I know I’m a little late to the party here considering school starts tomorrow (!!), but I wanted to share what my kiddos will be learning this year.
Bible
In addition to the Bible itself (which is all you need, and I’m not suggesting otherwise), we’ll be continuing our worldview study using Apologia’s What on Earth Can I Do? We received this as a review last (school) year, and it’s really good, so after a summer off from it, we’ll be diving back in this week. Our history (which I’ll discuss in a minute) will also be very Bible-heavy this year.
Language Arts
For spelling, Munchkin will be using the rest of Seahawk’s Spelling You See workbook. It helped Seahawk for a while, but then he stagnated. Munchkin is a natural speller, so he doesn’t really need a spelling curriculum, but he likes SYS so he’ll be using it for fun. For Seahawk, who needs spelling help, I’ll be trying out a few different things this year. We’ll be using the free version of Essential Skills Advantage (the paid version was a Crew Review item, but I wasn’t on that review) as well as playing some word games from SchoolhouseTeachers.com. I also hope to start him on All About Spelling in a few weeks.
For grammar, we have another review product (you’ll be seeing that review in about four weeks): Fix It! Grammar by Institute for Excellence in Writing. I’ve looked over this a lot the past couple of weeks in preparation for teaching it, and I’m really excited. I won’t share too much here, otherwise I won’t have anything to include in my review, but make sure to look for the review soon.
In reading, I’m going to be pretty flexible with the children this year. They’ll each read one chapter of their Bible each day (their choice where) as well as one chapter minimum from a novel or nonfiction book of their choice (there’s a little bit of flexibility with the “one chapter” thing – some books have really long chapters!). With each book completed comes a book report (very basic: Title, Author, Publication date, Main Character(s), Supporting Characters, Plot, What I Liked, and What I Didn’t Like).
To keep building on the writing and researching skills they developed over the summer using My First Report: Sports from Hewitt Homeschooling, we now have access to several other sets of My First Report. We’ll be buddying this up with geography for the first part of the year (maybe even the whole year… there’s a lot of them!), and they’ll do reports on all the different states. We have four steps to report writing in our home: answer the questions from the MFR, outline, rough draft, final draft. They will do one step per day, completing one report per week.
Finally, they’ll have handwriting practice books. We will be using Handwriting: Writing with Power by Christian Liberty Press. I haven’t seen the actual books yet (they’re coming as donations from a friend, along with a lot of our other curriculum which is listed here today), but I looked at a sample online, and it includes things such as addressing an envelope and making up their own sentence using the word of the day.
Science
We’re going to start science for the year learning about the human body. We did this a little bit a couple of years ago, but this year we’re going to dig a little deeper. To help with this, I’m using some “speedy lapbooks” from CurrClick. When we finish with the body, we’ll move onto Space using more of these lapbooks.
History
We have a new review product for history called TruthQuest History. It’s a super in-depth history program of the Old Testament including ancient cultures (primarily Egypt, through the story of Joseph [end of Genesis]). That review won’t be here on the blog, but you can find it over on The Old Schoolhouse site sometime after November 10th.
Foreign Language
We’re going to keep going with our French studies this year. We will likely keep going with Mango Languages, which we reviewed earlier this calendar year, unless we find something else.
So that’s what my kids are studying this year; what about yours?
Blessings,
Wendy
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Looks like some great picks and a great year is ahead! We are using Fix It Grammar for the first time this year and I am VERY pleased. Mr. 8 year old seems to “like” it too. I’ve been particularly fond of how gentle it is and how it incorporates handwriting, grammar, and dictionary practice AND learning new words to boot. I think I’m going to start a competition with him to see who can use the new word each day the most. 🙂 Have a great year, Wendy!
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