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Saturday, February 3, 2007

Customizer or Curriculum User?

I have my 2nd grade curriculum ready to be scheduled out and while visiting a few homeschooling boards, I realized that there is a number of "customizers" and "curriculum users". Look at my blog, you can tell I'm a customizer. But what I don't know is when to customize and when to follow a curriculum.

When I first started researching homeschooling, I requested all the catalogs I could find. As I looked at the options I realized a few things, I needed to figure out WHAT to use and WHEN and HOW. What is the determining factor? Other than the amount of children you have to homeschool, where does the comfort zone of the what, when and how begin and end?

I've thought about my goals, to use good literature in both spines and readers, to expose my children to a variety of viewpoints, to use engaging and fun products to facilitate learning as much as possible...but I could do this with curricula and piecing something together.

I would love to hear your feedback!

 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Jessica,
Thanks for visiting my blog!
With our first year of schooling almost over I have noticed that I am much more consistent when I follow a curriculum. For example, Saxon Math has each lesson laid out. It is easy to follow without much preparation. Now, there are many areas where I have not purchased a curriculum, only books. We are doing fine for now. But it is much harder for me because I'm just not sure what I am doing :)
Anyway...
Here is a link to the Pretzel recipe should you so desire to bake some:
http://largefamilylogistics.lifewithchrist.org/permalink/29970
Also, you said that you were glad I got to go home...What are you talking about!!! :) :) I did nothing of the sort. Is it because I posted on Australia day - you thought I went to Australia?
I wish!
Well, enough from me.
Long live the customizing, catalog, curriculum Queen (that's you)
Stacy (Aussie in America)

Barb said...

Jessica,

I am a customizer to the max, it seems that with each year and each child I sit and think what style of learning works best with them and then customize the topics to fit them. My daughter loved everything to be a unit study so we had lots of time to "live" the time period in history. She is also a very linguistic learner and loves to read, write, and play with words. She did lots of reports. My oldest son just wanted a list of things to do on his own and he would just get school done....he did this all through high school. My middle son needs lots of projects so we do some reading and then come up with something to pull it all together at the end. My youngest son just loves to read and read and read. Give him a topic and he will go to the library and delve in deep.

So I customize for each child. This is the fourth time I have had a 7th grader and each time it has been a different experience. I think it keeps me interested too. I need to learn something new with each child or it becomes stale. Math is about the only thing that stays static.

We have customized Abeka, SL, and TOG. I just don't blog about all my other subjects on my blog so you don't see all that goes on in my life. :)

Barb
Harmony Art Mom