Back To School: Curriculum

It's August, which means it's time to start getting serious about school again! As part of the Heart of the Matter "Not Back to School Blog Hop" I thought I would share what we are planning on using this year for our curriculum.

Like just about every homeschooler I've met, our curriculum is varied and gets "tweaked" a little each year. Last year with H, we used Christian Light Education and Math-U-See, along with some random supplemental things for science and social studies.

This year we are going to continue with Christian Light Education for English and Language Arts for both H and G (grade 3 and 1). H really enjoyed this curriculum last year, so I'm hoping G will like it as well (that would keep things simple, wouldn't it?!) M will continue learning to read with "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" by Siegfried Engelmann and "Bob Books" by Bobby Lynn Maslen. F has some word cards that she enjoys using to work on her vocabulary, and G has started holding them up to J to teach her to "read" as well! :-)

H decided to switch to Christian Light Education for Math this year. She likes the workbook layout, so I'm hoping it will be a good fit for her. G will be using some Rod and Staff math books (grade 1) that I already have (because I never got around to listing them on ebay!). M will use some workbooks I bought to practice writing numbers, counting, patterns, etc. Not to be left out, I also got some workbooks for F that work on colors and shapes, because she likes to do school like a big girl, too! :-)

Another change this year is that we will be trying Adventures in My Father's World, primarily for social studies, U.S. geography and science. This is geared toward H's age, but I'm hoping to include G and M (and maybe even F) in some of it as well. I have bought some puzzles, extra state workbooks, and stickers and will be printing off simple coloring sheets of the states for the younger kids. They will of course be involved in the science as well. We also check out books and DVDs from the library from time to time for exposure to some different science lessons. Some we have checked out before are Popular Mechanics for Kids and Beakman's World.

I also got some cute books called "Home Economics for Home Schoolers" from Pearables, which I am hoping to use to teach some fun skills each week. I don't consider myself to be the consummate homemaker, so I was excited to find these adorable, simple books, especially since I have 5 girls! The idea is that they will learn a new skill each week in one of the categories of cooking, baking, cleaning, sewing, and organization. Then they practice it all week. Hopefully I'll be able to delegate more household tasks after going through this series! :-)

H and G will start up with piano lessons again in September, and all three big girls will also be in AWANA at church. We also decided to join a homeschool co-op group this year, so the girls will be participating in field trips and co-op classes as well. Whew! That sounds like a lot. . . now to figure out how it will all fit into each day!