2016/2017 Curriculum Overview

I’ve spent way way way too much time trying to decide on curriculum for next year.  Part of me just wants to get a box set and be done with it, but we really like All About Reading/All About Spelling.  So I decided to do everything separate which meant like 80 different choices had to be made.  I think we are done though!!  Now, we school year round so this isn’t an exact model.  And we are really set on grade levels, so those are approximate.

Also, I don’t do planners.  We go at our own pace.  If one lesson takes 5 days – whatever.  If we do 3 lessons in one day, awesome.  As long as they have learned the material, we moved on, no matter how long it takes.  That is the beauty in homeschooling!  As such, we don’t do grades.  Every grade would be an A because we learn it until we learn it.

 

Logi-Bear is 5 and has already started his kindergarten-like course work.  But we will call his school year kindergarten.

Royal is 7 and will be about 2nd grade.

Baloo is 9 and is doing a mix of 4th and 5th depending on the subject.  This year will be a bit of a catch up year for him.

 

Logi-Bear in Kindergarten

Reading – combination of a lot of different programs.  Logi-Bear loves to look at letters and play with letter sounds.  This is going to seem like a lot of overkill but he enjoys it.

MobyMax Alphabet
All About Reading Pre-Level
Easy Peasy Homeschool – Getting Ready to Read

Math:
Singapore Math 1a/1b.  We are moving through this pretty slowly but he’s adept at math and getting it pretty well.

Science, history, art, music, PE, etc are all being done together and I’ll sum that up at the end of the post.

 

Royal in 2nd Grade

Reading:
All About Reading – level 3.  We are just about done with 2 now.
My own non-fiction reader set coming….soon.

Spelling:
All About Spelling – level 1 (and maybe 2)

Math:
Singapore Math 1b/2a – We are still working through 1b and I don’t think we will be done over the summer.  I’m hoping we can make it through 2b next year as well, but we will see.
To note: we use the U.S. edition and just buy the home educators books and the workbooks.  We haven’t needed the textbook yet!

 

Baloo in 4th/5th grade

Spelling:
All About Spelling 4

Math:
Singapore Math – We started on 2b earlier this year.  He had some gaps to fill.  I would love to make it through 4b by the end of the year but we will just see how it goes.  He knows MOST of the material but there are significant gaps that I am just not willing to overlook.  So who knows how far we will make it this year!

Language Arts:
Michael Clay Thompson Grammar Island
Fair warning – this is really expensive.  I probably wouldn’t spring for it, but Royal and Logi-Bear will use it too in upcoming years.

 

 

Now for everything we will do together.  Homeschooling 3 kids…I don’t think it makes any sense to separate on some of these.  There is only so much time in the day!  So

History:
Story of the World – Ancients.  We will be adding in other activities from Pinterest and such from time to time.  Because we can and history can be super boring.  I don’t know if I’ll blog about the extras or not, but you can be sure it will show up on my Pinterest history board!
To note : SOTW is not really secular.  Though the religious parts are fairly easy to skip over or adjust as needed.  Some people don’t really like it…for us, the writing makes it worth having to adjust some parts.

 

Science:
Real Science Odessy
So no lie, finding a secular, non-neutral, classical science curriculum is NOT easy.  I asked so many people are reviewed so many curricula.  They have a “try before you buy” sample that i looked over and this is either going to be great or just “eh”.
We are all going to do biology, but I’m getting level 1 for Royal and Logi-Bear and level 2 for Baloo.  We will probably work through all of it together.

 

PE

I’m a bit stuck on this one.  The boys all do gymnastics and play outside for hours a day.  I don’t feel like they need more physical activity.  However, physical education is about more than just activity.  I haven’t found anything that speaks to me just yet though.

 

Art
Art Lab for Kids

We havent started this yet but I have the book and it is amazing.  It has different units based on medium or utensil.  So there is an entire section on paint with a bunch of different projects.  We will go through each unit with all the different projects.

I’m also hoping to do an artist study, but I haven’t found one I liked.  Might have to just make my own.

 

Geography:
We are going through U.S. Geography this year and then do one continent per year after that.  I am making my own stuff for this…so fingers crossed that it is actually done by August.  As you might have noticed, I’ve placed a LOT of big projects on my list.  You can sign up for the newsletter to make sure and receive updates on my big projects!