I LOVE all your content and the depth of planning and buildup of background knowledge you have! Would like to see a video where you share all the books and resources you use in addition to those mentioned here!
Oh gosh, well the backbone to it was my curriculum pics video for 2024-2025. But then I had switched out TGTB science for Live Education. But the rest is still around and we are using. But do you mean the books I use to help me teach in addition to the curricula?
Aw thank you so much. I really like doing the videos. When I have homeschool moms respond the way you do, I feel more like I am talking to you rather the camera so it's easier to have a 'conversation'.
I started this school year off (back in July) with isolated grammar lessons as we have been for the last three years, and near the end of our first semester, I decided we could drop it. My daughter knows how to structure a sentence without thinking about which words are nouns, verbs, adverbs, and so on. It just comes out naturally and she’s always used language very well. I don’t see the need to find and mark nouns, articles, verbs, and the like. Marking those things or filling them in on a worksheet has never correlated with improved writing for my daughter because her brain doesn’t make those connections. If we read a well crafted sentence compared to one that isn’t she can see the difference and then understands the importance of word usage and punctuation. Using literature and editing her writing to teach grammar and punctuation has been working better than any grammar program so far. It’s also a lot more fun. 🤩
I'm with you. We develop our first language naturally but somehow think we need to make ourselves deconstruct something we already get. In later years, I see it worthwhile studying English structure but not in the younger years so diligently. Something that will take years of workbooks to do can be accomplished in a few weeks at an older level. It's not the case for everything but it likely is for grammar for us. We do have fun diagramming sentences but I wouldn't do that at this age unless it WAS fun. Thank you for sharing your own experience.
@ thank you for sharing your insight! It definitely boosts confidence in how we’re choosing to do things. You’re so right about waiting to point out grammar rules until a child can actually understand the significance, and how much less time you’d have to spend on trying to reinforce it. Each year we would pick back up a grammar book it was like it was all new again for my mildly dyslexic daughter. I’m glad I realized this semester that I need to free her from being bogged down by it at her age. My MIL homeschooled her last two children and had encouraged me from the beginning to let editing take the wheel for learning these things for now. I should’ve listened sooner lol!
@@brittany.powell that is pretty interesting how so many of us are thinking and doing the same thing and how we have to be instructed by our children before we believe it!!!
I love your videos! So inspiring for me as a homeschooling mom with my 13 year old daughter. Your philosophies and vision for your homeschool is just lovely.
Well, I will do that video next then. I've already written the syllabus. It's the easiest because it's a short summer prep course. Or maybe I will start it in the spring and be done before summer so we can have a bit of a break. I don't have all the books yet but I have written several into the course description as ideas, things to think about or as reminders when we get to that point. Some books along the way may supersede the ones on the list but that doesn't matter. It's been good practice writing these because it shows me right on paper how much is too much when they are side-to-side. Too many full courses can crush a kid and too light and they aren't really credits, are they? I was watching one of Simplify Homeschool's videos and they referenced having an array of courses, some intense and others 'high input, low output.' So I'll be paying attention to that as we get to HS. It was also helpful to hear their take on how many credits should be taken each year. It was interesting to think of the usual 24 credits to graduate HS as the bare minimum. I finished HS 35 years ago and most of my credits were from British school. I remember my parents having meetings with the American HS to figure out what was what. So I'm smart enough to know I don't know what I'm doing and I want experts to back what I create. As I go, I'll ask for help from teachers, friends in the workforce, course creators... I was a course creator and instructor for a time in the government so one thing I do know quite well is tempo and load. That needs to be right to be effective and robust. A person needs to find interest in the course they take and the course, then, needs to push the learner.
Thank you for sharing, Jill! This was very informative! We use both the well trained mind and MCT and love them both for different reasons. I am looking forward to checking out some of the other resources you shared today!
Hi! I'm so glad you like the video. I realize I'm a bit uncommon but there are a few of us out there doing our own thing and it's nice to see. Next year will be even more different, I think. It's just interesting that one can go one's own way in homeschool and achieve the same results as others in the end. We are getting more and more afield of the public school style every month we do this.
@@ThePattersonHomeschoolAcademy You're doing a fantastic job! It is nice to have representation for homeschoolers who don't operate like public school but who also value a solid workload. We feel accomplished at the end of the day but it doesn't feel like 'work'. :)
I am a novelist, and have written several books. I love, save the cat as a foundation for plot structure. If you and Morgan decide to do a deep dive on plot, I’d be happy to give you some recommendations. Not a flip thru request, but I’d love a video where you reflect on what you might have done if you’d chosen to homeschool Morgan from K or First grade. Love the way you are making grammar relevant- I hated grammar lessons in school because they felt silly. But when we were looking at actual book texts, I was very attentive and interested.
You know, I wonder that myself -- what the heck I would have done with Morgan in K-1st grade. She was in kindergarten during covid but up in ND it was a non-event in comparison. We were all back in school pretty easily come August of the same year. But for the couple of months she was with me, I was clueless. I didn't understand a thing about Morgan when it came to reading. I feel like "school-school" (what we call public school now) was really great for her. Loads of friends, great teachers. We were really new to the area, had just moved from Omaha. So even if I realised homeschool was a good option, I don't think I would have done it in k and 1st grade. But it was a conversation I had with my husband in the beginning of Morgan's 3rd grade that had me quickly considering it. I was lamenting my inability to teach her French, something very important to me and the only drawback to moving up here. And he just simply asked, "Why don't you homeschool her?" And the lightbulb went off. I WISH I had had that convo with him one full year earlier. But I think we did fall into something that was just perfect for us. Don't laugh, but at the time, I didn't know homeschool was legal unless you were a fundamentalist Christian. I thought you had to be anti-something to do it! But you have 2 littles, right? So you are going through the very stage I skipped. How are you finding teaching kids to read? I understand the first time feels scary because it can seem like too slow a process and there is a lot of second guessing and worrying and then you realize you don't need to worry at all.
@ I do have two- twins in fact! Teaching reading is going well so far. We’re using All About Reading, and one kid is picking it up super fast and the other a little slower (I do phonics one on one). We spend a lot of time playing. I think for me the biggest worry is that I am missing something. But with a lot of changes coming to public schools, I feel more compelled to homeschool so we can have a better grasp on history, science, and critical thinking.
Did Morgan ever try How to Write a Novel Before You Turn 13? And did you ever play M.A.S.H (mansion apartment shack house) as a kid? We’ve been using it as a fun character generator for creating stories.
M.A.S.H! OMGosh, yes. I always ended up with Eddie living in a shack driving a Trans Am and having 10 kids. LOL Nice to know you are using it for something better than that! What a funny game -- makes me smile. Morgan doesn't write in the Write a Novel Before You Turn 13 book. She started to but we keep deferring to her green journal. So I use the to walk her through processes and she can think about things that way and then write freely in her journal. She wrote a short story for about 2 weeks, doing 2 pages a day until she hit a glitch and got frustrated and wanted to write something different. I was sad because I really liked the story!!! And while we "start over", it's really by picking up where we left off with techniques or a plot and moving her along that way. I have found it really, really helpful for ME, because without it I would forget certain things and be less methodical. It is written to the kid tho and would be great for someone 10 and up IMO. I'm working on dividing a plot into chapters with her now. I many ways, I know this will be easier when she can type faster. We will get much further that way. Writing by hand is the greatest limiting factor for now.
The punctuation guide might help, then. For spelling, if you are at work, you can simply rely on a spellcheck. You will notice over and over your spellcheck is correcting the same words you are misspelling. Write down those words and those can be the ones you want to try to memorise. Do you have a mentor at work? If not, find someone doing your type of job you can share your worries with and they can help with things you might want to do or read about to improve. Best of luck!
I can but it won't get any less confusing! It's a bit of a complaint I have with the curriculum so here it goes: Once you finish First Language Lessons Level 4, the books move to a colour-coded series. There are 4 of them: Blue, Yellow, Red, & Purple. They are essentially the same. You can start with any and do them in any order. So let's say you start with Blue. You would purchase the Blue Workbook and The Blue Key. You would also buy the green Core Instructor Text which will work for any and all of the colour-coded books. You just buy that once (along with the green grammar guidebook if you want). Each of the books ramp up rather fast. So if you are unfamiliar with diagramming sentences or you are unsure of grammar, no matter if you are in the 4th grade or you are an adult, I would start with Level 4 of their First Language Lessons book. That moves step by step. This is more than a basic grammar book. The diagramming of sentences is hard and people do it if they want an English degree or higher. It helps a person understand sentence structure in a far deeper way than learning the parts of speech. You could use one colour-coded book and take a good couple of years to complete it by doing one lesson a week and then doing another more basic grammar course along side it -- like we did with Fix-It grammar. Does this make better sense??? Before I bought the books I actually had a rather lengthly e-mail correspondence with their rep because I couldn't figure out the books myself on-line. I think this is a marketing failure but it's a choice they made. Perhaps I should do a flip through. I don't see a lot of people using the books...
Spelling workbooks always feel so silly to me too! They don’t feel like they’re actually teaching anything, just keeping the kids busy (how many crosswords can a kid actually take before they throughly despise a workbook?). I love your approach so much more, it’s actually practical instead of seeing an arbitrary list that means nothing to them in the moment.
Thanks! I feel like there are so many different ways to learn that you think we would have discovered way more interesting ways to remember spelling by now than what is offered to us. I kind of hold curricula responsible for keeping too many feet on the said of public school learning rather than taking a look at US and who WE are and what WE are doing and emulating THAT.
I LOVE all your content and the depth of planning and buildup of background knowledge you have! Would like to see a video where you share all the books and resources you use in addition to those mentioned here!
Oh gosh, well the backbone to it was my curriculum pics video for 2024-2025. But then I had switched out TGTB science for Live Education. But the rest is still around and we are using. But do you mean the books I use to help me teach in addition to the curricula?
Thank you for all your time and effort you put into these videos. Love hearing about how you homeschool.
Aw thank you so much. I really like doing the videos. When I have homeschool moms respond the way you do, I feel more like I am talking to you rather the camera so it's easier to have a 'conversation'.
I started this school year off (back in July) with isolated grammar lessons as we have been for the last three years, and near the end of our first semester, I decided we could drop it. My daughter knows how to structure a sentence without thinking about which words are nouns, verbs, adverbs, and so on. It just comes out naturally and she’s always used language very well. I don’t see the need to find and mark nouns, articles, verbs, and the like. Marking those things or filling them in on a worksheet has never correlated with improved writing for my daughter because her brain doesn’t make those connections. If we read a well crafted sentence compared to one that isn’t she can see the difference and then understands the importance of word usage and punctuation. Using literature and editing her writing to teach grammar and punctuation has been working better than any grammar program so far. It’s also a lot more fun. 🤩
I'm with you. We develop our first language naturally but somehow think we need to make ourselves deconstruct something we already get. In later years, I see it worthwhile studying English structure but not in the younger years so diligently. Something that will take years of workbooks to do can be accomplished in a few weeks at an older level. It's not the case for everything but it likely is for grammar for us. We do have fun diagramming sentences but I wouldn't do that at this age unless it WAS fun. Thank you for sharing your own experience.
@ thank you for sharing your insight! It definitely boosts confidence in how we’re choosing to do things. You’re so right about waiting to point out grammar rules until a child can actually understand the significance, and how much less time you’d have to spend on trying to reinforce it. Each year we would pick back up a grammar book it was like it was all new again for my mildly dyslexic daughter. I’m glad I realized this semester that I need to free her from being bogged down by it at her age. My MIL homeschooled her last two children and had encouraged me from the beginning to let editing take the wheel for learning these things for now. I should’ve listened sooner lol!
@@brittany.powell that is pretty interesting how so many of us are thinking and doing the same thing and how we have to be instructed by our children before we believe it!!!
I love your videos! So inspiring for me as a homeschooling mom with my 13 year old daughter. Your philosophies and vision for your homeschool is just lovely.
Thank you so much for telling me that. I know I'm a bit unconventional but there seems to be a few of us out there!
I love your content. Thank you for sharing your ideas and homeschool.
Thank you so much!!!
I would love to see the class you are making for high school readiness. I thought that was a great idea and would love to see some of your ideas
Well, I will do that video next then. I've already written the syllabus. It's the easiest because it's a short summer prep course. Or maybe I will start it in the spring and be done before summer so we can have a bit of a break. I don't have all the books yet but I have written several into the course description as ideas, things to think about or as reminders when we get to that point. Some books along the way may supersede the ones on the list but that doesn't matter. It's been good practice writing these because it shows me right on paper how much is too much when they are side-to-side. Too many full courses can crush a kid and too light and they aren't really credits, are they? I was watching one of Simplify Homeschool's videos and they referenced having an array of courses, some intense and others 'high input, low output.' So I'll be paying attention to that as we get to HS. It was also helpful to hear their take on how many credits should be taken each year. It was interesting to think of the usual 24 credits to graduate HS as the bare minimum. I finished HS 35 years ago and most of my credits were from British school. I remember my parents having meetings with the American HS to figure out what was what. So I'm smart enough to know I don't know what I'm doing and I want experts to back what I create. As I go, I'll ask for help from teachers, friends in the workforce, course creators... I was a course creator and instructor for a time in the government so one thing I do know quite well is tempo and load. That needs to be right to be effective and robust. A person needs to find interest in the course they take and the course, then, needs to push the learner.
Thank you
Thank you for sharing, Jill! This was very informative! We use both the well trained mind and MCT and love them both for different reasons.
I am looking forward to checking out some of the other resources you shared today!
Hi! I'm so glad you like the video. I realize I'm a bit uncommon but there are a few of us out there doing our own thing and it's nice to see. Next year will be even more different, I think. It's just interesting that one can go one's own way in homeschool and achieve the same results as others in the end. We are getting more and more afield of the public school style every month we do this.
@@ThePattersonHomeschoolAcademy You're doing a fantastic job! It is nice to have representation for homeschoolers who don't operate like public school but who also value a solid workload. We feel accomplished at the end of the day but it doesn't feel like 'work'. :)
I am a novelist, and have written several books. I love, save the cat as a foundation for plot structure. If you and Morgan decide to do a deep dive on plot, I’d be happy to give you some recommendations.
Not a flip thru request, but I’d love a video where you reflect on what you might have done if you’d chosen to homeschool Morgan from K or First grade.
Love the way you are making grammar relevant- I hated grammar lessons in school because they felt silly. But when we were looking at actual book texts, I was very attentive and interested.
You know, I wonder that myself -- what the heck I would have done with Morgan in K-1st grade. She was in kindergarten during covid but up in ND it was a non-event in comparison. We were all back in school pretty easily come August of the same year. But for the couple of months she was with me, I was clueless. I didn't understand a thing about Morgan when it came to reading. I feel like "school-school" (what we call public school now) was really great for her. Loads of friends, great teachers. We were really new to the area, had just moved from Omaha. So even if I realised homeschool was a good option, I don't think I would have done it in k and 1st grade. But it was a conversation I had with my husband in the beginning of Morgan's 3rd grade that had me quickly considering it. I was lamenting my inability to teach her French, something very important to me and the only drawback to moving up here. And he just simply asked, "Why don't you homeschool her?" And the lightbulb went off. I WISH I had had that convo with him one full year earlier. But I think we did fall into something that was just perfect for us. Don't laugh, but at the time, I didn't know homeschool was legal unless you were a fundamentalist Christian. I thought you had to be anti-something to do it!
But you have 2 littles, right? So you are going through the very stage I skipped. How are you finding teaching kids to read? I understand the first time feels scary because it can seem like too slow a process and there is a lot of second guessing and worrying and then you realize you don't need to worry at all.
@ I do have two- twins in fact! Teaching reading is going well so far. We’re using All About Reading, and one kid is picking it up super fast and the other a little slower (I do phonics one on one). We spend a lot of time playing. I think for me the biggest worry is that I am missing something. But with a lot of changes coming to public schools, I feel more compelled to homeschool so we can have a better grasp on history, science, and critical thinking.
Did Morgan ever try How to Write a Novel Before You Turn 13? And did you ever play M.A.S.H (mansion apartment shack house) as a kid? We’ve been using it as a fun character generator for creating stories.
M.A.S.H! OMGosh, yes. I always ended up with Eddie living in a shack driving a Trans Am and having 10 kids. LOL Nice to know you are using it for something better than that! What a funny game -- makes me smile. Morgan doesn't write in the Write a Novel Before You Turn 13 book. She started to but we keep deferring to her green journal. So I use the to walk her through processes and she can think about things that way and then write freely in her journal. She wrote a short story for about 2 weeks, doing 2 pages a day until she hit a glitch and got frustrated and wanted to write something different. I was sad because I really liked the story!!! And while we "start over", it's really by picking up where we left off with techniques or a plot and moving her along that way. I have found it really, really helpful for ME, because without it I would forget certain things and be less methodical. It is written to the kid tho and would be great for someone 10 and up IMO. I'm working on dividing a plot into chapters with her now. I many ways, I know this will be easier when she can type faster. We will get much further that way. Writing by hand is the greatest limiting factor for now.
Wow! I think I’m going to order the spelling and punctuation books for myself. I write so much for work and I’m never confident in those areas.
The punctuation guide might help, then. For spelling, if you are at work, you can simply rely on a spellcheck. You will notice over and over your spellcheck is correcting the same words you are misspelling. Write down those words and those can be the ones you want to try to memorise. Do you have a mentor at work? If not, find someone doing your type of job you can share your worries with and they can help with things you might want to do or read about to improve. Best of luck!
Can you reexplain the different colored books for the grammar?
I can but it won't get any less confusing! It's a bit of a complaint I have with the curriculum so here it goes:
Once you finish First Language Lessons Level 4, the books move to a colour-coded series. There are 4 of them: Blue, Yellow, Red, & Purple. They are essentially the same. You can start with any and do them in any order. So let's say you start with Blue. You would purchase the Blue Workbook and The Blue Key. You would also buy the green Core Instructor Text which will work for any and all of the colour-coded books. You just buy that once (along with the green grammar guidebook if you want). Each of the books ramp up rather fast. So if you are unfamiliar with diagramming sentences or you are unsure of grammar, no matter if you are in the 4th grade or you are an adult, I would start with Level 4 of their First Language Lessons book. That moves step by step.
This is more than a basic grammar book. The diagramming of sentences is hard and people do it if they want an English degree or higher. It helps a person understand sentence structure in a far deeper way than learning the parts of speech. You could use one colour-coded book and take a good couple of years to complete it by doing one lesson a week and then doing another more basic grammar course along side it -- like we did with Fix-It grammar.
Does this make better sense??? Before I bought the books I actually had a rather lengthly e-mail correspondence with their rep because I couldn't figure out the books myself on-line. I think this is a marketing failure but it's a choice they made.
Perhaps I should do a flip through. I don't see a lot of people using the books...
Spelling workbooks always feel so silly to me too! They don’t feel like they’re actually teaching anything, just keeping the kids busy (how many crosswords can a kid actually take before they throughly despise a workbook?). I love your approach so much more, it’s actually practical instead of seeing an arbitrary list that means nothing to them in the moment.
Thanks! I feel like there are so many different ways to learn that you think we would have discovered way more interesting ways to remember spelling by now than what is offered to us. I kind of hold curricula responsible for keeping too many feet on the said of public school learning rather than taking a look at US and who WE are and what WE are doing and emulating THAT.