Bruffey Claddagh Academy: Gather 'Round Homeschool

Fellow home educating families: 

I invite you to gather 'round and consider a new way to educate your family.

Earlier this year, before things went topsy turvy with a pandemic, God began to lead our homeschool in a new direction - from a more eclectic approach with lots of seatwork and workbooks to a more combined, unified, exploratory approach. Before Emma was born, I was lead to do more workbooks and seatwork, which worked incredibly well during those early days, months, and year with a newborn and emerging toddler. As Emma was approaching 2, I wanted more hands on and less seatwork with more creative exploration and learning as a family. Cue Gather 'Round Homeschool! A dear friend, Thara Reinitz with Proverbs 31 in Progress, sent me this video by Rebecca Spooner of Homeschool On about her journey and how God lead her to create her own curriculum. I got chills watching the video, as I had been praying and looking for options to transition our homeschool and her description matched just what my heart had been seeking. I truly believe it was divinely timed and lead.

I joined the Gather Round Homeschool Facebook Community and began reading about the coming curriculum. After prayer and consideration and discussing with Josh, we decided we would try a week using a free 1 week sample of the first unit study - North American Birds. My children LOVED it and asked if we could do more. 

The format is set up accordingly: We read together from the teacher's guide the topic of the day's lesson and then each child has their own level of work in their individual workbooks that fits their level and skills - my oldest is in early elementary (for ages 8-10 or so), my 2nd child is in early reader (for ages 6-8), and my 3rd child is in pre-reader (for ages 4-5). We are excited that a kindergarten addition is coming later this year , as there is a bit of a jump between pre-reader and early reader. My 3rd child would be in the gap between the 2, so we went with the lower level so as not to frustrate her with work that would be above her abilities. It worked well and she benefitted from the lessons. At times, we only used the teacher's guide and the student workbooks. Other days, we incorporated the additional manipulatives, books, and activities I had gathered. 

Trying the 1 week sample solified our decision, and we ordered a full unit and jumped in! We chose to do Oceans  as our first unit study and began on March 1st  - our plan was to take 5 or so weeks to complete the unit and near the end, around March 30th, we were going to go to the beach as a part of our study.

I have set up a GRH Corner in our home where we keep the books we have related to the current unit study and a variety of related activities. Here is our Oceans Reading and Activity Corner along with my children's school binders that house their unit study workbooks:

Some of our oceans activities

As I look back on our first full unit study of GRH, I now think of Proverbs 16:9, which reads, "The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps." About 11 days after we began our journey as a GRH family, the whole world began to close. Our trip to the beach and to the Houston Aquarium were cancelled. But GOD knew... He knew how GRH would bless our home and our education journey during the Coronavirus crisis. My children had less seatwork and I had less late night lesson planning. We still used our Daily Foundation Basket to start our day with Bible study, memory work, read alouds, and poetry, followed by GRH and the associated work, and then math. We integrated the spelling we have been using as time and motivation allowed, but there was spelling and language in GRH, which was a huge blessing on days where emotions and uncertainties were high. 

In the days following the closing of the world, our co-op closed, gymnastics closed, Our Cub Scouts with Pack 393 was put on hold, etc, etc... we became more of a HOMEschooling family than we had been since the kids were small. Gather Round Homeschool made it more seamless and less stressful in our home. The kids loved learning about God's creation in His massive ocean. As we navigated learning about the COVID-19 situation and took days to study world events, we spread out our study of oceans and finished it in about 8 weeks rather than 5 or 6. We now are taking 2 weeks off and are focusing on evaluating and planning for our next school term while keeping up with reading and math. We will pick back up with our next unit study later this month. Having GRH has allowed us to better integrate other lessons we have wanted to bring into our children's lives and has proven an interesting, engaging, unifying way to educate our children. 

Starting to prepare for our Human Body unit study. 

These posters are a beneficial, additional purchase to go with the unit. 

If you decide to try the Human Body unit, here is a Pinterest board I created with activity ideas.

If you are looking for a curriculum that is rich, complete, and allows you to educate children of multiple ages on one topic, then I encourage you to look into and try Gather Round Homeschool. All you techincally need to add is math and, for Christian families, a time of Bible study (GRH is faith based and integrates scripture and God's truth, but even the author states that she adds further in-depth Bible study with her children). 

The author, Rebecca, describes GRH this way - "Gather 'Round Homeschool is not just a curriculum, it is really an entirely new way to homeschool. Targeted lessons that challenge and inspire curiosity in our students and are age/stage appropriate. One beautiful teachers guide and then connecting student pages that spider web into the amazing connections of social studies, science, history, reading, writing, spelling, grammar, geography, art, Bible, and more! 

It is a way of life where education is about family connection and exploring together. It brings in hands on, it brings in Charlotte Mason, it brings in worksheets and lessons that make the subjects come to life. It is the ultimate unit study, but so much bigger than that. And at the end of the day, it is creating a community of homeschoolers that have one desire for their family: Life to the full. "