Winter Promise Wednesday: Aussie Style!

We are starting a brand new series called Winter Promise Wednesdays!  We would LOVE to be able to show-off YOUR families using Winter Promise in your homeschool. Today we are blessed to have a guest post from Kendra, who blogs at the Aussie Pumpkin Patch! If you would like to guest post for the Winter Promise blog, please fill out this form and we will be in touch: Winter Promise Blogger Interest Form! 

 winterpromisewednesdays

A few years ago I was in a bit of what’s known as homeschool burnout. We’d outgrown our trusty old curriculum & I wasn’t truly sure where to go next. After much searching, praying, & considering I stumbled, quite literally, upon Winter Promise.

{Invitation the boys made for our English Tea}

It was a breath of fresh air, an answer to prayer, & quite literally saved me from enrolling my children in the local public school. Winter Promise had just the right mix of Adventure Reading, Non-Fiction spines, timeline work, & notebooking. Exactly what my family loved & enjoyed doing, only I didn’t have to figure out how to line it all up or schedule it out because it was all ready done for me. We had the best school year!

 

{Winter Promise Timeline Notebooks 3.5 years later}

 

Here we are a few years later & we’re still enjoying Winter Promise. One of my very favourite things about Winter Promise is how very easy & simple it is to combine children of different ages & grades. My boys are two years apart in age & about 2.5 grades apart in school. It’s not always easy breeching that small gap, but I find it quite simple with Winter Promise. Allowing my older one to accomplish all the notebooking & timeline bits, while having my younger student do the ones most applicable for his age & level.
{Maps from CAW Theme Photo}

 

 

This year we had intended to separate our children & using completely different themes with them. I wanted my 6th grader to use Children Around The World while my 4th Grader wanted to use Animal Worlds. We set out with that intention in mind adding in some extra adventure reading to both, but in the end our younger student felt left out not to be enjoying the same Theme as his big brother. We found it so easy to just slip him in despite being all most two complete terms into our school year. We simply picked up an e-copy of the lovely World Traveler’s Guide, & oh isn’t the e-copy beautiful with all that lovely colour inside of it!

 

{boys working together photo}

 

As a family we read all the lovely spines, or main books, for Children Around The World & then my children set themselves up at our work table surrounded by the books they need to work on their notebooking pages. My older son is able to help his younger brother which is very sweet to see.

My children absolutely love the non-fiction books & it’s often a fight over who gets to pry through them first after I’ve read aloud from the daily sections. Who knew looking at toilets & televisions around the world would cause such a fuss! While I do read the read alouds to the both children as well, I do assign each child a book of their own, perhaps as an audio or one we read together, something at their own age level. It’s fun for everyone to share together what they’ve been reading about in relation to our studies.

{Crazy Family Dressed up photo}

 

 

Our family has really enjoyed the cultural gatherings getting into the full swing of things complete with dressing up & pretend tours through famous cities & landmarks. The boys have gone all out with special invitations & encouraging us to use “proper accents” according to the country we are visiting.
It’s such a blessing to have found a curriculum that my children love, is a joy to use, & helps us create such wonderful memories along our homeschooling journey!
You can read more about Kendra’s family using Winter Promise on her blog where she has a full category of posts written as they were using the curriculum over the years. Thank you, Kendra!! 
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5 replies
  2. Melissa Bowers
    Melissa Bowers says:

    We’re looking forward to our first year of WinterPromise, beginning this fall. My kids are 7, 5, and 3, and we will be using American Story 1.

    It’s great to hear from people who have “gone before” and have successfully used WinterPromise. I will have to check out Kendra’s blog.

    Reply
    • Candace Crabtree
      Candace Crabtree says:

      Melissa, thanks for your comments! I’m so excited to hear more about how your year goes! I clicked over to your blog and noticed you mentioned it there too. I’d love to read more of your posts through the year if you share there about WP. 🙂 I love blogging and hope to share about our journey with Quest for the Ancient World on my blog too!

      Reply
  3. Melissa Bowers
    Melissa Bowers says:

    Is there supposed to be a space between “Winter” and “Promise,” or not? There seems to be a lack of consistency, even on WinterPromise (Winter Promise?)’s own web site….

    Reply
    • Candace Crabtree
      Candace Crabtree says:

      Melissa, you are right! 🙂 I (Candace) recently started blogging/working for Winter Promise and I always put a space between them. I noticed that often Kaeryn (the author of WP) does not put a space. I actually have not asked her about this yet, keep forgetting and we always have a million other things to discuss. 🙂

      Reply

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