A few weeks ago Bright Ideas Press (affiliate link) created a new affiliate system, and since then I’ve been going through and updating all of my links to their site. As a result I’ve been going through a lot of my old posts, and I’ve noticed how we’ve changed how we used Illuminations (affiliate link, let’s just say all links to Bright Ideas Press are affiliates) over the past two years.
Reading the posts was actually rather encouraging to me. I’d highly encourage you to look over how your kids have grown and changed through the years.
When we first started using Illuminations my boys were just in 3rd grade, and they were a rather immature 3rd graders.
We started out using every bit of it, and for about two weeks it went well. Then I wore out, the kids wore out, and it wasn’t going well.
And I started digging deeper into Illuminations.
Every time I’ve had a problem with our schedule, and I’ve dug deeper into Illuminations or examined how it’s working a little more, I’ve found the solution.
I discovered Illuminations has a young learners section, and that was perfect for my kids. I mean perfect. So I dropped what wasn’t working, and added in the young learners geography and literature.
But around January or February of last year my kids suddenly took off in their core skills of math and reading.
And I dug deeper into Illuminations again. And it grew with us again.
I played with some of the scheduling and it was working again.
Then came this year. I’ve been so impressed with how my kids are doing with their schoolwork. Each time I give them more responsibility they step up and do it.
I continue to fiddle with my schedule every few months, but we’ve figured out a good balance. I’ve figured out while they finish up their All About Reading lessons I just don’t have it in me to include the literature guides, they’re awesome and I can’t wait to do them. The one week I did, I loved the skills covered, but we have time. Lots of time.
Every now and then I get asked if I’ve written all I can about Illuminations, and I just keep saying “I’ve barely scratched the surface, there’s so much more to find.” And it’s been true every single time. I keep finding more. I can’t wait until next year to see what new toy I discover there.
If your curious how other people’s homeschools have changed over the years check out and see what others have learned as they’ve homeschooled.
It’s really cool to find something that works!
Yes it is, I’m glad to find it this relatively early in my homeschooling journey. There’s still parts of our stuff I need to tweak more.
Interesting! We seem to try other things but always come back to what we do best which is sort of bumbling through history and science together.
It was rather eye opening to me how much my kids had grown in the past year and a half when I read through all of those old posts. It amazed me what I’d learned in that time.
It can be pretty eye opening to look back on old posts!
I know! I knew how much they’d changed from when they were preschoolers, but just to see the change in the last year was amazing.