workbook and she ended up happily working through that. I did make it an extra point to try to encourage tons of reading because of the fact I went lenient on English curriculum, as well as following up with discussions after each chapter/book to make sure her comprehension was where it should be. Moving on, I already praised Generation Genius for Science earlier so I don’t need to say again that, of course, she used and loved that this year (Thankfully, the one subject that was a breeze for her)! We had started the year with Science Shepherd Curriculum* and, for the time being, I won’t even get into what I didn’t like about that until I write a separate review (STAY TUNED). Mainly though, G.G. was just so asked for by all 3 of my kids that it was a no-brainer to easily switch to that. She has a specific interest in all things nature and animals so I included the Big Science Workbook* and let her just jump through to whatever lesson peaked her interest on any given day. Even when I didn’t assign this workbook she would still ask to do a page or 2 so I consider that a major success! Next is the bane of her existence: MATH! When I say she hates math, I mean she LOATHES math, despises math, tears down her face everyday, wants-to-vomit-when-you-mention-math! Unfortunately, I can’t recommend even 1 math resource that really worked for her. She didn’t like Zearn, she didn’t like YouTube videos with scratch paper, she didn’t like The Good and the Beautiful, she didn’t like misc. worksheets or printables, she kinda endured Generation Genius (yes, they also have math videos but didn’t know until closer to the year end) and at least I can say that was she could stomach that VERY occasionally. Basically the whole year was an absolute struggle though. Sadly it showed in her testing last month as she feel behind (2nd) grade level and is still meeting 1st grade standards. I hate to admit that most days I gave in and gave up on math with her. She’s currently required to do math over the summer because of this fact, however, and we are still intermittently watching G.G. Math videos and using the Freckle app to hopefully fill in some of her learning gaps. It should be interesting to decide on a math curriculum for 2023-24. Ugh! (Sidenote: I’m not a newbie at having a child who struggles in math. My Sophomore had to go thru remediation in Middle School but currently just finished Freshman year with a B in Pre-algebra!! So I’m not SUPER worried for my 2nd grader yet. I do know there can be light at the end of the tunnel!) Then Social Studies… she liked to read the “I am” books, for example, about Abraham Lincoln and Sacagawea. She also ended up wanting to complete a lot of her sister’s kindergarten lessons so I never said no and purchased a couple of her own grade level Little Social Studies Thinkers Packets from Teachers Pay Teachers, too. When we ran out of all those she started the Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners: Geography workbook and finished out the year in that. I just have to toot my horn a tiny bit that we even finished the year at all! She tried my patience but we endured and I’m glad this chapter of 2nd grade is behind us.
3rd Grade: I had so much fun with my son in 3rd grade this year. It’s just such an enjoyable age to teach in regards to certain concepts I excel in and in his willingness to soak in the knowledge and get the work done! I’m happy he’s such a strong reader so a lot of if is very independent but he still loves having me look over his shoulder and offer help. This was the first year I added in additional electives along with the 4 core subjects we always cover and so that was also fun and challenging in it’s own way. I’ll start with Language Arts. We started the Year using Starline Press. This was a recommendation from his Charter School Teacher and because I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to use with him, we took the advice. This was a HUGE fail unfortunately. The workbooks just had no character and he didn’t enjoy working through them whatsoever. Boring is the word that comes to mind, even from me (and if you know be, you know I hate that word). He made it just about 3 months with that until I transitioned him into another resource. We tried Night Zookeeper for writing which was “fine” but not anything we wanted to continue long term. He loves to read, as I mentioned, so that’s never an issue. I’m will post a 3rd grade book list very soon because there were so many good ones this year that he enjoyed (STAY TUNED). Eventually though, we turned to The Good and the Beautiful Level 3** and fell in love! He never complained to complete any of the worksheets or activities. In contrast, he highly enjoyed the Geography and Art lessons included and the added recipes he could cook! I liked the “cut and paste” method of paragraph writing. It was so successful in teaching writing and structure strategies and I will continue using that method with both my younger students for sure! I shared how their Kindergarten Math was also successful for us so this year really fostered an adoration for TGATB curriculum. He also used Starline Press for History initially and it’s no surprise that also didn’t work out. We moved into The Good and The Beautiful Year 1 History which was okay, but didn’t hit a lot of the teaching requirements for CA standards. Eventually I just pieced together a hodgepodge of resources that focused on what was required. We even resorted to silly websites such as IXL and Brainpop Jr. that I normally am not fond of and it turns out he’s also not fond of them either. I focused on economics by using a powerpoint purchased on Teachers Pay Teachers that was just eh, meaning it got the job done but wasn’t fun. I found some printables and YouTube videos to focus on learning the Branches of Government, Laws, Government Officials, & the US Constitution but nothing worth even mentioning. He highly enjoyed the Scrambled States of America Game and played that often. Once we checked off his state requirements he just supplemented by using Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners: Geography Grade 3 which he despised. That says a lot coming from him as he’s usually very easy to placate. Social Studies this year wasn’t a failure but it also wasn’t a hit. I will really need to re-work some things to entertain my daughter in the Fall for this subject. For Math we finally got to use Teaching Textbooks! This has been on my Want-To-Try List for quite a while but is not available for grades under 3 and it was everything I hoped! We both really enjoyed the online lessons and he breezed through it. Math is his strong subject. We did learn that their 3rd grade level ends up slightly easy for the typical California 3rd grade standards so I supplemented with some additional worksheets and such in the areas it lacked. I love that it is slower paced, however, and I only did more because of our Charter School pushing that need. When Science Shepherd failed for him and his sister he also picked right up in Generation Genius for Science and it worked great as well. He likes Science and loves experiments so he works through some National Geographic Science Kits, the Magic themed one was his favorite. That covers all of his core subjects so I’ll talk about his electives. He dabbled in Code Kingdoms coding for a while. He liked doing this with his Dad and so they ended up making some Obby games together on Roblox. He also did Typing. We like the Keyboarding Without Tears program. We used the Writing Without Tears Cursive workbook because he enjoyed the Typing so much and that ended up a fail. Getting him to cursive was like pulling teeth and while he completed the workbook, he still can’t read cursive that great and has a hard time writing certain letters without looking at copies first. He loves building Legos and Robots, we were able to send him to a Robotics & Sailing Program at the Harbor for a semester. All in all his school year was such a success!
That concludes this wrap-up and, as expected, it was longer then I intended. Please check back soon for the additional posts I will make of curriculum reviews, book list, and my Mini-Kindergarten lesson plan!
