Anyone using Catholic curriculum?

[elus0814]

This is our second year homeschooling with a now first grader and preschooler, after a month long hiatus while moving we're getting ready to dive back in. So far I've pieced together my own curriculum. We're using lots of Seton books (for phonics, english, spelling, some history, and some religion), math u see, and artistic pursuits. We now have four children including a toddler and infant. It's getting tough to find time to plan the lessons so I've been looking into enrolling in a program that will provide me with lesson plans and some subjective grading services. If I do this I would want to use a Catholic curriculum. Does anyone have any experience using one?

[crunchy_mama]

We are Catholic but I am planning our own lessons here, following Mater Ambalis, it is a free Catholic Charlotte Mason style curriculum.  I am doing school 6wks on-1off then planning on the off week.  Sorry I don't experience enrolling in any school though. 

[KempsMama]

I don't have experience using it myself, but Catholic Heritage Curricula was recommended to me by several mom's at our church, and it's what I plan to use. 

[elus0814]

Originally Posted by KempsMama 

I don't have experience using it myself, but Catholic Heritage Curricula was recommended to me by several mom's at our church, and it's what I plan to use. 

I was looking at their website last night. They have an 'online conference' which shows their materials in great detail. It seemed a bit light to me, just two pages of spelling per week didn't seem like enough. That said, I think Seton is a bit heavy. We have to skip pages because the kids just don't need five double sided handwriting sheets per week or five pages of phonics plus a test. We have to do the same with math u see, they have three pages of new work, three of review, and a test. I've tried breaking up the lessons over more than a week but it's awkward. That went off track, sorry!

Do you know what other moms like about it?

[elus0814]

Originally Posted by crunchy_mama 

We are Catholic but I am planning our own lessons here, following Mater Ambalis, it is a free Catholic Charlotte Mason style curriculum.  I am doing school 6wks on-1off then planning on the off week.  Sorry I don't experience enrolling in any school though. 

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

That's EXACTLY what I was looking for, something where I could have a basic idea of what to do while being able to use our own math and make changes if needed. The fact that it's free just makes it that much better! I think I'll use that as a guide while looking for another, more specific lesson plan.

[KempsMama]

The lightness of it is one of the things most mom's like.  You can add to it as needed, but you aren't sorting through tons of stuff to get to what you want. 

[luv-my-boys]

this is also a great Catholic homeschooling support site.  It has links to various Catholic hs curriculums and sites that might be helpful.

http://www.catholichomeschool.org/curriculums.php 

[Nitenites]

I've been homeschooling since the "beginning" (my oldest is 10, in 5th grade) and we've used a variety of materials. Here's my impression:

CHC - very light. Too fluffy, not enough "meat." Social studies is a lot of "study this country this week by going to the library and finding books about culture and geography." Their First Penance/First Holy Communion prep materials are VERY helpful, though. 
Seton - the other end of the spectrum. School at home. Too strict for us. Sometimes it just felt like work for the sake of work. (It was great practice in redemptive suffering, though, LOL!) 

What we're using right now is Sonlight. It's Protestant, but mostly okay. I liked 1st - 4th grades, but 5th grade is DRY. And 6th grade is very pro-Reformation ("Martin Luther was a hero"), not quite the direction we're planning on taking with that topic. So we're going to try MODG (Mother of Divine Grace) next year, starting in 6th grade. We're not enrolling. I plan on buying the lesson plan and the books, and doing things on my own. I've also heard about Kolbe, though I've never seen any of their materials or tried their curricula.

[elus0814]

Originally Posted by Nitenites 

I've been homeschooling since the "beginning" (my oldest is 10, in 5th grade) and we've used a variety of materials. Here's my impression:

CHC - very light. Too fluffy, not enough "meat." Social studies is a lot of "study this country this week by going to the library and finding books about culture and geography." Their First Penance/First Holy Communion prep materials are VERY helpful, though. 
Seton - the other end of the spectrum. School at home. Too strict for us. Sometimes it just felt like work for the sake of work. (It was great practice in redemptive suffering, though, LOL!) 

What we're using right now is Sonlight. It's Protestant, but mostly okay. I liked 1st - 4th grades, but 5th grade is DRY. And 6th grade is very pro-Reformation ("Martin Luther was a hero"), not quite the direction we're planning on taking with that topic. So we're going to try MODG (Mother of Divine Grace) next year, starting in 6th grade. We're not enrolling. I plan on buying the lesson plan and the books, and doing things on my own. I've also heard about Kolbe, though I've never seen any of their materials or tried their curricula.

We've had the same experience with Seton being simply school at home but it is complete (except for science and history) and teaches everything so we skip some material while using many of their books (phonics, spelling, science, history, english, and others). I really like the spelling, it's just enough work for the week but not too much. The english book is great as well but it expects a beginning of the year first grader to be reading fluently so we didn't start it until later in the year. The science and history are nice but can easily be completed within a couple months and that's with extra projects and reading to fill it out. We use math u see instead of their math but we have the math workbooks as extra fun practice, my kids enjoy doing work on their own with the extra math and phonics books they have. I wouldn't enroll with them because of the volume of busy work. If we did every page plus lessons (we tried with their free first month of lessons offer) we would be spending six hours a day on it! I really wish, however, that they would sell individual subject lessons. I really like how they explain the phonics and english. 

I looked into chc too and it appeared to be not nearly enough work. Do you know if a church will allow kids who did home prep to receive the sacraments? Do you just allow them to receive communion without mentioning it to the church?

I've seen kolbe materials at a conference and they looked ok but we were way into seton so I didn't get anything. They have a nice complete catalog to look through. I'm thinking seriously about kolbe because they allow any number of changes but I'm not sure I can bring myself to pay for it if I'm going to be changing half of it. That may be even more work than now.

I'm not sure I can decide on enrollment it one. Each has things I like and things I do not. 

[frugalmum]

Five of my children are enrolled in Seton Home Study School.  By and large we like it very much, except I'm so unorganized I haven't been able to keep up with the grading/ paperwork except for my older ones.  Their books are great and in the future I will probably just buy the books for my younger ones and enroll the older ones (6th grade+).

[Nitenites]

Originally Posted by elus0814 

I looked into chc too and it appeared to be not nearly enough work. Do you know if a church will allow kids who did home prep to receive the sacraments? Do you just allow them to receive communion without mentioning it to the church?

Depends on your parish. Our parish is pretty conservative (ie, lots of homeschoolers) and some choose to participate in Religious Ed, and some don't. Our First Communion/First Penance programs are for the parish school's students as well as public school and homeschool students. Some homeschool parents (like us) choose to do FHC on our own. Monsignor is fine with it, he just interviews them before FHC, asking simple questions like, "Do you know what the Eucharist is?" and "Can you say the Act of Contrition?" and some basic questions about the sacraments and Ten Commandments. When homeschooled kids have their FHC at Mass, he makes a big deal - an announcement, the family sits in the front pew, the child is the first to receive, etc. Homeschoolers have a very positive relationship with the priests in our parish. We're very fortunate. I would talk to your parish priest (be prepared to show him the materials you're using) and go from there. 
 

[frugalmama]

We're using CHC, and loving it. DD is in K. I find that while it is light, you can make more of it if you want to. Everything else I looked at was too much school at home or used dated materials.

The only things so far I don't like about CHC is:

1. The K Religion program really isn't that great. I tossed it within the first few days and made my own using a couple of books I had on hand. Once you get to the 1st grade Faith & Life it's good though.

2. Most of the materials and lesson plans can only be bought through CHC. I prefer to buy from Amazon with gift cards earned throughout the year. However CHC is selling a few items direct from them on Amazon now - I'm in hopes it expands soon.