2010-2011 Homeschool Choices

As many of you know, I have a bit of an addiction to homeschool curriculum. Don’t all homeschool moms? I mean, there are so many choices for us to look over. My goal is to hand pick curriculum that will meet my childrens’ learning needs, styles, and desires, without breaking our budget or causing my dear husband to need to worry over yet another income avenue.

We have some extra, or special needs that I must consider when making curriculum choices.

  • Dysgraphia, ADHD, Low Vision, Delayed Speech
  • Amount of handwriting required.
  • Time needed one on one.
  • Preparation time
  • Is it adaptable?
  • Is it going to help enforce Biblical principals?
  • Will it teach something I won’t approve of? Evolution, “adult” material?

I try to find material that will be easily passed down from one child to the next, with some modification to meet each child’s needs. This helps save us money in the long run. I don’t mind spending $120 on a Math curriculum, if I will be able to use it on six or more children. I mean that is $20 a year for math. Honestly, I have not seen a curriculum for $20, that is complete, so this makes sense.

I also like to be able to combine grades as much as possible. We do a lot of family school type things. Bible, Science, History, Geography, and so forth.

So, now that you know ma bit about my criteria for curriculum, here is our list for this year:

Preschool:

Books from Rod and Staff, a variety of their story books and a few of their workbooks

Kindergarten:

Again, I am using Rod and Staff books.

McRuffy Math, Handwriting and Phonics.

We are combining our preschool and kindy children. I will do a bit of “extra” with the kindies, but for the most part they work together.

Second Grade:

Bible-Our 24 Family Ways, 21 rules of this house, Yearly Bible reading plan.

Math-MeRuffy Math-this is new to us, and I LOVE it!!!

Phonics-Explode the Code

Spelling-A Reason for Spelling-Again, new to us this year, and we really enjoy it.

Grammar-Easy Grammar-she really likes it.

Reading-Various books that correspond with her ability, and our studies.

Fifth Grade:

Bible-Our 24 Family Ways, 21 Rules of this House, Yearly Bible Reading Plan, and Proverbs People

Math-Teaching Textbooks-New this year-LOVE it!!!

Spelling-Phonetic Zoo, and SpellQuizzer

Grammar- Character Quality Language Arts, Writing Tales, and Shurely Grammar-pulling meat from all to put together a custom curriculum for our dysgraphic student. His needs are different and language arts must be customized to his needs.

Family:

Copywork-I make handwriting, copywork and notebooking pages for everyone using Startwrite.

History-TrughQuest and Homeschool in the Woods Time Travelers CDs. We are also pulling in Prairie Primer, our children have requested this, and we are really enjoying it. We like to use a living books and hands on approach for history.

Science-Apologia/Jeanie Fulbright Exploring Creation with Zoology series-We have Flying Creatures, Swimming Creatures, and Land Animals. I do this differently then others. Our family is nuts of nature study and zoology, therefore as we find something that interests us, I go to these books and put together a plan to dig deeper.

Nature Study-We do lots of Nature Study. We have started using several things fro Remembrance Press.

Geography-A Child’s World of Geography.

Unit Studies-We do unit studies all the time. Many of our studies will be put together using Download N Gos via The Old Schoolhouse Store. I also put together our own studies as we see fit.

We also use various computer games to supplement. Quarter Mile Math, Rainbow Rock, Typing Instructor, are among a few.

I review for The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew, and Timberdoodle. Therefore, we are constantly finding new and fun things to add to our current list. Watch my review posts for more information on them.