Mother4Jesus

Extreme Makeover: School Room Edition What a dramatic title eh??  I've been homeschooling since 1998 and i've NEVER had an official school room. I've never really felt the need for one. I feel that learning is something we do all over the house and so i've never allocated a space for it. I have had shelving for our books but never a whole room!!  With my youngest two children, we're using a different type of curriculum, so many days I would find myself with books, teachers manuals and my teacher binder sprawled all over the kitchen table. If the kids wanted a drink or a snack , I would shove all those over to one side and hope that no one spilled anything.  I had decided that when we paint, I would take the toy room and convert it to school room.  With our "Before" video, you can see that in our "After" video that the room is like what I had planned, as the room was forming, it was amazing to see my vision come to life. This i...

I've decided to use Math U See this year. I looked at all the others... Singapore, Saxon, AOP, BJU, and truth be told, they are all pretty much the same. What I liked about MUS is that the manipulatives give children a good look at the numbers and how they work together. Yes, the other curriculums like Singapore and Saxon have manipulatives, but they're the same things you can buy in your local walmart. I love the 10 minute dvd's, which not only teaches the students but helps the parents to reteach and explain when needed. Another benefit is that they encourage memorization. ALL curriculum's teach for mastery, It would be hard to find one that says, "Yea, we teach it but we don't care if your child masters it.". The problem is that addition and subtraction are easy to understand conceptually, but I want my child to memorize her addition and subtraction facts. I don't want to see my child in 2nd or 3rd grade counting on her fingers. The only problem I...