I have a huge love/hate relationship with Easy Peasy Homeschool. I have nothing but high praise for Lee Giles, the creator of this wonderful (and totally free) homeschool curriculum. It takes your child(ren) from preschool to grade 12 and it does it so beautifully. It is a complete curriculum, right down to stuff like phys ed, computers, and even art!
So what are my problems with this curriculum, what bothered me when I first started to use it a few years ago? Well, for one it is religious. But to be fair, I knew it was written by a missionary family, so I did expect lots of biblical references peppering the various subjects. This isn’t a huge deal, more of an annoyance, since I want Peanut to have a secular education.
The second problem was that after preschool the child is expected to learn to read, and learn fast. They are expected to enter grade 1 with a grade 2 reading level. Ouch! I knew that wasn’t gonna happen with Peanut!
The third problem is that the history portion is very “dry” and within a minute or two Peanut wasn’t having anything more to do with it. I can’t blame him, I was bored to tears too. I think if you have a child that loves to just read and absorb information, this is perfect, but Peanut is hands on. He wants to touch the pages of the books, he wants to build things, and lapbooks are not a good outlet for him. He wants to make the nile, the pyramids, the desert. For this, Minecraft could be a great alternative to lapbooks!
The fourth problem is that the science was above his abilities. When I looked into the year 1 biology, I found out it uses a textbook that is actually meant for a grade 2+ level! No wonder I was so hesitant to use it!
And the fifth problem is that we only have 144 days in our school year, not 180. This means we either have to skip stuff or double up days. Thankfully most subjects have the last 20 days as end of the year projects that we can easily skip!
So now that I’ve done all this curriculum bashing, why on earth am I writing about using this again?
Because this curriculum is FANTASTIC! I absolutely love it!
After waiting for a few of years, we began to use the second part of Getting Ready 1 called McGuffey’s Primer. During this time we didn’t do anything except learn to read and Math Mammoth grade 1. I had honestly thought it would take us almost a year to get through it, but Peanut surprised me by flying through McGuffey’s Primer in less than 2 months!
So then I looked into Easy Peasy Getting Ready 2. I think my head exploded! How could we possibly get through McGuffey’s first eclectic reader plus a total phonics curriculum in this next year? And peeking into the Grade 1 language arts made me cringe! Grade 2 level books to be read by the student, yikes!
But now, here we are, one third of the way through McGuffey’s first eclectic reader, and Peanut is reading like a boss! I’m starting to have faith in this curriculum again. Maybe Peanut will be reading grade 2 books soon.
Since his reading is going so well, and his math seems to be steadily getting better, it was time to throw in some more challenging things.
I added the McMillan Reading Treasures grade 1 program, and we are finding that it is more of a review thanks to Easy Peasy. We are 7 weeks into it, and Peanut is enjoying all the stories so far. He’s not too fond of the language arts practice book though. haha.
But we were lacking read alouds, and I also wanted to include more handwriting even though Peanut still has difficulty forming the letters. I ended up getting Handwriting Without Tears, and using a suggestion from Pinterest (it can be a great resource sometimes, haha) I photocopied the pages and traced the boxes Peanut is supposed to write in with glue. I tried elmer’s school glue, but that didn’t give enough of a 3D box. A glue gun worked great! Just put a blob of glue on a piece of foil, then use a toothpick to dip in the glue and spread it thinly around the box. Now Peanut has a tactile way to know where to stop his letters! You can see the glue in this picture:
And we also decided to jump into Easy Peasy grade 1 Language arts.
Peanut is really surprising me! We have done the first two days of Language arts grade 1, and he has enjoyed listening to the poems, and the read-aloud too (discussed in the next paragraph). He managed to fill out the worksheets with me as his scribe. He even managed to use the Language arts 1 Tracing book to make the sentence “His wife shuddered.” from day 2, and that chicken scratch of his, making a complete sentence, is a wonderful sight to see!
I know Peanut can’t read things like “The Tale of Jolly Robin” yet, and probably not for at least another year. I am treating the grade 1 reading portion as a read-aloud instead, and so far we have read the first two chapters. Peanut really likes The Tale of Jolly Robin. I think next year he will probably be able read it on his own!
I still really want to use other subjects from this curriculum, but for now I think we’re doing great with using the reading, Language Arts, Math, and Phys Ed. Maybe down the road we’ll add science, history, music, and art, but I think we’ve got enough on our plate.
But this being said, I am thinking about ordering Pandia Press REAL Science Odyssey life science level 1 during the black Friday sale. I’m just checking out their free sample now to see how Peanut likes it. I don’t know if we are actually ready to use it yet, but the price is fantastic!
So until next time, may your days be joyful, your nights be relaxing, and your coffee be stronger than your problems!
A Joyful Chaos 