15/16 Curriculum Choices

Hello!  I'm excited to get back to blogging!  I'm also most excited about our school year this season.  We are in our 3rd week and are finding our grove as each day goes on.  Our kiddo is, as with most homeschoolers, a varied grade level status.  Based on her age, she is considered Kindergarten, but she is working fairly consistently at a first grade level in most core subjects.  They say it can take on average 3 years to find your niche' for curriculum and scheduling.  Then after that you'll have to change it up all over again.  I feel like we are doing just that.  Trying to find that right thing for us.  Once I thought something was working, we have found we don't quite flow with it and have to explore other areas.  However, that is the main joy of homeschooling.  You have the choice to find what is best for you!

Our choices for curriculum this year, are a mix.  We are not sticking with one publisher for all subjects.  We are getting our feet wet and seeing what works.

MATH:

Right now we are using Singapore 1A.  Our kiddo did well with the Essentials Kindergarten set last year, so we continued with it.  So far we are liking it.  It helps that our kiddo is a math wiz.  She LOVES math!  I am confident that if we scheduled math everyday (which we don't), she wouldn't have a problem with it. Depending on how the rest of the first half of the curriculum goes, we may stick with it this year.  Otherwise we may be switching to CLE (Christian Light Publications).  I have heard that Singapore although amazing in their methods, does not go into much detail with time, fractions and other different aspects of mathematics.  Both luckily are friendly on the budget and are easy to teach from.

PHONICS/READING:

Here is where we are struggling a bit.  We are finishing up book #4 of the Kindergarten set from Horizons.  I enjoy it, but kiddo seems to be not liking it much anymore.  We may just have to mix things up a little, seeing as it is fairly repetitive on the activities.  However, she has been learning a lot.  Over the course of the K set, so far she is reading really strongly, she knows sentence structure including, nouns, pronouns, proper nouns, possession, quotations and capitalizing.  So it has been effective!  We have Grade 1, I am thinking we will stick with it and just maybe make it a little more hands on, which will make it a little more teacher intensive for myself, but I'm okay with that.  At this age, teaching is pretty self explanatory, but I will say, outside of looking at certain answers that don't make much sense, the Teacher's Manual is basically useless.  If you are okay with having some answers unknowing, I wouldn't waste my money on the TMs.  That's just my opinion though.

WORLD GEOGRAPHY/SOCIAL STUDIES:

This year we are using Confession of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth.  So far we LOVE it!  It's very adaptable.  You can use as much or as little as you want and it is very friendly to multiple age groups.  We finished up China this last week and we are jumping to Mexico/Spain this week since my husband is home and he is very familiar with those countries and can join in the fun!

SCIENCE:

We are not using a formal curriculum.  I am simply piecing things together.  We are studying a different theme every month, so it's somewhat of a free range science this year.

HANDWRITING:

Again, we are just going letter by letter, fine tuning her penmanship, which is beyond a 5 year old/kindergartner's norm.  We will be transitioning into cursive (which I believe is important) later this year.  She is anxious to learn, but we want to ensure her basic formation is consistent with manuscript.

BIBLE:

This is a very important part of our daily routine.  We will simply be reading and doing various activities pertaining to stories and characteristics from God's Word.

ART:

Again another varied subject.  This will consist of random projects to keep this fun and light.  Pintrest is my main source of inspiration for this subject.



That is a basic run down of what our curriculum looks like this year.  Next post I think I'll write about a typical day and what our "school schedule" looks like daily.

I am going to do my best to keep up on writing!  The more I write, the more I will make it a habit!

Thanks for reading! Have a blessed day!