Yeah, this post is mainly for my own benefit so I can look back on this years from now. However, I've chosen a lot of our curriculum based on recommendations from others so I know other homeschoolers might be interested in knowing what we're using. Otherwise this post will probably be pretty boring for you! But if you do happen to read this and have any questions about anything I'd love to talk to you about anything that we use. I have no problem telling you if I don't like something so I'll be completely honest with you!
#1--6th grade
Bible Study Guide for All Ages is our Bible curriculum for this year. This is actually the first time I've had a set curriculum for Bible. We have a friend who has used this for a while and really liked it so we looked in to it too. It is written by a Church of Christ family and we agree with everything we've looked at that they teach. We were also impressed by the fact that their illustrations show people with brown skin--not white. Always good to be a little more accurate! We go through two lessons a week. It takes about 15 minutes to go through half a lesson.
Saxon Math 76 Don't think she's a year ahead, Saxon just has their years divided weird. 76 is the 6th grade curriculum. We started Saxon with #1 last year and it was exactly what I thought it would be. #1 struggles a little with math so all the review in Saxon is excellent for her. We never do all 30 problems in each lesson. She does even one day and odd the next. This gives her plenty of review without overwhelming her.
Excellence in Writing is our writing for the year. I can not say enough good things about this curriculum. If you are interested in your child being able to write a well-written paper this is the curriculum for you! I intend to use this all the way through high school. #1 is doing Ancient History Based Writing this year to coincide with our History.
Learning Language Arts Through Literature for the rest of the language arts. Excellence in Writing focuses solely on writing so we need something to cover everything else. I love the curriculum we use for the younger grades, but it only goes through 4th grade. This is actually the first time I've used LLATL so I can't endorse it just yet. Ask back at the end of the year.
Mystery of History for history. We have the audio CDs so the girls can listen to the CDs and follow along in the book. We have all the reproducible pages on a CD as well so I have those all printed out. We start Monday morning off doing the Pre-Test and then #1 and #2 work through three lessons and the quiz on their own. I love how this curriculum teaches what was happening in the world and relates it to what was going on at the same time in the Bible. We're able to use the timeline set up for this along with our timeline for Bible. I love that the girls can see that Helen of Troy lived around the same time as Ruth! We've used this curriculum for a few years and I definitely recommend it!
God's Design for Life is our Science. We've used this for a couple of years as well and I really like it. Mainly because the girls can read the lesson, answer the questions and then move on. Can you tell I'm not a science person? We occasionally do a science experiment, but not often. We're finishing up Weather from last year and then we'll to through Plants, Animals, and the Human Body this year. This is the last year #1 does this curriculum. Starting next year she's going to have to step up the science into something more substantial, but this is adequate for this year.
We're using two separate books for Geography this year. One I do with them that is mainly teaching how to read maps and discern information from maps and graphs about geography. The other is a workbook that they do on their own that has information about different countries that they read and then do worksheets on. I actually don't remember the name of the books we're using and I'd have to get up to go and see what they are, so you'll just have to trust me that we are doing geography this year. I haven't been super impressed with any geography curriculum so these are just books I've found used that looked like they would work for us.
Spelling Power I love love love this for spelling! I paid around $60 this book, but this is all I'm ever going to need to buy for spelling. I love how it is set up and how students work on correcting mistakes by themselves. I've seen a vast improvement from #2's spelling since we've started using this.
Mavis Beacon for typing. Again recommended by a friend. Love this program so much! #1 started using it last year and can already type around 30 wpm. She works through it on her own, at her own pace. I love that is teaches the correct method of typing from the very beginning. Hubby has even talked about going through it himself since he never really learned how to type correctly.
#2--4th grade
Bible Study Guide Another thing I love about BSG is that they have different levels of the same lessons. So even though #1, #2 and #3 are all on different levels, they are all going through the same lessons at the same time.
Math U See We switched to Saxon for 3rd grade last year, but I did not like the way they taught multiplication at all so we've switched back to MUS for 4th grade to learn division. MUS has some major holes in it which is why we'll be going back to Saxon for 5th and beyond, but I think they do the best job of teaching the basic concepts through 4th grade.
Excellence In Writing #2 is also using IEW for writing, she's just using a different book that is a little bit easier to go through. She struggles with this a little bit more than #1, I think because she wants to just write down whatever is in her head and doesn't want to think through the process of what it takes to write a paragraph well. However, I believe by the end of this year she'll be able to do both.
First Language Lessons This is another curriculum I found based on a recommendation and I love it! It is very teacher intensive, but I'm not sure a language arts program shouldn't be teacher intensive. Technically this program only goes through 4th grade, but they learn so much at such at an advanced level that I stretch the 3rd and 4th grade books through 3 years.
A Reason for Handwriting I love this curriculum because you are learning scripture as you are doing your handwriting. You're not just writing random words down, you're writing verses out of the Bible. #2 is just learning cursive this year. Mainly because her handwriting was pretty bad last year and I wanted her to have another year of practicing before learning cursive. This book does a pretty good job of teaching cursive correctly.
History, Science, Geography and Spelling are all the same as #1
#3--1st Grade
Bible Study Guide What do you know--the same as her sisters! #3 is actually the only one that requires the use of a teacher's guide, but it still only takes about 15 minutes to get through half a lesson. Plus the teacher's guide tells me exactly what to put on the maps and timeline which makes my life easier!
Math U See Used it for both of the other girls and loved it. #3 really loves Math and I attribute that a lot to this curriculum.
First Language Lessons I actually have the old book that has levels one and two together, but you can't buy that anymore. I love that this curriculum doesn't have anything for the student to do as far as workbooks, it is all just learning by listening to your teacher which I think is a learned skill for children. I also love that #3 already learned a poem last week. And I loved that #1 and #2 can still say the exact poem from when they learned it!
A Reason For Handwriting I've never bought anything but the student pages for this curriculum, I'm not sure why you would need a teacher book, but that is just my preference. This level is perfect for #3 to get lots of practice on her handwriting without getting too bored with it.
That's all the formal curriculum I do with #3. She reads to me every day to help improve her reading skills and I read something like Magic School Bus for her to get some exposure to science, but that is about it. I'm not a fan of overloading younger kids with a bunch of stuff just to be able to say we're doing something. I'm a big fan of learning through exposure!
And that is it for this year. I don't promise we'll get through everything or even that we'll be doing all of this in 6 weeks, but for now this is what our school year looks like!
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