Curriculum Time

I've been spending a fair amount of time over the past few weeks figuring out my curriculum for the coming year. I love browsing through the different books and catalogs and websites and figuring out what will be the perfect fit. The virtual charter school we homeschool through gives me a set allotment for each of the boys to pay for guided instruction, things I pay other people to teach them, and for curriculum. For 1st-3rd it is $1200 per student for the year, which buys a lot of stuff!!!

R is going to skip 2nd grade and do third grade this year. He is really excited because now he'll be the same as all of the other kids in his primary class. I'm happy because I won't have to justify purchasing higher level materials as much now that he did the testing. And if he ever ends up going to a traditional public school, this will put him closer to where he needs to be.

So after all my browsing, here is what we are planning to use:

Calculadder speed drills for math fluency
Math U See for both boys, plus Singapore math and Teaching Textbooks 6 for R.
(I would never use 3 programs if I-DEA wasn't paying for it, but since they do, it works great. R can see each concept presented a different way and he doesn't bored with the same sort of exercises everyday and he can feel like he is moving fast but still get the practice he needs for mastery.) T on the other hand would just get frustrated with a program that jumps around or with change, so Math U See alone should work great for him. Everyday will be pretty much like the day before with each concept introduced nice and slow.

I like each program for a different reason. I like how Math U See presents the concepts and goes from very concrete to abstract. I like Singapore's emphasis on word problems and mental math, and I like Teaching Textbooks because he can do it on his own and it's a good spiral review that uses the vocabulary he will encounter on tests. And on days when he wants to do it his way, not my way, it's nice to have an outside "authority" that he can't argue with. :)

For History, we are going to use Mystery of History and Story of the World along with a 10 book The Bible Story set by Arthur Maxwell to cover biblical history and Ancient history. I realized that the boys know the stories in the Book of Mormon really well, but they only know the common ones in the Bible, like Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark, Daniel and the Lions Den, David and Goliath, Joseph Sold into Egypt, Moses, and stories about Jesus. They don't know the less common stories, so we're going to cover those this year. Actually typing that out, I realized they really do know quite a few.

For Science, we are going to use Evan-Moor Scienceworks for kids. We will use them as the base for a unit study on each topic, one every month or so depending on how in-depth and detailed the kids are interested in. I'm already expecting the one on weather and the one on water and oceans to take longer.

For Spelling, R is going to use Spellwell. T won't do spelling, but he'll do Primary Phonics and continue reading lessons and writing that goes along with that. Both boys will use Handwriting without Tears, T to practice printing and hopefully straighten out some of his reversals, R to learn cursive. T will do Write about Me and R will use Just Write for their writing exercises.

For PE, we are going to try horseback riding lessons this fall. For Art, we'll keep working with Artistic Pursuits. For music, I got a bunch of CD's with stories about different composers and an hour of their music. We've listened to a couple and I was surprised how many songs the boys started humming along with. (From listening to Beethoven's Wig, a CD that plays short pieces of popular classical music paired with silly words that use the composers name or the name of the song. Now they love listening for those chunks.)

We will also do TEACH co-op again on Fridays.

I think that pretty much covers my plan for the coming school year.