A real Master Books mom shares how short lessons, faith-filled learning, and flexibility transformed her homeschool.
Below is a transcript of Laura's thoughts, specially formatted for online reading.
Master Books curriculum and this community have been a huge win and blessing in our lives. We just love the gentle approach to Master Books lessons. It works so well for my son and his needs. This curriculum gives me so much peace as a mom, so I figured I'd give a little summary of our school year so far and why that is, as we are finishing our second week of second semester.
Math: Working Ahead Without Overwhelm
When it comes to my son's math, I know that even though he is working on concepts that are ahead, as that is what is appropriate for him, he is introduced to them in a non overwhelming way without excessive busywork. He has a few problems each day, which actually helps with his retention, and he continues making wonderful progress. This puts my mama mind at ease, as it can be scary to let little ones work so far ahead some times.
Science: Short Lessons That Invite Deeper Exploration
When it comes to science, we just love that the short concise lessons allow us to dive deeper into his topics of interest by getting creative, like in combining both lower elementary science series, which many times overlap in lesson topics, or finding videos to watch and expanding on the lessons.
Language Arts: Building Writing Skills Naturally
When it comes to Language Arts, the way writing is continuously a part of most assignments in short two sentence increments, has eased my worry as a mom on how to teach my son to learn how to write. I've seen the progress since we first started this school year.
Short, concise lessons allow us to dive deeper into the things he loves.
Now, this second semester, he is coming up with his own sentences, writing them, and remembering to capitalize at the beginning and end with a punctuation mark. Sometimes he even spells everything in those sentences correctly himself. Wow is all I have to say.
The lessons paired up with the academy have been more than enough for him to understand the new grammar concepts etc. Best of all, His faith continues to grow so much because of the wonderful assignments throughout this series such as writing psalms.
Social Studies: Opening Doors to Conversation
When it comes to Social studies, we just love how it opens us up to having some deep conversations about different topics such as countries, cities, continents, etc.
The Flexibility We Need
All this, while having time for real life activities and spending time as a family. I love that we can expand on lessons if something interests my little guy, or if it is a busier day, we can take it easy, without the worry that we will fall behind our schedule. All this thanks to the open and go format and short concise lessons that adapt to our lives.
Now we finish all our subjects in about an hour and a half—sometimes less.
Game-Changing Adjustments This Semester
The curriculum itself is amazing when it comes to all the subjects for the reasons I just mentioned, but With us now including some of the strategies from the book Thrive, we are off to a wonderful start to our second semester.
My son's attitude towards all the everyday things he finds hard in his challenging areas has improved so much. Much less frustration and anger now. He has been more open to learning, and motivated to getting his everyday things done, with a more positive attitude. This has been a gamechanger for us that has improved our overall homeschooling experience, because a positive attitude, carries into all the different areas of the day.
So Second semester is looking better than the first for us, and we are happy and very thankful.
Navigating 2E Challenges
It's been a big year for us, learning to make accommodations and adaptations to fit my son's 2E needs. It truly can be challenging at times to try to find balance with a child that develops asynchronously, and can mentally be a certain age in academics, another age emotionally, another age physically, and another age socially. It is a unique tricky challenge with its own set of frustrations as you try to figure out how to balance it all, is all I will say on this. It can also feel like a lonely experience because of it as well.
Back to Joy and Peace
After some adjustments, it looks like the joy and peace have returned, and we are on the right track. I'm proud of how he is improving, and I'm so happy to see my son back to being happy, having a more positive attitude, and us enjoying our homeschooling time so much, that we are back to completing all subjects in about an hour and a half, sometimes less.
Master Books brought peace back into our homeschool.
For a while it was starting to take us twice as long, not because he was having a hard time with the material as academics is actually his strength, but due to overall negative attitude carrying over from frequent morning tantrums about everyday tasks his autism causes him struggles with.
I was told these issues can be common in 2E kids because these kids can take a bit more time to grow emotionally while at the same time be older than their age intellectually. The mismatch of not all areas growing at the same pace (intellectually, emotionally, socially etc), can cause these frustrations for both child and parent.
What's Working: Token System and Visual Schedules
The token system along with the visual schedule I posted about last week have been a huge help in this. He now loves being able to work hard at maintaining a more positive attitude, to earn an outside meal of his choice each week.
Why Master Books Is a Blessing
This is just a little summary of our school year so far, adjustments we made, and why Master Books is such a blessing for us and works great as my son's curriculum for all his subjects.
I cannot say enough about Master Books. The courses are well made that I find them to be more than enough academically. The short lessons themselves are great as well, which helps so much with retention, and most importantly I love that all subjects are truly faith infused.
I love how the short lessons don't take up a large portion of our days, and so give me the time and opportunity as a teacher, to be more in control of including other activities to expand on these topics, when we want to. I love that schooling can be completed in the morning, and we can then have the rest of the day to do other things as a family.
You're Not Alone
I hope some of you find this long post to be encouraging that
- Masterbooks is more than enough, and
- in letting you know that you're not alone in sometimes having struggles and needing to make changes to daily routines and adapt things to better meet your little one's needs.
It can be frustrating and challenging, especially when it takes a while of trying different things until you find one that works, but it is so worth it to see their little smiles and watch them continue to happily grow in what they know each day.
Praying second semester is going well for all of you too, as you all find ways to adjust back into homeschooling after the long holiday break. If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read this long post.
