Curriculium Time

We started our first week of school Monday. I think A and I were both super excited to find ourselves back into a routine and some semblance of normal, well our old normal with a new little guy thrown into the mix. 

This year I really needed things a little more laid out for me. Having a newborn, being a sleep deprived mom again, and all that comes with it, I figured I could use all the help I could get. I can't spend hours planning and searching out resources right now, but I still wanted to give A the rich, literature based education that she has been used to. Enter BookShark!

 I have always been fascinated by Sonlight, but although we are Christian, I didn't want our entire curriculum to be based around that. In fact, I like my curriculum secular, with our bible time separate. Well BookShark is brand new onto the homeschooling scene but is everything I have been looking for. A secular Sonlight! We are using Core 4- the second half of American History. Perfect for us, since we managed to cover up to the Civil War last year. We are using their History Core and Language Arts. The assigned reading is great and it all ties into the period of history we are learning.

I could have ordered their science too, but this year I decided to try a set I picked up on Ebay. It's a middle school science year from Calvert. It comes complete with books and guides for each one with assignments and extra reading. A decided to start with astronomy. We will also be doing individual project based units on other topics that interest her throughout the year. The first being butterflies as we have a trip planned down to the Butterfly Garden in Albuquerque.

We had such a good year using Teaching Textbooks last year for math that we are at it again. This year with 5th grade, although we have already skipped the first 14 lessons and just took the quizzes for those. She scored a 98% on the first and 100% on the second. If she finishes it up before the end of the year, then we will just continue onto grade 6th. 

We will also be throwing in some living math books and projects to add some fun into our days.

 A has been asking to learn cursive for some time now, so this year we will be transitioning to it using a couple of different resources.

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 I wanted to cover Bible and Typing this year as some extracurriculars. For Bible I found a great course. "God's Great Covenant". We will be covering the Old Testament from Genesis thru Ruth.

For typing we are trying out Type to Learn 4.

 For spelling we are going with Sequential Spelling. I decided to start with level 1, even though some of the words are easy, the build so quickly to larger words that I thought we would go ahead and see how it works for us. We have done the first 5 lessons and so far A is liking it.

 So here's to a good year!

Good luck everyone.