How is it going with Illuminations?

We are now officially done with the first quarter of Mystery of History 1{affiliate link}.  So, I thought I’d give an update for how it’s going for us.

{This post contains affiliate links.  See my full Disclosure statement for more information}

What has been working great for us with Illuminations (affiliate link)

• The schedule grid.  It’s been really helpful to me to have it all laid out in one place, much better than my plan last year of 5 different plans and notebooks.
• Being able to change what’s on there.  I rarely stick to a plan for long and being able to change the suggested plans has been great.
• Being able to change subjects on there and not use what’s on there.  They give you options for 3 different grammar subjects.  There is no way I’m going to go through that many.  So I’ve been using that space for other items I need to do
• The additional suggestions and random other stuff.  I’ve enjoyed looking through the teacher manuals and trying their projects and doing different things.
• The ability to declare a “do-over” week and just repeat that week with slightly different schedule because life has been too crazy.  Life for us is weird right now, there are a lot of things in flux, and it’s been wonderful to not stress too much if we did not get it all done.  It will happen.

 

What I’ve learned had to change with Illuminations

• My kids are at the young end of things, and they/we were not ready for the 3-8 geography.  So we switched to the young learners geography.
• I’ve also figured out we enjoy a slower pace for geography than they give us in Illuminations.  In Illuminations they cover a country a week, and I just don’t enjoy that pace.  I like to dig into their culture more.
• I had to type in the Math lessons because otherwise I lost track of which lesson had to go when just because Saxon is very different from Math U See.
• For my sanity I have to add in what the spelling words are, just seeing “Complete spelling week 7 day 1” did not help me because I had to flip over there.

What ultimately hasn’t worked for us with Illuminations

While I love the resources for the geography in Illuminations, the pacing doesn’t quite work for us.  I like taking a month to study one country, not a week.  This means we won’t cover as many countries or necessarily get through as much, but it works better for us.

I also had found it annoying I couldn’t delete some of the row permanently that I wasn’t using.  I don’t need the older kids stuff, and we weren’t using the read alones yet, so each week those rows were left blank.  I erased the subjects we weren’t using so I didn’t waste the ink.

Enter the Illuminations update

I’d been chatting with someone from Bright Ideas Press and told them if they ever put in an update for Illuminations they should really let you move the rows around and add/delete rows as you needed to.

She then told me they were working on an update for Illuminations and she thought that was one of the new changes.  I thought EUREKA this will work!

Well this morning I got my update, it was released on Wednesday, but I’ve been busy with a migraine and a sinus infection this week, so I just downloaded it this morning.

 

Here’s my cool new Illuminations finds

Was this there all along and I’d forgotten about it?  It’s broken down perfectly week by week, lesson by lesson with what you need for the hands on activities.  How did I miss this?

I never looked at the high school stuff before because my kids are nowhere near that age.  but I was curious about the Life 101 study, and oh it’s going to be fun to use those materials.  I might do the Covenant study for myself, it’s a PRECEPT study, I LOVE those!  Yes, caps lock was needed!

A new schedule grid, you just pick the subjects you need and add those in.  Sweet, no more wading through 3 pages of subjects to get the subjects I needed.

And they added the buttons I needed.  See that, delete a subject (I decided I do not need to print off the copywork one I’d added), and add custom subject, I added 8 or so.

Here’s a screen shot of my updated schedule grid (this is not all of the subjects).  I added in: math, anatomy, writing (there is one, but we’re not using their suggested), errands, projects to do, supplies to buy (might as well make use of that supply list I found).

I’ve got my schedule grid all cued up to create next week’s schedule.  I’ll be sliding over some music and adding in a few things.  This semester has been teaching me a lot about flexibility.