Mommy Brain

Today is day five of Randi’s Back to Homeschooling Week. The topic for today is Curriculum.

I have been meaning to do a wrap-up post about the school year that ended in June, and another to talk about our curriculum for this year. Instead, I’m going to do a little of both in this post.

We’ve used a lot of different curriculum since we began homeschooling: Abeka, Bob Jones, Easy Grammar, etc. Some has worked better than others. Some worked great for a time, and then our needs changed.

This is what we will be using this year.

For Josiah, kindergarten:

Abeka Phonics K5
Saxon Math 1
A D’Nealian handwriting workbook

I have used Abeka Phonics to teach each one of my kids to read. It is the only subject we continued to use from Abeka after our first year of homeschooling, when I bought the complete Abeka kindergarten program to use with Natalie. The other subjects just didn’t work for us, but I love their Phonics program.

I have used the Italic handwriting program with the older two kids, but Natalie is having trouble reading looped cursive because it is so different from Italic cursive. I am doing some additional work with her to make up for this, but that is my reason for switching to D’Nealian.

For Jonathan, 2nd grade:

D’Nealian handwriting
Shurley English, level 2
Saxon Math 2
Map Skills, book 2
Spelling Workout, book B

For Noah, 3rd grade:

Italic Handwriting, book F
Shurley English, level 3
Saxon Math 3
Map Skills, book 3
Spelling Workout, book C

Noah and Natalie are already learning Italic handwriting, so I have decided not to switch mid-stream, and just add some extra training in reading looped cursive.

For Natalie, 5th grade:

Italic Handwriting, book F
Shurley English, level 5
Saxon Math 6/5
Map Skills, book 5
Reading Detective A1
Spelling Workout, book E

Shurley English will be new for us this year. In the past, I have used Abeka Language 1 for 1st grade, then switched to Easy Grammar in grade 2. Natalie did Easy Grammar 4 last year. Easy Grammar does not incorporate vocabulary or writing skills, and I was trying to add those in with different programs. Shurley is all-inclusive: grammar, vocabulary, and writing. I am excited to start it this year.

For everyone:

Story of the World II, The Middle Ages
Living Learning Books Science: Earth Science and Astronomy
Power Glide Spanish Jr.
Prima Latina
Artistic Pursuits Book 1
Stories of the Composers, Book 1

Up until last year, we used Bob Jones University for Math, Science, and History. Last year, we switched to Saxon for Math, Story of the World for History, and Living Learning Books for Science. All of the new curriculum worked much better for us. Bob Jones Math is a good program, but does not incorporate enough review, in my opinion. It also did not emphasize memorizing math facts enough. Saxon Math is very strong on both of these points.

Bob Jones History and Science are fine prorgrams; they just weren’t right for our family. We love, love, love Story of the World. Did I say we LOVE it? Now, I am not a big hands-on project mom. I love to let them go wild with the arts and crafts material on their own, but planned projects - not so much. So we did not do many of the projects with Story of the World - and I don’t know how you could do even half of them and finish in one year. We did the reading, the coloring pages, the review questions, and the map work for all the chapters, and a few of the hands-on projects. I plan to do more of the hands-on stuff this year, mainly because I find the Middle Ages more interesting than Ancient History. Don’t misunderstand me, though, I learned a lot from book 1 of SOTW, and the kids enjoyed it very much.

Living Learning Books is a Science curriculum based on the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling. Basically, you have a teacher’s guide that has lists of recommended living books and videos for each topic, plus some related activities. The student books have coloring pages and vocabulary sheets to go along with the topics being studied. I was able to find many of the resources at my library, plus pulled in some others that weren’t on the list. Last year we did Life Science, which involved units on various animals, the human body, and trees and plants. We learned a lot and had fun along the way.

Spanish was new to us last year, too, although it kind of fizzled out halfway through the year. I’m hoping to do it twice a week this year, but I’ll be happy if we do it once a week. I am realistic about how much time we have.

Noah and Natalie took a Latin class once a week last year, but I felt left out, so we’re going to be doing it at home this year. The plan is three times a week. We will repeat Prima Latina, which is what N & N used in class, but Jonathan, Josiah and I will join. J & J won’t do the written work, just watch the DVD and hopefully pick up some vocabulary by osmosis.

Artistic Pursuits and Stories of the Composers were in our plans for last year, but didn’t happen more than a couple times. We’ll see how much we can fit in this year.

I’m planning to do a three weeks on, one week off schedule with the Shurley English and Prima Latina, since Shurley is a more intense grammar program than we’ve used before.

So there you have it - our plans for this year. We start August 27th - which isn’t very far off! Are you all ready to start? Did you take the summer off - or have you been continuing on as usual?