Uncle Arthur's The Bible Story FREE Curriculum!

The Uncle Arthur Bible Stories books are much beloved in this house!  We even have the old cassettes made by Your Story Hour people and the kids LOVE these (they also make CD's).  So when I discovered there is a FREE curriculum you can download for Vol. 1-6 (grades 1-4) and   here's the one for Vol. 7-10 (grades 5-8).  This is just an awesome resource and I hope it will bless many of you!

Book Of Virtues FREE Curriculum!!!

Well I have the Book of Virtue by William Bennett and for a long time I thought it would make a great curriculum but I didn't want to mess with it...guess what?  Someone already did it and it's FREE!!  It's an amazing resource with over 900 pages!  If you add in some math, writing or copywork, phonics if you need reading, you'll have a complete year for free!


Book of Virtue Curriculum

Homeschool Journal | Portfolio | Planner

Sometimes I just need a journal / portfolio / assignment /planner sheet for the kids to use for school that I can customize....one that has fun activities like mazes and can help me keep organize with the books, movies, internet we use.  One that doesn't have tons of coloring since I have a kid who doesn't like coloring.  go.figure.   Or cost a fortune, and isn't a ruled or blank piece of paper because if I hand a blank piece of paper to this kid he will stare at it.  One that can be used with ANY curriculum or NONE at all for freestyling.  One that ALL ages of kids can use instead of for specific ages or grades.  I'm not asking for a lot....right?  You can stop laughing now.     I've homeschooled since dinosaurs roamed the Earth and up until this point I haven't seen this beast...

And then I found the Christian Homeschool Adventure Journal.  Right now there are only 2 and they are "adventure" (read boy) oriented, which is fine since I have boys, but I'm hoping for more!  The cool part is there is a page they fill in with pictures or writing about their day and what they did.  They date it and there you go!  D.O.N.E  the portfolio is done.  

I love that I can make a little list with checkboxes at the bottom of the first page to let them know stuff I want them to do that day.  If I'm really on my game I do that the night before. ;)  So planning done.... 

The next page is really open ended and has assignment ideas all around the outside so all I do is circle what I want them to do on that page, draw some lines to divide it if I need to. Assignment sheet...check!  

The last page is either a maze, or asks them to draw something or has a coloring page that isn't TOO overwhelming....read NOT a whole page of crazy designs that my younger kid will refuse to do, and enough that the creative ones can really put some of theempty space to good use.

The best part is, you can adapt it.   If it's small kids, you just have them draw pictures of their day, and as they get older you can begin giving writing, comics or ???  So cool.  One journal per kid for ALL the ages and grades.  How cool is that???  

AND you just need 3 for the year and you have 180 days done without counting days on your calendar.  LOVE THAT.  For those that have hour requirements you can just put the hours on the first page for that day....though, homeschooling happens ALL the time not just for 2-4 hours since they are learning constantly.  Just sayin'.

Now, I know you're probably wondering...what about math, etc...   Yes, you'll have to add math & phonics for the littles, and math & grammar for the olders but if they pick their books according to the list in the front, and it's books they like, you won't be bugging them to read, fill out this sheet, etc. like when you use textbooks.

The really cool thing about this journal is it has a bucket list for them to put things they would like to do in the next 60 days and has them do them through out the 60 days.  So, all that stuff you "want to do" that falls through the cracks actually gets done, and because the kids pick out what they want on their bucket list, it's stuff they will actually do. Not the stuff some curriculum says you should do that you have to drag the kids through.  Now, I'll be honest here, and say my kids knew some stuff they wanted to do, but I kept throwing out ideas until they caught on and they filled out the entire list.

Here's some pics of different kids' books so you can see the inside:

Homeschool Burnout?!?! - Here's Your Fix!

Well it's that time of year again....are you struggling with keeping it all together???  Here's a repost of Renee Elison over at HomeschoolHowtos  excellent article to help you with your struggles. ;)   Here's a link to how I think you can make ACE Paces more fun

Are you SURE you have the right curriculum?

Burnout
The single biggest cause of homeschooling burnout is having chosen the wrong curriculum.  For most homeschoolers, veterans and beginners alike, the illusion is that you will always have perfect days in which to teach, but the reality is that you’ll seldom have even one perfect homeschooling day.  If your schooling centers on you as the teacher, it will simply slip through the cracks on days when other demands take over.  Because schooling is the one flexible/negotiable part of the day (no one is watching), it often gets put on the back burner (for far too many days, for months on end), because today we can’t do it right, using what you thought was the ideal curriculum.

Now that school is beginning again this fall, mothers are scrambling to make out their schedules, get last minute supplies, etc.  This feels exhilarating—at least, initially.  Aha—a fresh start.  But talk to those same moms one month from now and they are in tears, feeling guilty, and nothing is going according to plan.  Hubby is threatening to put the children back in public school because anything is better than the fiasco he sees going on day after day in his own home with his stressed-out wife and inconsolable children.  Because they’ve got the wrong curriculum.

Haven’t seen the big picture
Moms, by and large, because they have never been down this path before (they graduated from nursing school, or business school…), inadvertently choose and purchase curriculums that are heavily mother-dependent.  They purchase curriculum based on topics that they wish they had had in school, or books that look fabulous, or techniques that seem new and innovative and far superior to the way they were taught.  But the problem is not the content or style of the program, at all, but rather it is one of administration.  Is this curriculum going to be easy to get through each day, especially when I’m preoccupied with little Johnny who just threw up, or on an emergency phone call, or have unexpected company?  Then what happens?  What happens when I’m up all night with another child and have to sleep IN in the morning?  Let’s see—hmm—5 children times 2 “mom-isn’t-available-to-teach” hours per student equals ten wasted hours for the family that morning.

Because we have been in the movement for over 20 years as vendors, we have seen children who are now the grown products of this little daily nightmare, and it isn’t pretty.

Unit studies—the kick with a bite
In far too many cases, these idealistic theories about curriculum have been murdered by a few brutal facts—embarrassing facts.  The children didn’t get thoroughly educated—not even as much as we were educated in inferior secular schools.  Scores of excited moms who have never taught a child through all twelve grade levels tell me sentences like this: “This fall we are going to study George Washington—in fact, we’ll do a unit study on him!” The problem is that the mom doesn’t see the 12-year big picture that there are over 34,000 concepts to cover to even make your child aware of the most rudimentary components of the big wide world out there.  Giving three months to one concept just isn’t gonna cut it.  While mom is fixated on her one euphoric idea of what she will teach, time is wasting; sand literallypours through the hour glass of childhood.  What she is not aware of is that children can learn ten times faster than she can even dream up the topics, let alone provide a newly hunted down perfect book to teach it with.

Moms with extra time, huh?
Go ahead and buy all of the super-idealized curriculum you want.  But this year try teaching it in the evenings or on the weekends when you get that one “supercharged-mommy-moment” a week, but for all the remainder of the time, for all those “barely-making-it” hours, get a curriculum that your children can do without you hovering it.  Waltz onto their page on any day at any time that you want to teach them from your own academic passions—we always teach our passions best—but for all the otherdays, and the other hours, keep your children’s noses to the grindstone of an established curriculum that gets the job done without you.

Ask yourself a question: How much extra time did I have yesterday to write out lesson plans, or to thumb through a textbook to figure out what my child should be doing today?  Was it three minutes?  30 seconds?  Oops, just couldn’t get to it?  Then what makes you think you’ll have that time tomorrow?  If you must read a teacher’s edition to figure out what your child should do, you are already sunk before you start.

All the “not-so-hot” choices out there
Some love those big companies that sell you the huge textbook for every subject, so that your school curriculum can look just like the public school’s.  But quickly you’ll find that the sheer size of the books scares your kids off (they are a pain in the neck to haul around), and parents by the scores have already discovered that they are “drill and kill and over-kill” curriculums, despite the expensive packaging!  They cost too much, weigh too much, take too much preparation out of your hide, and bore your children to tears with excessive unnecessary mental labor.

Then there are the super dense spiritual curriculums.  The entire family reads this and that and does this project and that project on one character trait, together.  Fine.  Purchase those and teach one every Sabbath, or work through one for one evening a week to gather as a whole family to study.  But for two-to-six hours a day every day of the week, they require too much of mama—and too much of everyone else.  On most days, one can’t even find the whole family to study with, let alone do it.  If you use one of these programs, you’ll burn out, guaranteed.

Then there is the sensational one book for this and one book for that—the eclectic approach.  I hope you like shopping—because your children will read them and finish them on the way to the car.

Then there is the hands-on, build everything you read about (pyramids under the kitchen table) approach.  This approach absorbs far too much time spent on “pyramids”—single subjects—(which a child can readily understand just by looking at a few pictures), to the exclusion of time that could have been spent on other equally important concepts/subjects.  Life isn’t just endless time on your hands.  Time spent under the table is time lost practicing a new scale on an instrument.

Then there is the “read-every-book-in-sight” curriculum.  Just read.  Tons of homeschooling families pride themselves on what good readers their children have become.  They congratulate themselves on having exceptional readers…which they mistakenly think then makes them exempt from producing anything else.  The only problem is, they just don’t know that all homeschooling families produce good readers.  This is commonplace, with few exceptions.  They can’t see it, because they live in only their own house.  Moreover, reading is not the whole picture.  What if your car only had a motor, no steering wheel, no brakes, no seats.  Math is important, writing is important, physics is important, spelling is important, each of them requiring very little reading and a great deal of doing.  The first time your child hears about atoms and molecules and has only read history books, he is apt to say “Huh?” or worse yet, start feeling the “Huh?” going on inside himself everywhere he turns.  A general education requires gaining basic familiarity with thousands of diverse concepts.

Grading your children’s work—whatever for?
If you want to grade all your children’s work, go ahead, have at it.  But they won’t grow, if you do their evaluation.  Weeks worth of stacked papers that mom will someday get around to grading trains your child in absolutely nothing.  When your children get back all your delayed grading with your meticulous and conscientious red marks, they will mindlessly throw those same papers into the trash.  Sound familiar?  If they grade their own as soon as they finish a page, they will be invested in it themselves, to their own surprise.  It is that simple.  Correcting one’s work is where all the growth takes place.  Do you really have this much extra time?  Would you not rather read a good book, or take a walk with your child?

A long ride
Go ahead, buy whatever curriculum you want, or insist upon having, but also, this year, try buying the ACE curriculum to use as your daily work horse.  You can’t see the full extent of it all now, but you’ll ride to the schooling-pasture and back to the barn every day for two to six hours a day for 12 years with this schooling business—so you’ve gotta have a dependable horse to get you there and back, unless you want a circus at your house every day, if you didn’t spend two hours last night prepping for some other scenario.

Even if your child is only exposed to this sequential, consecutive, line upon line, precept upon precept material and skips half of the fill-in-the-blanks, or merely answers the questions aloud, or even just hears them read to him by an older sibling on sick days, or isn’t multi-sensing every concept, he will be light years ahead of the child who hasn’t.  He will have at least encountered all of these thousands of concepts.  Four pace booklets a day, four concepts per booklet, 5 days a week, 36 weeks a year, for twelve years, yields 34,560 concepts.  Ta-dah !!!!  Did you catch that?  This is all done for you.  You didn’t have to even get out of your easy chair.  This year, try teaching whatever else you want on top of that—but not in place of it.  Countless very burned out families have switched to A.C.E. after trying everything else they had in mind, and the smiles have returned.  There have been no regrets!

We recommend ACE for these 12 very tight and succinct reasons:
1. ACE is taught using thin booklets: easy to haul on errands.
2. ACE is comprehensive; nothing will fall through the cracks.
3. ACE is spiritual: you won’t produce an intelligent drunk.
4. ACE is engaging, uplifting and keeps their interest both academically and spiritually: children end up loving God through their subjects.
5. ACE is self-taught, not mommy dependent: it actually happens every day, regardless of the chaos mom is embroiled in at the moment.
6. ACE is self-corrected: the student has instant feedback.
7. ACE is the curriculum for tear reduction; momma doesn’t burn out—she actually likes her children, gets dinner on the table, and wants to continue homeschooling next year.
8. ACE is priced at the low end of curriculums: you don’t have to rob a bank or incur debt to buy it.  The entire year costs less than one month’s tuition at any private Christian school.  It is so inexpensive, the grandparents can purchase it for you.  You won’t grow bitter halfway through the year because you sank 2 grand into a curriculum and now you hate the stuff but can’t possibly switch because you mortgaged the house to get it.
9. ACE trains outstanding character, woven into the full page text of every subject—not tacked on as a token at the end of the entire day just to make it look spiritual.
10. Employers love to hire ACE graduates for any type of work, because they have found year after year that these students’ cheerful work ethic is second to none.
11. ACE has been used in 135 countries; it currently educates well over 3 million children.  It is tried and true.  Children using it actually graduate—they score high on standardized tests—they get scholarships at colleges.
12. ACE is guilt free; school happens.

Have your children read history and biography and how-to books voraciously in the evenings.  Train them in domestic skills.  Teach them how to earn and save a dollar.  And turn off the TV and videos and stop the endless “goes nowhere” recreational fantasy reading, and you’ll produce super children.

Color Your Way To Math Facts!

I've thought about doing what this lady has done a million times but FINALLY someone did it for me. 

 Color your Multiplication Facts!!

I'm not affiliated just thought I'd pass along this fun way of learning!

Easy Peasy Homeschool Review

We've use EP several times and I've enjoyed and been frustrated using EP so I thought I'd write a post about the pros and cons and ways to get around some of the problems I see coming up regularly about using EP.  Before we get to that though let me say that the woman who did this deserves a shout out because she continues to have it FOR FREE so here's her story and the donate button is on the top. DONATE!  Doesn't matter if it's just a buck.   They are a missionary family so donate...okay off to the pros and cons.

Pros:

1. FREE!!!  Seriously this is worth it just for this.
2.  Scheduled.   Nothing for you to figure out...just do the next day.  Doesn't matter if you've missed some days you just march on.   
3.  Uses free resources.  This is closely related to #1.  It's a pain when other curriculum has history and science that require all kinds of stuff you have to pay for.
4. Online.  For some this may not be a bonus BUT you can take this anywhere there is an internet connection...including grandma's house or McDonalds.  Or if you're really tech savvy just use your phone and tether or hotspot your laptop...walla!  homeschool at the park!

Cons:

1.  Difficult to place.  Even with their placement test (on the How To Use tab) you'll find it  hard to place them accurately.
2. Large disparity between LA & early grades Math as compared to other curriculum.  The author has  her kids reading quite advanced books, probably about 2 grades ahead BUT early math (before end of 3rd level) is almost a grade behind. Once you're in about 5th grade math EP switches to Kahn Academy so it levels out.  But Kahn Academy is Common Core so you decide. 
3.  Expects a child to be writing well by 2nd grade
4. The science & history..if you don't like a portion you're stuck ie.. don't want wars(program year 4), Ancients(program level 1) lapbooks (program level 2) or animals (program level  2), world geography (program level  3).  It's too advanced for prior to Third or maybe even Fourth grade if you ask me.
5. No way to tell if they are doing the work unless you quiz them (or have them leave tabs open so you can see)
6. Might be difficult for first time homeschooler to figure out
7. Doesn't run well on tablets..most games don't work properly or you will need a keyboard
8. Very rarely will you be able to use it's levels (ie. 1, 2, 3) as is.  Therefore you'll have to set up your own schedule using LA, Reading, Math and I've found that when you use the individual components (reading, math, science etc)  things get lost in the shuffle from the Levels.  Meaning you loose typing, logic and other things that were scheduled in the original Level.
9. Maybe a little TOO easy peasy for some things.  Meaning some days it doesn't seem    like much to do while other days can be really overwhelming.  But like I said earlier the science, history, reading and writing seems advanced. Now I know it sounds like I just contradicted myself but once you use it you'll kinda know what I'm talking about.

All of the cons can still be overcome because...it's FREE! FREE! FREE!  And here's my plug to DONATE...one more time

Fixes:

1. Have your child leave tabs open to see if they played the games and what the score was.  You can screen shot it and put it into programs like Onenote or Evernote.
2. Check written work. Honestly this seems obvious but with lots of kids things can get lost in the shuffle.
3. Have a text to speech program (already available on macs) for children who can't read well.  Yes it can sound robotic but here's my shout out to Macs because it does a great job...even on the poetry!    SpeakIt! for  the Chrome browser works pretty good for PC's.  This is especially great for dyslexic kids!  
4. If writing is an issue just have the child dictate and you scribe or highlight (with a highlight pen) and have them use what they said for copywork.
5.  You can skip stuff you don't like in science and history (or anything else)...you're in charge not the curriculum.  The bonus here is there is no guilt because you didn't pay tons of $$$ for something that isn't working.  Ask me how I know this.... 
6. Use the simple planner and write what level the kids stuff is at on the top (or bottom) so you know where they are suppose to be. ie...Math - 3, LA - 2, Reading - 1.
7. To find something fast on the page use control-F or command-F (macs)  which should pop up a little thing that allows you to search quickly for something.
8. Print your week ahead of time.  I use my highlighter and mark a dot on the simple   planner for the days the kids need printouts.  These are what the * (asterisk) next to the day is about.  
9. Easy Peasy doesn't have tests so it can be hard to assess what your kids are retaining.  Here are some Ideas to make it easier.  Please be relaxed about quizing your kids.  Homeschooling is not a race for knowledge but about relationships...so don't kill your relationship by over quizzing...On to quizzing and testing.  The obvious is look at the vocabulary words and ask if they remember what they are.  Open some of the science or history and look for what is being taught and simply ask them to teach you about it :0)  You can't teach what you don't know!  Have them draw or write about a topic they learned or even have them act it out if applicable. 
10. This isn't a fix but MAKE SURE you have the recommended ad blocker and your youtube is set to safety mode!  The safety mode is at the very bottom of the youtube screen.
11. This is my personal opinion but here goes....it goes without saying that if your kid is on the internet you need to have them protected.  So use K9 for browsing and keep your kid's screen in public view.  I have seen WAY too many sad stories about kids on the internet so better to be safe then sorry.

   

Emergency Homeschool Plan or How To Homeschool Through A Mess or Chronic Illness

dis·as·ter

diˈzastər/

noun

1. a sudden event, such as an accident or a natural catastrophe, that causes great damage or loss of life.

   "159 people died in the disaster"

   synonyms:

   catastrophe, calamity, cataclysm, tragedy, act of God, holocaust; accident "a subway disaster"

   • denoting a genre of films that use natural or accidental catastrophe as the mainspring of plot and setting.

     modifier noun: disaster

     "a disaster movie"
   • an event or fact that has unfortunate consequences.

     "a string of personal disasters"

     
     

     
     

     synonyms:

     misfortune, mishap, misadventure, mischance, setback, reversal, stroke of bad luck, blow "a string of personal disasters" Ever had one of these???

What happens when disaster strikes??  Back when Hurricane Katrina went through, Ambleside Online made an emergency plan with FREE resources and some really great advice for ANYONE who is homeschooling through a rough patch.  It has curriculum suggestions and ideas to keep life moving forward.... even when you've lost everything.  The kids can read on their own and make it real simple for you.

Ambleside Online HELP

Here's a great article from Renee over at Homeschool How To's that worth a read:

Tips for Homeschooling with FEW or NO RESOURCES






Here's some of my suggestions based on stuff that's happened to us:

First let me say that there's an old saying among pioneer homeschoolers - all you need is a math book and a library card...I agree.  You can get the math book from my FREE Vintage Education tab above.  Don't let the old texts scare ya..Math hasn't changed...as a matter of fact the last update was Calculus and that was almost 500 years ago so....    1+1=2 has been around for well, forever!

1.  Only do the 3 R's -  Reading, Writing, Arithmetic     You can pull this from ANY book you have.  For ideas see Renee's tips above
        
          
2.  Use internet linked websites and FREE curriculum - I don't think you need curriculum but..

        Ambleside Online HELP - This is the emergency homeschooling page
        Easy Peasy Homeschool
        Everything Homeschooling
        Kahn Academy - CAUTION.. common core!
       Old Fashioned Education
        Use my FREE - Vintage Education

3.  Use Internet linked Unit Studies

        Amanda Bennett Unit Studies - Load these up on the Ipad
        The Simple Homeschool

4.  Stream or Get Educational Videos
        Netflix
        Hulu
        Youtube Education
        Use Your Local Library


5.  Play Games and Online Math Games

        ABCya
        Sheppard Software
          Math Playground
         Mr. Nussbaum
        Apps on your phone or Ipad
        Really most kids board & card games involved math of some sort

6.  Let them do Retail Learning

         Use grocery shopping to learn:

                         -money
                         -fractions
                         -weight  -  oz's, LB  (there is a scale in the veggie department)
                         -value  - price per oz
                         -find colors, numbers etc
                         -percentage - 20% off coupons and such
                         -budget shopping- give them the money and the list and see if they can get                              all that's on the list
                          
            you get the idea....


6.  Read...just Read
        
        Use Your Local Library
        
         Find books:
                              Internet Archive
                              Google Books

7.  Books on Tape

          Use Your Local Library

           Find Books:
                          
                              Librivox
                              Sparkle Stories - not free but super sweet stories for the younger crowd.  You can get it for $1 the first month by using the code SPARKLEFRIENDS


8.  Strew Ideas by website

             Strewing means to leave stuff laying around so the kids discover it but in this case  
              you can leave it up on your computer so they can see it 
        
            The Kids Should See This


9.  Emergency Food Plan
             
               My Blog Post On Emergency Food Plan


Sometimes whatever is going on in your life IS the curriculum...and the lesson... so don't be hard on yourself.  Kids will learn in spite of what's going on...that's just the way God made them!  So let them see you filled with God's presence and peace so they can learn to have  "the peace that passes all understanding"  Phil. 4:7

A great book to have during hard times is  God's Promises For Your Every Need

Remember that this too shall pass....
                           
     

Summer Reading From Sonlight!

It's almost that time...time for swimming pools, beaches, gardens and lots and lots of reading!!!

Sonlight has got ya covered so head over and get some good summer reading!

Amanda Bennett Unit Studies by Categories

Here's a great printout if you're trying to find a specific history period or science from Amanda Bennett Unit Study~!

Robinson Curriculum & Life of Fred??

I know a LOT of people would like to know if Life of Fred will work with  ______ Curriculum so I thought this post from
Kernels Of Wheat to be encouraging.    This post also lists a relaxed approach to progress through LOF and then onto RC's science.

Summer Fun! or Almost FREE Curriculum!

It's that time of year when:

1. You're kids are starting to get bored because you're not schoolin' year 'round or
2. You're looking for FREE or nearly free curriculum for the next year

I've got you covered with two really great options.  First you'll notice that my left sidebar has lots of curriculum listed and included in that is a section on free curriculum.  But let's say you want lesson plans and free curriculum???

Easy Peasy All In One Homeschool   which is Charlotte Mason influenced.  This has everything you'll need to homeschool your kids to 8th grade and now the owner is starting on highschool.  This is a missionary family so please consider donating to help them!  If you have a tablet ....this curriculum rocks!

or

for ONLY $15.95  Everything Homeschool  which is more unit study and delight directed influenced.   Here's a free sample of the weekly lesson plans  Here's the free stuff off Everything Homeschool.  Here's some summer fun and here's their magazine blog  Homeschool Fun with stuff that's fun to do in summer or...whenever!

Both are fabulous resources for summer or you're whole school year!  They both have lesson plans and free forms for tracking with probably Everything Homeschool having quite a bit more in that category.

The Right Homeschool Curriculum

This is a repost from Renee Ellison of HomeschoolHowTos.com  

It's probably one of the best articles I've seen on this subject...and one of the reasons we switched curriculum.  I could identify with most of what she was saying and I've known for a while things had to change.

I HIGHLY recommend any of her materials!  Teacher's Secrets and Motherhood Savvy for Homeschoolers is just about the best how to book for homeschool moms that I've ever seen....really...and I've seen A LOT.  It's answers a lot of the day to day problems you may have.  I wish when I was a young mom and homemaker I'd had this book.  It's like a crash course in what you wish you had learned but were too busy working a job to figure out.  All of her little pamplets are like vitamins  - short but to the point.  No wading through 100's of pages to get the answers you need NOW.  It's also available at Amazon Teachers' Secrets and Motherhood Savvy for Homeschoolers

 and you can get it in a kindle version for instant gratification..er...help  Teachers' Secrets and Motherhood Savvy for Homeschoolers

Are you SURE you have the right curriculum?

Burnout
The single biggest cause of homeschooling burnout is choosing the WRONG curriculum.  For most homeschoolers, veterans and beginners alike, the illusion is that you will always have

perfect

days in which to teach, but the reality is that you’ll SELDOM have even ONE perfect homeschooling day.  If your schooling centers on you as the teacher, it will simply slip through the cracks on days when other demands take over.  Because schooling is THE ONE flexible/negotiable part of the day (no one is watching), it often gets put on the back burner (for far too many days, for months on end), because today we can’t do it RIGHT, using what you THOUGHT was the ideal curriculum.

Now that school is beginning again this fall, mothers are scrambling to make out their schedules, get last minute supplies, etc.  This feels exhilarating…at least, initially.  Aha…a fresh start.  But talk to those same moms one month from now and they are in tears, feeling guilty, and nothing is going according to plan.  Hubby is threatening to put the children back in public school because ANYTHING is better than the fiasco he sees going on day after day in his own home with his stressed-out wife and inconsolable children.  Because they’ve got the WRONG curriculum.

Haven’t seen the big picture
Moms, by and large, because they have never been down this path before (they graduated from NURSING school, or BUSINESS school…), inadvertently choose and purchase curriculums that are heavily MOTHER-dependent.  They purchase curriculum based on TOPICS that they wish they had had in school, or books that LOOK fabulous, or techniques that seem new and innovative and far superior to the way THEY were taught.  But the problem is not the content or style of the program, at all, but rather it is one of ADMINISTRATION.  Is this curriculum going to be easy to get through each day, especially when I’m preoccupied with little Johnny who just threw up, or on an emergency phone call, or have unexpected company?  THEN what happens?  What happens when I’m up all night with another child and have to sleep IN in the morning?  Let’s see…hmm… 5 children times 2 “mom-isn’t-available-to-teach” hours per student equals ten wasted hours for the family that morning.

Because we have been in the movement for over 20 years as vendors, we have seen children who are now the GROWN products of this little daily nightmare, and it isn’t pretty.

Unit studies…the kick with a bite
In far too many cases, these idealistic theories about curriculum have been murdered by a few brutal facts…embarrassing facts.  The children didn’t get thoroughly educated…not even as much as WE were educated in inferior secular schools.  Scores of excited moms who have never taught a child through all twelve grade levels tell me sentences like this: “This fall we are going to study George Washington—in fact, we’ll do a unit study on him!” The problem is that the mom doesn’t see the 12-year big picture that there are over 34,000 concepts to cover to even make your child AWARE of the most rudimentary components of the big wide world out there.  Giving three months to one concept just isn’t gonna cut it.  While mom is fixated on her one euphoric idea of what SHE will teach, time is wasting…sand literally POURS through the hour glass of childhood.  What she is not aware of is that children can learn ten times faster than she can even dream up the topics, let alone provide a newly hunted down perfect book to teach it with.

Moms with extra time, huh?
Go ahead and buy all of the super-idealized curriculum you want.  But this year try teaching it in the evenings or on the weekends when you get that one “supercharged-mommy-moment” a week, but for all the REST of the time, for all those “barely-making-it” hours, get a curriculum that your children can do WITHOUT you.  Waltz onto their page on any day at any time that you want to teach them from your own academic passions…we always teach our passions best…but for all the OTHER days, and the OTHER hours, keep your children’s noses to the grindstone of an established curriculum that gets the job DONE without you.

Ask yourself a question: How much EXTRA time did I have yesterday to write out lesson plans, or to thumb through a textbook to figure out what my child should be doing today?  Was it three minutes?  30 seconds?  Oops, just couldn’t get to it?  Then what makes you think you’ll have that time TOMORROW?  If you’ve gotta read a teacher’s edition to figure out what your child should do, you are already sunk before you start.

All the “not-so-hot” choices out there
Some love those big companies that sell you the huge textbook for every subject, so that your school curriculum can look just like the public school’s.  But quickly you’ll find that the sheer size of the books scares your kids off (they are a pain in the neck to haul around), and parents by the scores have already discovered that they are “drill and kill and over-kill” curriculums, despite the expensive packaging!  They cost too much, weigh too much, take too much preparation out of YOUR hide, and bore your children to tears with excessive unnecessary mental labor.

Then there are the super dense SPIRITUAL curriculums.  ALL the family reads this and that and does this project and that project on ONE character trait, TOGETHER.  Fine.  Purchase those and teach one every Sabbath, or work through one for one evening a week to gather as a WHOLE family to study.  But for two-to-six hours a day every day of the week, they require too much of mama…and too much of everyone else.  On most days, one can’t even FIND the whole family to study with, let alone DO it.  If you use one of these programs, you’ll burn out, guaranteed.

Then there is the sensational one book for this and one book for that — the eclectic approach.  I hope you like shopping… because your children will read them and finish them on the way to the car.

Then there is the hands-on…build everything you read about…pyramids under the kitchen table approach.  This approach absorbs far too much time spent on “pyramids”...single subjects… (which a child can readily understand just by looking at a few pictures), to the exclusion of time that could have been spent on other equally important concepts/subjects.  Life isn’t just endless time on your hands.  Time spent under the table is time lost practicing a new scale on an instrument.

Then there is the “read-every-book-in-sight” curriculum.  Just read.  Tons of homeschooling families pride themselves on what good readers their children have become.  They congratulate themselves on having exceptional readers…which they mistakenly think then makes them exempt from producing anything else.  The only problem is,.they just don’t know that ALL homeschooling families produce good readers.  This is commonplace, with few exceptions.  They can’t see it, because they live in ONLY their own house.  Moreover, reading is not the whole picture.  What if your car ONLY had a motor, no steering wheel, no brakes, no seats.  Math is important, writing is important, physics is important, spelling is important, each of them requiring very little reading and a great deal of DOING.  The first time your child hears about atoms and molecules and has only read history books, he is apt to say “Huh?” or worse yet, start FEELING the “Huh?” going on inside himself everywhere he turns.  A general education requires gaining basic familiarity with thousands of DIVERSE concepts.

Grading your children’s work…whatever for?
If you want to grade all your children’s work, go ahead, have at it.  But THEY won’t grow, if YOU do their evaluation.  Weeks worth of stacked papers that mom will someday get around to grading trains your child in absolutely nothing.  When your children get back all your delayed grading with your meticulous and conscientious red marks, they will mindlessly throw those same papers into the trash.  Sound familiar?  If they grade their own AS SOON AS THEY FINISH EACH PAGE, they will be invested in it THEMSELVES, to their own surprise.  It is that simple.  CORRECTING one’s work is where ALL the growth takes place.  Do you REALLY have THIS much EXTRA time?  Would you not rather read a good book, or take a walk with your child? 

A long ride
Go ahead, buy whatever curriculum you want, or insist upon having….but ALSO, this year, try buying ACE to use as your daily work horse.  You can’t see the full extent of it all now, but you’ll ride to the schooling-pasture and back to the barn EVERY DAY for two to six hours a day for 12 years with this schooling business…so you’ve gotta have a dependable horse to get you there and back…unless you want a circus at your house every day, if you didn’t spend two hours last night prepping for some other scenario.

Even if your child is only EXPOSED to this sequential, consecutive, line upon line, precept upon precept material and skips half of the fill in the blanks, or merely answers the questions aloud, or even just hears them read to him by an older sibling on sick days, or isn’t multi-sensing every concept… he will be light years ahead of the child who hasn’t.  He will have at least encountered ALL these thousands of concepts.  Four pace booklets a day, four concepts per booklet, 5 days a week, 36 weeks a year, for twelve years, yields 34,560 concepts.  Ta-dah !!!!  Did you catch that?  This is all done FOR you.  You didn’t have to even get out of your easy chair.  This year, try teaching whatever ELSE you want ON TOP of that… but not in place of it.  Countless very burned out families have switched to ACE after trying everything else they had in mind, and the smiles have returned.  There have been no regrets!

We recommend ACE for these 12 very tight and succinct reasons:
1. ACE is taught using THIN booklets…as in… easy to haul on errands.
2. ACE is comprehensive…as in… nothing will fall through the cracks.
3. ACE is spiritual…as in… you won’t produce an intelligent drunk.
4. ACE is engaging, uplifting and KEEPS their interest both academically and spiritually…as in…children end up LOVING God THROUGH their subjects.
5. ACE is self-taught…as in…not mommy dependent…as in… it actually HAPPENS every day regardless of the chaos mom is embroiled in at the moment.
6. ACE is self-corrected…as in…the student has instant feedback.
7. ACE is the curriculum for tear reduction…as in ...momma doesn’t burn out…she actually likes her children AND gets dinner on the table…and wants to continue homeschooling next year.
8. ACE is priced at the low end of curriculums…as in… you don’t have to rob a bank or incur debt to buy it.  The entire year costs less than one month’s tuition at any private Christian school.  It is so inexpensive, the grandparents can purchase it for you.  You won’t grow bitter halfway through the year because you sank 2 grand into a curriculum and now you hate the stuff but can’t possibly switch because you mortgaged the house to get it.
9. ACE trains OUTSTANDING character, woven into the full page text of every subject…as in…not tacked on as a token at the end of the entire day just to make it LOOK spiritual.
10. Employers love to hire ACE graduates for any type of work, because they have found year after year that these students’ cheerful work-ethic is second to none.
11. ACE is in 135 countries and currently educates well over 3 million children…as in…tried and true…kids actually graduate…they actually score high on standardized tests…they actually get scholarships at colleges.
12. ACE is guilt free…school happens.

Have your children read history and biography and how-to books voraciously in the evenings.  Train them in domestic skills.  Teach them how to earn and save a dollar.  And turn off the TV and videos and stop the endless “goes nowhere” recreational FANTASY reading, and you’ll produce SUPER CHILDREN.

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