Curricula

Rather than delve into the reasons why we've chosen to homeschool, I'd much rather discuss what curricula we are using - it's just much more interesting and muce less stressful. For as different as The Boy and The Girl can be, their learning styles are similar which is a blessing. It's made it pretty easy to choose curriculum and kept me from having to buy different ones for each of them in each subject.


Keep in mind, we're only 2 weeks into the year (our first) so I don't have a lot to say about most of our choices at this point. We are what you would call an "eclectic classical homeschooling family" meaning we are implementing a classical education but we're not using an "out of the box" curriculum. In case you're wondering what a "classical education" is, it is based on a three-part process of training the mind called the trivium. The trivium involves three stages: the grammar stage (K-5), the logic stage (6-8), and the rhetoric stage (9-12). According to the website, The Well-Trained Mind,

Classical education is language-focused; learning is accomplished through words, written and spoken, rather than through images (pictures, videos, and television).

With that in mind, and my well-worn copy of "The Well-Trained Mind" in hand, here are the choices I made for curricula:


LANGUAGE:
Writing: The Complete Writer/Writing with Ease (1 & 4)
Grammar: First Language Lessons (1 & 4)
Spelling: Spelling Workout (A & E)*

MATH:
Math-U-See (Alpha and Gamma)**

HISTORY/GEOGRAPHY:
The Story of the World: Volume 1 - Ancient Times

SCIENCE:
Real Science 4 Kids - Chemistry (Pre-Level 1 & Level 1)

FOREIGN LANGUAGE:
Latin for Children (Song School & Level A)***


* ~ The Girl is quite good with words - in any format. Spelling has never been a challenge for her and, in looking at the 4th grade spelling book, I knew she'd get bored with it. So I bumped her up to the 5th grade book and she's enjoying the more difficult words. The Boy was also bored with the "easy words" that he was dealing with in Kindergarten so I didn't hesitate to jump ahead several lessons in his book to words that were more challenging. For both of them, I let them take a pretest at the beginning of the week (without having looked at the book). If they spell all of the words correctly, they do not have to do the spelling lesson and are free to either use that time to read or they can move on to the next lesson - it's their choice.


** ~ Though The Girl is good with words, her math skills are shaky. I'd get into the reasons why but that is another post/rant for another day. Suffice it to say, she needed more work on multiplication so I ordered the Gamma curriculum from Math-U-See, even though that is *technically* a 3rd grade level of math. They take a pretest at the beginning of the lesson and if they score 90% or higher on the pretest, they are free to move on to the next lesson. Each lesson comes with 6 worksheets - 3 that are nothing but problems from the lesson and 3 that have problems from the lesson AND review problems from previous lessons. The first 3 worksheets are required (assuming they don't test out of the lesson). The remaining 3 worksheets are optional. A score of 90% or higher on the lesson test is required before we move on to the next lesson. The nice thing about Math-U-See is that I can go to the website and generate more worksheets if either of them needs the additional practice.


*** ~ I have not yet decided whether we are going to dive into a foreign language this year or not. I don't want to overwhelm either my children or myself. We're all of two weeks into this school year and, while the days have been short and relatively easy thus far, I know we haven't really gotten into the meat of it all just yet. Nor have we started Co-Op yet so that will be another factor to consider before we try to tackle yet another subject. We'll see.


So those are our curriculum choices for the year. We are also a part of a local homeschool cooperative (henceforth known as "The Co-Op") that I've actually been involved with for a few years. While my children were in public school, I taught PE and facilitated a high school Anatomy class for The Co-Op which is made up of many of my friends from church. This year, we'll be doing PE, Chemistry, art/crafts, and a writing workshop (Institute for Excellence in Writing). That should round out our year!




Pau.




- hfs