So many choices! History/Geography

This is one of the most enjoyable topics for me! I love to learn about other people groups and cultures...and I love to expose my kids to them too! We have worked through a few curriculums over the past 4 years and are excited to start something new this coming year.

Our first year of "I get to pick our curriculum" we went with My Father's World. We really resonated with their philosophy. We learned a lot about MFW at the Modesto Homeschool Conference (held around July each year) by attending their workshops. As first-time homeschoolers in the "I get to pick our curriculum" group vs. a charter where it is mostly picked for you, we really got a lot out of attending the conference! I really recommend attending a conference when you are getting started! It was important that both my husband and I were there to receive information and talk it through. Because we both heard from the speakers we we were able to decide which curriculum best suited our family. Like anything it is best to hear it first-hand.

Anyhow, we used the MFW History/Geography/Bible curriculum for all of our three kids. The two years I am gong to mention with MFW our kids were in 3rd, 1st, PreK and 4th, 2nd and K.

We started out with the MFW Adventures in US History. (This is recommended for families if your oldest child is in 2nd or 3rd grade.) It was a fun exploration of the country we live in. Doing this first gives kids an idea of who they are in relation to people they can relate to first before heading around the world to other people groups. One of the things I enjoyed the most was that the supporting literature MFW recommends are written with kids in mind. Specifically, they are from a child's perspective. An example is that as people immigrated to the US from other countries the journey was told from the perspective of a child and how they would have felt with the challenges and excitement that comes with such a large undertaking. This curriculum leads you through the 50 states.

The next year we did with MFW was Exploring Countries and Cultures. I was so excited to study this and really open our kid's eyes up to people groups they (we) have never even heard of. We studies the 7 continents and some of the main countries in each as well as some indigenous groups. It was fantastic! My two favorite supplemental books in this set were the biographies of the "missionaries" and Kingdom Tales (near the bottom of the picture). Our whole family loved these and used them as Read-Alongs in the evenings. The kids always asked for another chapter to be read!

MFW covers geography with their sets.

One thing that we enjoyed a few years ago were smaller consumable books specific to map reading skills. They come in levels from about 2nd to 8th grade and all pages are full color. The book pictured below is what Fashion Faith did for 2nd grade. C-dub did Level D. You can find them here. I ordered them with a group of other moms. I'm not sure if you can order them as singles or not.

This coming year our plan is to start volume 1 of Mystery of History. It was a toss up between that and The Story of the World. Both were appealing to me because not only is there a book with each week's lessons that includes fun hands-on activities but you can also get the read-aloud section on audio CD! We live about 20 minutes from a few of the activities that we are involved in so I think this will be a good use of our time. We may listen to it at home as well but I like having the option of the kids listening too to take a read-aloud off my plate, especially with the year we are anticipating of adoption. (Whew, that was a long run-on sentence.) I have heard great things from many friends about both of these curriculums.

We have started listening to The Story of the World this summer in the car and the kids are really enjoying it. We will switch to listening to Mystery of History when those CDs arrive. Why not get the info into them in more than one way more than once?

Here are pictures of both...

On my search for curriculum earlier this spring I found this geography curriculum while searching through Veritas Press for Composition Guides for our literature: Legends and Leagues. It looks really cute and follows a four year cycle. Again, I LOVE when all or most of my kids can learn the same thing. This curriculum has activities for younger and older students. (Probably 2-6th grades) We'll see how it works out. It has a read-along portion and then activities. The child's consumable book is full color and so is the read-along booklet. We are starting with South and will work our way through north, east and west. I am doing this with all of my school-aged kids this coming year (6th, 4th, 2nd). The lesson plan recommends doing it every other week. 

I am also looking forward to our oldest being in the Mapping the World By Heart class next year. I hope it works out. They're still trying to get a teacher for that class at our co-op location.  I'm not sure what curriculum they are using yet. My husband did this in his 6th grade class when he was younger. I think it would be a fun class to teach too. :)

So many choices! Science

I have noticed that I focus on either science or history/geography every other year. With my kids all still in elementary school and fairly close in a age doing both subjects with activities is too much for me. One of my goals with schooling my children is that we learn as much as possible together. If we learn together, even if kids are at different levels, we can all have a conversation about it. It builds family unity, which I LOVE! Even if children aren't the same grade it's fun to learn the same topics within subjects like science, history, geography, art, foreign languages, music... together!

I put off doing science at home until last year. I had heard many good things about Apologia Science for a few years and decided to jump on it last year. I am SO GLAD WE DID! It was fabulous. We all learned so much and had the best time.

I had a friend over who is getting ready to start homeschooling next year and she said something interesting when I talked about how much I have enjoyed our year with Apologia. I showed her the text book, the field journals, the lesson plan and the experiment kit we used. She said that she had talked with two other families already that also did Apologia but did not enjoy it. They did not get the field journal, the experiment kit or the lesson plans. :(

That was our experience with science and art before this past year. I was overwhelmed with all of the supplies we needed for the activity that it just didn't get done, which led to a "not as fun" experience for ALL. The documenting and hands-on is what makes information come alive so it totally makes sense that the subject would not be enjoyed to the fullest if you skip or miss those parts. Apologia puts together just about everything you will need to complete the experiments for that text! What a great idea and TOTALLY worth the money!

With that said here is what we did last year for science...

Apologia Astronomy text book

Field Journal

Junior Field Journal

Experiment Kit

Lesson Plan

I love Apologia and will definitely use it in the future! (with all the things listed above)
You can find all the subjects that Apologia covers on CBD here

I love that they cover so many areas of study within the subject of science.
I love that they have Field Journals and Junior Field Journals.
I love that they prepackage the experiment supplies, right down to prepackaged baggies for each            experiment and labeled!
I love that the books are written from a Biblical perspective!
I love that the text book is full color and not too big.
I love that they ask have an audio you can listen to.
I love that they also have a lap book you can do.

I love Apologia!

{I have not used other science curriculum so this is a limited post in the area of science.}

Other outside resources we have enjoyed are:
Magic Schoolbus books and DVDs

So many choices! Language Arts

Language Arts is such a large subject. In my opinion, one of the most important. If you can't read and write well...you cannot learn any of the fun subjects as you grow up. With that, I spend a lot of our time in the area of Language Arts (LA).

Here is a list of curriculums we have used and will be using. I will also add some choices that friends of ours have used.

Institute of Excellence in Writing (IEW) offers some of my very favorite things!

One of the reasons I like this company is their explanation of why they do what they do and the videos you can watch online to hear about them. They also have a helpful customer service line.

We have used their poetry and LOVE it! The method they use is that of hearing it over and over to memorize. We listen when we are in the car. We have done this for the past two years and our kids have memorized about 30 poems of different lengths. Some are a minute long and one is even 4 minutes long. We will continue to do this for the next two years as it is a 4 year program. (Pictured is the CD as well as the poems written out in the spiral bound book. They are sold separately but I recommend using both.) As small children memorization really helps them retain information and is a great life skill!

As our end-of-the-year party we invite our extended family over for "Poetry & Popsicles". This year it has expanded to Poetry, Piano & Popsicles Potluck at the Pool. It's this Saturday and we're so excited. The kids get to recite three or four poems each as well as play a few pieces of piano they have been working on. We dress up and have a grand time!

IEW offers many choices of writing...they are the Institute of Excellence in Writing after all :)
I look forward to having C-dub and Fashion Faith (FF) in the
Student Writing Intensive A (SWI) this coming school year as a paid class at the Liberty Co-op location. This course is a DVD course that can be done at home or with a group. One idea, because of cost, is to split the cost between a few families. We have friends who have used this and are quite happy. We will follow up the SWI Level A with the SWI Level A Continuation Course the following year if all goes as planned.

IEW also has theme based writing units for grades 3-12 that are fun!

For olde students IEW offers online courses as well. We have not tried them yet but have friends who have had a great experience.

My favorite thing offered on the IEW site is their
K-2 "Learn to Read".
I did this with Jumping Joy (JJ) as a Kinder and Fashion Faith as a 2nd grader. It was below the level of FF but I wanted to make sure she didn't miss anything. The LA I did with FF for 1st grade wasn't strong at all so I wasn't sure about what holes she was going to have.

It's call Primary Arts of Language (PAL). There are both reading & writing portions. It includes activities that are multi-sensory. I love this, especially for the K-2nd graders, because they are just getting started in structured learning. There are fill in sheets, folder games, active games, poems and a sticker book that all tie into each lesson.

The writing portion comes with
All About Spelling (AAS). (You can locate it on the IEW site or the link in the sentence before this one.) I LOVE this for spelling. We have tried three other spelling programs but this is by far my favorite! It actually teaches kids how to decode words. I thought that it only had two levels, but to my surprise and excitement there are a total of seven levels. I have done Level 1 and half way through Level 2 with my youngest. My middle skated through Level 1, as I mentioned before it was probably below her level but I didn't want to have holes in her LA learning. Now that I figured out there are 7 levels my older two will finish Level 2 with my youngest this coming year in the first month of school. Then they will all progress to Level 3. My oldest will probably breeze through until I get him up to his actual level. Once again it is multi-sensory with hearing the word, moving letter tiles and writing involved. Love this!

I was surprised with my oldest two's spelling from last year. I was excited about what I chose at first. By the last part of the year I realized that they could pass the weekly spelling tests just fine but when it came to writing sentences or paragraphs their spelling was horrible. They did not have the fundamentals down as far as decoding to figure out how to spell words correctly. They had, instead,  gotten good at memorizing a list of words for a test. I am not a fan of that AT ALL! We will no longer use that method for spelling and they will all do AAS.

One of the LA subjects that seems to get overlooked is handwriting. I still think that cursive is important to learn to write and read. All of my kids learn cursive and will practice it through 6th grade as a subject. There is just something about being able to write with fluidity, look at a printed word and turn it into cursive that is good for the brain. Usually I start this subject with my children as a 3rd grader. This coming year JJ begged me to start her a year early in 2nd. So I am letting her but warned her that if she complains then it's over until 3rd. She happens to be a highly motivated child that loves school and loves challenges. She always wants to keep up with her siblings so it can't hurt.

I was pleasantly surprised with the legibility of my son's cursive. His printing is small with not all of his letters formed correctly but his cursive is beautiful! I didn't start schooling him until half way through 2nd grade so it seems that some of his bad habits are stuck. Oh well, there are bigger hills to die on. ;)

We have used the following cursive curriculums.
Modern Style Cursive Connections

C-dub is the only one that did this book. I like how the letters are formed. Some of the excessive curly-cues are taken out which makes it easier to learn and to read. I really liked this book. I kind of forgot about it with my girls. Oh well.

Abeka Penmanship

Even though this book says 2 and is intended for Abeka's 2nd grade curriculum I use it with each child that starts cursive now. (I usually have them take out the "excessive curly-cues"). It gives the child practice with letter formation and turns into sentences by the middle of the book and paragraphs by the end. I also like that Abeka emphasize cursive with all grades (again I start in 3rd usually) and have practice books for kids through 6th grade where they are producing written samples after they have "mastered" letter formation.

With grammar and phonics there are many choices. I have tried a few, especially this last year that were ok. I felt we were a bit disjoined because they were all from different companies. Last year we used:

Easy Grammar

Explode the Code

Beyond the Code

Wordly Wise

as well as some of the ones listed above.

My favorite from the list above is Wordly Wise. Children from Preschool-12th grade get rich vocabulary in the context of a story. They revisit the word list up to 7 times by the end of each unit.

As I mentioned above I felt disjointed from so many different company's books so this coming year we are going with Abeka LA for the most part (with the exceptions of the SWI from IEW for writing for my 4th and 6th graders, poetry from IEW for all and AAS for all). I am looking forward to their grammar, vocabulary, cursive and basic LA work to tie in with Abeka. I think it will feel like less work for all of us as well. With our upcoming year having some possibly "unexpected events" (adoption related) I'm looking forward to the LA being a bit tidier and more compact. We'll see how it goes ;) 

Reading Comprehension is an area that I have yet to nail down. I am excited about what awaits us in the school closet for next year though! A friend shared with me the Comprehension Guides (CG) that Veritas Press puts out. (Look under the Literature tab on the left) I was excited to find some great choices and that led me to search CBD for even more.

I have settled on 6 novels with CG for my 6th grader as well as 2 books without CG and 4  books with CG for my 2nd and 4th graders as well as 2 without CG for each of them. Each CG has chapter by chapter questions and projects that tie in to the story. I like that they are thin, paperback and at first glance don't seem overwhelming, even for one of mine that can get easily overwhelmed with what work appears on a page.

Last year we used Five in a Row (FIAR) and Beyond Five in a Row for reading comprehension. I liked it but it was too much work on my end to make it happen. I do love the concept though! I love the kids literature to overlap and hit many subjects.

I might use this in the future, we'll see.

So many choices! MATH

We have been homeschooling our children for about 4 years now. Time flies! We have used an assortment of curriculums. Some I have LOVED, some have been good and some didn't work for us (but might for you). I thought I would list some choices here that might be helpful. This is, of course, not exhaustive, just what we have experienced.

I will start with Math...

{I would love to hear of your discoveries as they come!}

Singapore Math 

I have liked SM for my oldest and youngest children. Those two are more drawn to math. C-Dub started SM at level 2B and has now finished up with 6B. My middle child (Fashion Faith) has done 1B-3B and my youngest (Jumping Joy) 1A-2A so far. My oldest will move to Pre-Algebra, my middle will change math curriculum and my youngest will do 2B-3A next school year.

{Here is an example of 1A-1B textbooks, workbooks, teacher lesson plans & answers as I mention below}

What I like about it...this has been a great series of books for my son because math comes easily to him. I also like that there is a placement test and you can enter at any book. The books are organized 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3A...6B. I also like that the books are small paperback books that don't overwhelm the student. The intro few books (like 1 and 2) are also full color.

I like to purchase SM from the My Father's World site because you can get the books individually and they have put together an answer key/lesson plan book for a lost cost.

What I don't like...books 6A and 6B didn't have as clear of an explanation for problem solving or learning a new concept and the previous books. The text book did not give clear examples as I came to expect in the first books 1A-5B. I would not use 6A and 6B again.

I will continue to use SM with my youngest as math also comes easy to her and she enjoys the subject. I am trying out Abeka Math next year for my middle child (I already have the 4th grade curriculum so I don't have to spend any $$ for her in the area of math this coming year). I like that Abeka is full color even at the 4th grade level. She can do the math but too many problems on a page overwhelm her and it is not a favorite subject for her.

The Complete Book of Math Grades 1-2

I used this book with both of my girls. One of them in Kinder and one of them in 1st grade. It worked great for both girls even though they are very different learners. 

What I like about it...this book is very colorful and easy to navigate for a young mathematician. It is also paperback, which I prefer.

I just discovered that they have a 3-4th grade book as well. The book shown above can be purchased at My Father's World or on Amazon.

Teaching Textbooks

This will be new to us this coming year for my son who will start Pre-Algebra. We have lots of friends who have used different levels of Teaching Textbooks and I am at the end of my "pull the answer out of a hat" with my son. I'm sure I could figure it out but that is not a good use of my time. So we will try Teaching Textbooks. 

What I like about it...as I understand it there is a CD-rom that comes with the curriculum that teaches the lesson. With the 2.0 addition there is also a computer-correct feature. I'm LOVIN' that!

I believe Teaching Textbooks starts in 3rd grade.

What I don't like...the cost. Whew!!! It's a lot! So it better also sing and dance ;) I am hoping to use it for all the kids in my family and anyone else I know forever and ever...

I will most likely be getting this from Christian Book Distributors. My favorite website for most of my homeschool curriculum!!!

Saxon Math

We only used this curriculum briefly with my son in 1st grade. To me it is super boring and redundant. If they get the concept I like to move on not do 30 more problems of the same thing. We only used it because we were part of a charter homeschool for a short time.

Hope this helps!

More subjects to come :)