Curriculum 2013 - 2014

The 2013-2014 school year is approaching quickly, and I have been very busy over the last couple months researching, ordering, and assembling curriculum to use this year. I now have everything we are going to use and have written up my lesson plans and am working on my weekly prep lists now to help gather supplies for each week and get the library books we will need.

I was going to wait and do this curriculum post closer to September but the iHomeschool Network is doing their annual Not back to school blog hop and this week the link-up is for curriculum, so I figured I would do the post sooner and join in the fun.

This year Dude will be a 1st grader and Strawberry will be in JK (here in Ontario). I will start with what they will be learning together...

One Room Schoolhouse (together learning):
They each will be doing their learning notebooks, I got the printables from Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

They will be doing the same Bible Curriculum. We are still using Children Desiring God curriculum. We are in the Old Testament and will move into the New Testament Curriculum once we are finished, should be around Jan/Feb. We will be using this curriculum daily. I ordered the teacher's manual, verse pack, resource packet, and 2 colouring books.

To compliment our Bible curriculum, we invested in Betty Luken's Bible in felt. It has been great in helping the kids visualize the stories we are covering. Just be prepared it is a LOT of cutting out to get all the pieces ready. However, it was worth it because the set is just stunning and we will be using it for many years to come.

They will also be working together on The ABCs of Godly Children Curriculum. I got this curriculum when it was part of a Homemakng e-bundle earlier this year. They will be working on this 2x per week, one day the lesson and an application and the second day a craft that goes with the character quality. They will do it together when the traits are the same for girls and boys, and separately when they are different.

We will be working on handwriting daily also. I am forgoing curriculum for this and just put binders together with real handwriting paper. Dude will copy a Bible verse daily and Strawberry will start with tracing her name and we will go from there

Dude and Strawberry will be in the same Sunday class this fall, and they have a Bible verse to memorize weekly for class, so that will be included in our prayer time each morning.

Dude's First Grade Curriculum:

Reading: He will be doing All About Reading - level 1. We ordered the full package for this and it includes Teacher's manual, Student Activity book, 3 readers, progress chart, learning cards and storage box, and a phonograms CD. We also ordered the letter tiles set, and Adventures in Reading with ZigZag zebra lapbook games.

Spelling: He will be using All About Spelling - level 1. The letter tile kit goes with both programs, so we just ordered the spelling kit which included the Teacher's manual, student packet and card storage box. We will be using this with the reading curriculum daily, but the way it works is he will do one or the other everyday.

Math: He will finish up Math U See Primer level and move on to Alpha around Nov/Dec. We ordered this last year and got The teacher's guide, instructional DVD, student work book, song CD, and Decimal street poster (with clock on back) and block manipulatives.

Science: We are going to use Alpha Omega's Lifepac Science this year. I got the Teacher's manuals and the 10 workbooks. It covers colours, body, senses, animals, plants and more. It is set up workbook style, but since Dude isn't reading yet I will have to be more hands on. It is very colourful and looks like a lot of his interests and questions will be covered

Geography: We are going to *try* Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth. I say try because it may be too much at his age, but he has a definite interest in places, and the way countries are set up and about people around the world, so it may be alright. I got this curriculum included in the iHomeschool omnibus last year. I also ordered A Trip around the World, Another Trip around the World and Usborne's Encylopedia of Geography to compliment it. I also bought a book to look into Canada more in-depth when we do that country

Strawberry's JK Curriculum:

Reading: She will also be using All About Reading, but the Pre-Reading level. We ordered the teacher's manual, student craft book, student learning cards and storage box, alphabet CD, 2 readers and Ziggy the Zebra puppet (who they are already in love with). My lesson plans have her going through 1 letter in 3 days. She will start by doing the entire uppercase alphabet, then go back over it using the lowercase alphabet. That will take us almost to the end of the year, so we will likely start next fall still doing the pre-reading level and covering the sounds of the letters

Other: I got a limited time free curriculum tip through Motherhood on a dime for a pre-school alphabet based curriculum called God's Little Explorer's. I have gone through and picked a few of their lesson plans to compliment the letters we will be doing. I also got some math ideas out of here as well. I plan to do one number/math related activity with her each day. I printed the curriculum and just put it in a binder.

In Addition:
The last part of our school year plan is a couple of complimentary books to our curriculum. A few passed-down curriculum's Discovering God's World to add to our Science, and Before Five in a Row to pull some activities for Strawberry from. A bunch of Usborne math books, sticker addition and subtraction and See Inside Math (a suggestion I got from my BFF). Another Usborne book Flip-Flap body book to go with Science. A character book for Dude God's Wisdom for Little Boys. Prayer cards I printed from my favourite Canadian blogger Time Warp Wife, we will be using these for our prayer time each day.

Lastly, I have worksheets, busy bag activities and an ipad full of apps to fill some time while I am working with the other child.

Phew...that was long, but I feel really good about our plan for the year and ready to go come September when we start.


For His Glory!


I am linking up with the {Not} Back To School Blog Hop.

Our Homeschool Learning

After years of looking for and researching curriculum choices it was finally time to decide to actually order something. This actually felt quite overwhelming, I was so concerned that I needed to make the right choices and now there was a lot of pressure.

Daddy is extremely supportive of homeschooling our children, but is more of a pick what you want and than just let me know kind of person. So, really it was all up to me to find something that would work. I looked into so many different things and couldn't decide what to go with.

I asked my really good friend what she was planning to use this year (her kids are slightly older than each of mine) and she gave some great ideas that I thought could also work for us. So, here is what we have gone with (we are only 1 week in, so things could change):

We start out with a calendar binder. I got this idea from 1+1+1=1

They write out the date on the calendar, trace the day and month, graph the weather conditions, the temperature and fill out our 100 days of school tally. They really enjoy doing this part.

Next we do our Bible time. I chose to go with Children Desiring God's He Established A Testimony. It is meant for Sunday School classes but is easily adapted to a weekly format by me.
This curriculum will take us through the entire Old Testament and than there is another one to go through the New Testament. This week the kids worked on Creation and put together a creation timeline.

Next was time for Math. I (with a suggestion from my friend) went with Math-U-See's Primer. It is great so far and I can really see it being the perfect fit. We watched the first lesson on the DVD:

And then Dude does his lesson in the workbook (he really enjoys using the manipulatives:

The next thing we do is Language Arts. Right now, because Dude has mastered writing his letters and is working on lowercase, I decided to add in some sight words using the Dolch Word List (something I had never even heard of until my friend mentioned it).
This week our words were "a" and "and". I am amazed at how well he has grasped these. I sent him to find them in a book the other day and he did very well! Although, I never thought about it before, when I wrote out his cards with the sight words I used a regular "a" and in most books it has the old typeface one. I will have to pay more attention to this.

Lastly, we are doing Science. Kind of. I am just finding a science topic he is interested in and than each day we are doing a science experiment about it. Last week, Dude was facinated by the fog one morning and wondering where it comes from. This led us into the concept of evaporation. So...this week science has been about evaporation! We did our first experiment, pouring water outside and tracing around it to watch it evaporate.
Before:

and our After:

All in all we are having a great time and accomplishing everything we have set out to accomplish. School is taking us about 45 minutes to an hour each day. Not long in time but we are learning as much as I'm sure they are learning at school in the 6 1/2 hours the kids are there. So, we spend in a week about 4-5 hours doing "school" (less time than most kids are there in a single day) but that's the joy of homeschooling! I have realized that there is only so much that Dude can retain in a day. If we try to do too much he won't understand anything, so we do just enough that he is constantly learning. That is only the actual scheduled sit-down learning time, we are constantly teaching/learning all day at home.

They are also learning to be contributing members to our famiy by completing jobs around the house. At age 4 1/2 Dude is now the "vacuum guy" and he is very good at it! He doesn't miss a thing! I am so proud that they are learning so much more than just "school stuff". Strawberry is learning to do laundry, she is my little homemaker in training.

I love Homeschooling!!!!!!!!!



For His Glory!