Rome to the Reformation (RTR) Week 2

Well first let me say that we are technically 3 weeks into school, but we managed to get behind already and it took us 2 weeks to complete Week 2 of My Father's World.  I am a little concerned about how to schedule our year with doctor appointments, field trips and the occasional fun day thrown into the mix.  Last year we weren't using a true curriculum, so it was easy for me to adjust our days as needed.  We have also decided to join a local homeschool co-op that will be meeting on Thursdays.  This will basically take a whole day away from our curriculum already.  That is not a catastrophe as RTR has very light Fridays so we will just switch and do our Thursday work on Friday.  However now we don't have the leeway for the rest of the week if we get behind.  Maybe this is not a big deal to more relaxed people, but I am a list checker and I really want to check off all of our assignments each week.  Oh, what to do???

Anyway, on to our second week.  We did start a new history book Augustus Caesar's World.  It is somewhat less dry than the other books, but a little advanced for the 2nd and even 4th grader.  They are supposed to narrate the chapter back to me, and they have a hard time with this aspect.  I am hoping it is just a learning curve, although we have done some narration in the past.  Also, there is A LOT for me to read each day.  Others may disagree, but I get very tired doing read alouds and 2 "chapters" in ACW plus usually 2 other history texts and sometimes adding in a science chapter is really more than I can do in a day.  That is very tough for me and how I got behind on week 2.

On a good note I did meet someone this week who uses MFW and uses my favorite planner from last year.  I had to ordered the planner because MFW uses a grid system and I was afraid I would not be able to fit all I needed to into the planner.  I was glad to see that someone else is making it work for them.  I have been relying on the grid for 3 weeks and having a hard time with it visually.  Everything is written down, but not in a pleasant way to me, so I broke down and ordered the planner.  I received it yesterday and have already entered everything done so far and my plans for next week.  I can already see this is going to work out so much better for me.

Rome to the Reformation (RTR) Week 1

We just completed our first week of using our new curriculum My Father's World Rome to the Reformation.
In the past I have been a "piece it together" type of person working off my own handwriting lesson plans.  Using a pre-planned lesson grid has been a bit of a visual challenge to me.  It seems that writing plans out helps them sink into my brain so I am having to reread the grids and notes multiple times to let them sink into my brain.

 *** Note *** As I am writing the above sentence it occurred to me that my pregnancy fog is not helping matters with reviewing the lesson plans.  I suffer from an extreme case of pregnancy brain.  I consider it extreme because normally I am a very organized and fairly intelligent person.  I would never dream of misplacing my car keys or forgetting an important document.  However in previous pregnancies I have left my ATM card in the bank machine (mortifying to me) and didn't realize this until the bank called.  I also lost my engagement ring for several months because I decided to put it in a safe place while under the influence of pregnancy hormones.  This pregnancy is so far disaster free, but I do feel like I am living in a constant haze and I did ask my husband "What date is Christmas?"

Ok back to MFW... overall I think we had a successful first week.  I did over-schedule myself and unfortunately had to leave the house every day for field trips, doctor appointments and play dates.  This is not really doable in the long term, so I will need to adjust my schedule and try not to over-commit for the remainder of our school year.

The positives:
- my kids really liked the simple hands on projects we did this week
- I really liked the simplicity of the projects
- I also enjoy the "Book Basket" which gives me 15 minutes to regroup my thoughts midway through the day

The negatives:
- so far I find the history to be pretty dry.  Last year we used History Odyssey and our main spines were Story of the World, Usborne Encyclopedia of World History and A Child's History of the World.  We found those to be very engaging.  This week the majority of our reading came from Streams of Civilization and I find it to be written for an older audience.  My kids are 9 and 7 and the younger one, especially, has that glazed look in her eyes.  They do use more than one book for the history reading so I am hoping those hold our interest more.  We really loved history last year and I want us to continue to be excited.