How We Use A.C.E

I wrote a review on the A.C.E (Accelerated Christian Education) curriculum to which we switched last year over at The Curriculum Choice. It has been by far my most popular and commented on review. It led me to think that because there are not many homeschooling bloggers out there using the curriculum (or at least very few that I can find) I would put together a post or two on how we use this curriculum in our home. My hope is that it will be of use to other A.C.E homeschooling families.

Firstly, I mentioned in my review that we use A.C.E our way - not the prescribed way as we are a home not a school. At the time of writing my review what I was referring to was adding a strong Charlotte Mason twist to our work. I shared my initial thoughts on the A.C.E program here.

However, it seems that more changes were necessary for our family. For those of you who use the program you know that there is quite a prescribed way of setting goals, marking etc... When we first started using A.C.E we followed all rules as set out in the training manual - well - it ended up not working well for us. The actual curriculum worked really REALLY well - my girls enjoyed the work and what they were learning, everything actually got done every single day, and they did very well in their tests and have even retained majority of what they have learnt a year later (we keep getting little snippets of 'did you know' from our girls at various times in our daily lives and the info came from their PACE's).

Marking is for mama - I like to be in touch with what they are doing.

But I struggled! I struggled to remain in touch with what they were learning, I struggled with being so 'hands-off' with regard to their education. Up until our switch to A.C.E I had been completely in charge of what we learnt and when and how. If  A.C.E was going to work long-term in our home then things needed to change! So change them I did.

Outlined below are how we use A.C.E now:

DAILY

* I plan the daily goals (number of pages per PACE) weekly
Usually the child sets her own goals. But with me taking control I am able to set a workload that challenges my children yet does not overwhelm. I am also able to see what my children are going to be covering during the week and mentally highlight any areas that look like they could be more challenging than others.

* I go through new lessons with them
By this I mean that when a new concept is introduced or taught - especially in English and Math, I like to be the one to teach it to them. This way we are able to go over the new concept a couple of times together. We all know exactly where we are and can quickly cut to the chase if a problem occurs.

I keep the score-key's. The children only get access to them if I ask them to mark something.

* I mark all the work
This way I get to see areas of strength and weakness, I get to see exactly what area they are struggling with so that we can go through it together that very same day. Corrections that need to be done are considered 'homework' and is done once all 6 PACE's have been completed.

PLANNING

I am a planner! I love to plan out the school year, the term, the week. I get a certain joy out of planning out our school days. I found that if we use A.C.E the prescribed way - it cut all out the joy of planning! Well, in my book we just cannot have that!

Let's first look at my planner {pictured above}. This year I started off putting my own planner but then succumbed to purchasing The Well Planned Day. It has worked remarkably well in terms of planning out the PACE's. Here is how it works:

*The planner has pre-labeled boxes for Bible, Math, English, Science, and History. Then there are a few boxes that are unlabeled. I labeled them 'Word Building' and 'Literature'. There is enough space to plan for 4 children, only having two I have more space to play with.

* I have colour-coded my girls so that I can pick out who is who at a glance.

*In each subject box I have written the PACE number that they are busy with for that particular subject and then underneath I have set out the pages I wish them to do for each day of the week. The number of pages I set is dependent on a few things:

1 - The capabilities of each child 
2 - The difficulty of work
3 - The time period that I want the PACE to be completed in. (no longer than 3 weeks/PACE)

I would then take the total number of pages in a PACE and divide that by the amount of days that the PACE needs to be completed in. Once I have a rough idea of how many pages must be done each day, I look at it a bit deeper and assess the difficulty and decided whether to give fewer or more pages for the day. I then set out these pages for each subject for each of my children.

I would say that this process takes me about an hour, perhaps a little longer. Moving on from my planner...

* Once I have set the weeks work, I then fill out a goal card for each of the girls and pop that as well as all their PACE's into their work-boxes ready for Monday morning.

I hope that post shows how you can take a boxed curriculum and make it work for you. I think that as a homeschooling mum you have every right, indeed, you should, tweak it to work for you and for your family. If something is not working change it before throwing it out in favour of something 'better'. Often the 'better' is no better at all really - just different.

Blessings in Christ,
Shirley