Catholic Homeschool curriculums

  Before I was committed to making the homeschool decision I read Catholic Homeschooling by Mary Kay Clark. Talk about a wake up call, not just being a parent, but my obligation as a Catholic parent! The State and Federal government is not the dispenser of my kids education. I am, and I will never give that right up to someone else. I am the one who is solely given that right. That is my obligation as a parent, given to me by God.  It is a gift to be able to educate your children. Some choose to homeschool, some choose Catholic schools and some public, it's an individual decision. It shows you the wisdom past Pope's on homeschooling- remember the Pope's warning on contraception and how divorce and all sorts of other social issues would increase- it's sort of like that. I feel like I was stuck in a bubble till I read that info. I am forever thankful to the woman who lent me that book. Another wake up call, was Familia....that program you hear about at church- studying JP II's documents. Whew! Love it!

  Curriculum and Accreditation.
   This is the way it works, you can go out on your own, round up various books from different publishers and design your own classical curriculum. (I can't go that route because I am not that organized.) Organization comes with wisdom, which comes with experience and age...neither of which I have...ok I am thirty something I think ;) Most of the books "dumb it down" so you teach it without having to have a major in it.

Or you can select a program, like Catholic Schoolhouse, Mother of Divine Grace, Seton, Catholic Heritage Curricula, Our Lady of Victory etc.. and use their syllabii and recommended books. If you don't like the book(s) in a program most will allow you swap out that particular book and teach with another. Most have a nice syllabus and you can go day by day week by week with their syllabii. I know there are more, these are the ones I liked.

 Some are accredited which is nice so when your highschooler needs an official transcript to get into college (although a lot of VERY GOOD CATHOLIC colleges are not requiring it now), the accredited program will make one for you. ( We're not enrolled but I keep track of my kids scores and work now...just like a regular teacher would.)

  Where do you buy and sell books? 
   The books can be purchased new on Amazon, Ebay or Sacred Heart Books and Gifts or used (used at Cathswap yahoo group).  I don't believe you can resell some of Seton's stuff...so that's a bit of a disadvantage. It has to be traded in.



  What curriculum our family uses.
   We use Mother of Divine Grace right now. I am not enrolled full time because it is a cost issue, but come 5 or 6th grade I plan on enrolling our family full time as official students. You can still buy all the MODG materials you would need to teach. I am not recommending that to everyone, as every family's situation is different, some have the money, some don't want to commit because they might find out homeschooling isn't their cup of tea, whatever the reason only you can decide for yourself.

Another thing I use is Catholic Schoolhouse art #2 and Catholic Schoolhouse #2 Science. Why? Because my kids need more to do, and I am a Biology major so I just want it. Plus if you look at the genius way they arrange their stuff. ALL YOUR KIDS ON THE SAME SUBJECT IN THE SAME TIME PERIOD. We started with #2 year because the art starts with BC and goes from there. IF I had purchased the whole kit and kaboodle I would have also been doing history from BC forward. Everything is done with the time period being the guide. So you study the saints that lived or artists or musicians that lived in that time period you were just reading about in history.

We also integrate Catholic ABC's, by Catholic Icing. So I always have something on hand that fits everyone's needs here. Catholic ABC's rocks! It's got the transcript in it for your day, so "know what to say".

I Highly recommend "The Story of the World" all the volumes are pretty good, especially I and II

Writing our Catholic Faith

Angel Readers and Angel workbooks

A Beka for Math

Sacred Music Studies (free)

Virtues in Practice (free)

Catechesis of the Good Shepherd- find out if you have a program in your Diocese.

And last but not least, Holy Heroes..you can integrate all of their stuff.

The link to Kansas' state law and how to enroll your homeschool are here. Not too much too it. Just document well what you do every day. And I hate to say this, make it obvious for your husband to find in case something happens to you and he has to take action.


MUSIC

Currently we use Sacred Music Studies. As of Fall 2015 we are in Year II with Erin.

Just for fun! Have you heard this guy sing about being Catholic?  Well here is a song we like to listen to so much, probably once a day and we dance and clap and the kids know who all the people are in the images now. Enjoy! I like it so much I had to give it it's own page.


Justin Stroh and his family lead online LIVE Rosaries about once a week around 8 PM central time. We have been able to join in several times now. It's so so cool to hear the intentions from around the world- they are coming in from everywhere! It's amazing to be united in prayer over the computer! He offers reflections throughout the rosary and he and his wife do an amazing job leading the prayer service. If you have a Google Plus account just add Justin to your circle you will see the reminders. Check it out sometime!





This was how I did our first year below....
  Here's what we are using right now.  I never did get around to buying the CD that MODG recommends, and I can't say I have had any trouble finding the songs we need on You Tube. You Tube is a great resource. If you want to block the ads and scummy stuff, get AdBlockPro for which ever operating system you are using. It will clean up everything you are looking at including your yahoo email ads. It sure seems like it's hard to hide inappropriate ads from kids, but this did the trick.
  The kids know their prayers in Latin and a few songs too. MODG has them learning songs as part of their music class (in the syllabus). The prayers were extra. We find a the song or prayer in Latin and a written translation and print it out to reference when trying to pronounce and learn the words. So far we are doing good.  I never took a lick of Latin- except in biology, so this has been a blast learning! I am sure there are more versions of these, so if you have a suggestion let me know and I might ad it if it works for us.

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