Catholic Schoolhouse Blog- getting better because of you!

Hi there!

Thank you all for the responses to my request for feedback! I read every one of them and wanted to update you on what I heard and a few changes we’ve made in response to your awesome feedback. So here are a few items that I want to share after hearing from you.

Integrating Faith:

Saint funpacks will continue! Several people mentioned they liked integrating faith into other subjects (like math and language arts). I will also focus on integrating our Catholic Faith into other subject activities as I am able to, and where it makes sense!

Group/Program meeting activities:

I had no idea that the blog was used so much for planning when your programs meet! I will try to incorporate a few more group-type activities into the blog for use when you meet in your CSH groups! I do have one request of the tutors and directors: If you decide to use blog ideas/printable/activities when you meet in you groups, please let the parents of your students know. Parents using the blog at home do not want to accidentally repeat an activity done when your program meets, or vice versa.

Finding old posts:

I realize the blog is several weeks ahead of most families using CSH (this was on purpose to give you time to plan!). The Categories drop down on the side of the page was intended to be used to find old posts based on the week’s materials, however it may not be intuitive. I’ve changed the format so hopefully it will be easier to find the week you are looking for. The number in parenthesis is the number of posts that go with that week. For example Week 3 (4)– there are four posts that go with week 3, if you click on Week 3 (4), it will display all four of them: Catholic Schoolhouse Year 1 Week 3, Animals lapbook Part 3, Water Geography Book, and Ocean Layers Box. I hope this format works better for you!

Lapbooks:

I hear you like the lapbooks, but there is oh-so-much cutting involved!  On my side, I’ll work to make the flip pages and booklets a little easier to cut out from now on (like more strait lines so you can use a paper cutter and power through them faster).  Unfortunately you wont’ see this change until Week 11, since that’s what I’m working on these days.  On your side here are a couple suggestions: 1) Make one lapbook per family, not per student.  Give each student a different part to cut out and glue.  Then they can present to the rest of the students in your family their part before gluing.  This can be good read aloud practice, or presentation practice with low pressure since it’s so short!  2) If you do the lapbooks when your program meets, cut out the flip pages ahead of time for the little ones (with dedicated and caring parents/tutors) and just allow gluing when you meet (and discussion!).  You can also print them all and stack them before cutting- you can probably cut out 5 flip pages at once if you carefully stack pages that are the same.  If you don’t have a paper cutter you should! They are worth their weight in gold when you’re homeschooling.

And I saved the best for last- The New CSH Forum:

If you look at the top navigation bar, you’ll see a new link up there: Forum. If you click “Forum” it will take you to our new Forum page, where you can see forum topics like questions or ideas and acitivites. If you want to add a forum topic, or add a post to one of the existing forum topics, please hover your mouse over “forum” then click on register. You must register to use the forum. Once you have a username and password and have logged in, you can respond to forum posts, add your own forum posts, or add your own forum topics. I hope this makes sharing your ideas or questions so much easier! If you have a question you think others might have, please post it here. We may add questions to the forum questions topic as we get them in email. So if you have a question check the forum before emailing us to save yourself some time (although we love talking to you!). We think we have all the bugs worked out, but please contact us at CSH if you have trouble with this.

 

So thanks again for the feedback!  We’re working hard to make CSH the best it can be, and your help makes that possible!

(I did not put everything I heard in feedback in this post, just the items that seemed to be the most popular requests/ideas)

 

 

 

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