Our Curriculum

A friend who is starting to look at homeschool curriculum just asked what we are using. So I thought I'd post my reply to her. There are so many things that we plan to do, and I know that I won't even get to most of it. My plan is to have a field trip every few weeks. I like learning hands-on, so I love field trips. We live in such a great place to where we are only hours from DC, Philly, NYC, etc. I love that! Now if I only had unlimited funds, we'd be having a grand time!



We are an ecclectic family. I knew that before we even decided to homeschool, but it carried over into our approach to homeschooling too:)

I don't have anything against box curriculum/online schools, yet I knew that they would not provide me with the opportunity to vary studies according to interests and schedules. One of my concerns was keeping the subjects interesting enough to keep Ben's attention specifically. Since 6th grade is his first time in HS, it was an issue that I had to address. For those who start from day 1 (which I'm assuming is you!), you probably won't have that issue.

So here's what we are using:

Horizons Math - I'm very happy with it. The biggest problem is actually my daughter's attention span, so it's not the curriculum. Ben is moving thru it very quickly also, but that should get more challenging to him once we're past the review sections.

A Reason For Spelling - I'm not sure if I needed this for Ben, but he'll do a year anyway for reinforcement. It's been great for Ellie since she was behind in reading/comprehension. I love the fact that it has short stories that have a moral dilemma to deal with for each lesson and that it incorporates the Bible into the lessons too. That's all new to me coming from the public school system. Ben and Ellie end up listening to each other's stories and we've gotten into some great moral discussions.

Shurley English (Grammar and Composition) - This has been a challenge to me in trying to figure out how to work the lessons and such. It's not as easy for me to just assign pages since there's really not a workbook to use daily. I'm doing a little better, but I did not do enough planning to start with. Ben likes the lessons so far, or at least that's what he said. They are short lessons, so he doesn't feel like I'm talking non-stop to him. Some of the jingles that go along with the parts of grammar are cute, others are annoying. But I guess if you learn them either way, you'll still now the information, right! Friends of ours who have homeschooled for years began using this curriculum a few years ago and she also struggled in the beginning in teaching it. Now she's very happy with it and the kids are developing a strong basis in grammar. When I started looking at curriculum, I didn't want to have to research every subject. I didn't have the time to do that. Since our friends have a similar philiosphy/approach, we decided to use the same curriculum, for math and language arts. I'll finish out the year and see if we will continue in the same path.

American History 1815-Present (Veritas Press) - this is a challenging subject for me, not necessarily because of the curriculum, but because of the amount of material that I could teach to cover 200 years of viewing Amer History. It's set out in a set of 32 cards. I'm hoping to do one card per week, though I have a feeling we might get sidelined at times. This is one of the subjects where I let Ben pick what he wanted to study. So far we haven't done too much that is very exciting in terms of hands-on acitivities so that's something that I need to work on. It's very much a classical approach and has a lot of writing and reading, which can be good and bad. I'm finding that Ellie isn't retaining a lot of the information so I need to find a solution to that.

Oceanography for Science - when I asked Ben what he wanted to study for science, he said "I want to dissect a shark". Definitely a boy statement! I laughed because I didn't get to do that until I was in college. The shark then became a study of the ocean. Science curriculum would be one area that I feel is not a strong selection in homeschooling. There is very little available for elementary ages that I liked. I ended up using Exploring Creation:Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day. It's written well and covers all the topics. The only problem is that it's basically a 13 chapter book and you have to divide it to fit the needs of your family. We're actually doing science with another family once a week to do the experiments and games (wed am while Abby is in preschool) and I assign the kids reading and filling in an outline (that I have to create) for the rest of the week. I create a quiz each week too so that I can see whether they are actually doing their work. I'm also having each kid complete a research project on a sea creature of their choice that they will finish by May. A lot, but when it gets to the dissecting part, the boys will be thrilled. I think the girls will be too, but I wonder if they'll actually want to do any of the touching :)

Art, music and Gym - these seem to be a little of this and a little of that. I don't have too much planned as of yet simply because I'm still trying to get into a groove with everything else. I did buy a Great Composers series that covers 12 musicians since the 1600's. It's on the boring side though, so I have to bump that up a notch too. I tried today with finding different clips on YouTube to watch and that helped, though I'm not sure if the kids were just tired after a long week or not. Ellie and Abby seem more into the music side of things, while Ben really doesn't like classical music. The girls love dancing to any music while Ben runs away to hide :) He'd rather be out on his rollerblades - gym class!

Starting next week my mom is going to be doing some basic spanish with the kids while I'm at the women's bible study. I am so thankful for that since I know that I will need that time to rejuvenate my soul. Being home with the kids all day after the years of them being in school has been a challenge to me. A challenge in how I approach the day and my interaction with them. Ellie has challenged me to have patience and control as she throws a temper tantrum. Today was a good day with no tears, so hopefully we're past the whole 'deschooling' aspect of our first year.

So all that to say, this is what we are doing this year! I know it's a lot, but I'm jumping in with a sixth grader, a second grader and a preschooler. We do science and history together, among some of the smaller things.

Have fun researching all the curriculum. I found that there's a ton of great things out there and just not enough time to get it all done :)