Thursday, June 11, 2009

Curriculum 2009-2010

I have now ordered all of my curriculum for next year's school! I love sorting through, deciding, ordering, and especially receiving all the new stuff!! I use Sonlight for my history, reading, and read aloud literature and I love their book choices! I don't really like their language arts, though. I'm not too fond of their math choices, either. But now that I'm "experienced," having one whole year of "real" school under my belt (kindergarten - lol), I feel confident enough to go out and find what I want and trust myself to look at a product and know whether it will be good for my kids or not. I also rely heavily on the opinions of trusted friends who have used particular books before. I am really grateful that you (Joanna) recommended The Well-Trained Mind to me a while back. I have gone with so many of their recommendations, and I have not been disappointed yet! I went with many of theirs this year, which means a lot of my school choices look the same as yours (Joanna's)! Fun, huh?

So, anyway, here are my choices for Aaron's 1st grade year:

Ethan is still only interested in school some of the time, which is fine with me. I am in no hurry to rush him into it since he has the rest of his life to learn and work. I'll let him play while he can! But, he does like to do some workbooks and math. On an ideal day, he would do these things, but it is all pretty much optional!

Ethan's K-4 year:

I have everything either ordered or in house already! Most of it is in transit. I love, love, love when boxes of books come in the mail. My total cost isn't as low as yours since my Sonlight uses lots of living books rather than one text book, but hey, that is why I like it! For the two of them, we came in around $760. I'm going to have to clean out my bookshelf now so I have room to keep everything in an organized manner!

6 comments:

Debra said...

This looks fantastic! Great choices, and makes me wish I was using some of this in the fall too. Next year...

Enjoy your boxes, and enjoy rearranging.

So do you have the new Well Trained Mind? I've got that on hold at the library, trying to decide whether I should splurge on a revised book or not. Decisions, decisions, decisions...

Joanna said...

Excellent! So glad you shared. It is the best to get new books in the mail. Woohoo!

Luke Holzmann said...

May this be your best year yet (and MathTacular is great... not that I'm biased or anything [laughing]).

~Luke

Unknown said...

Thanks for posting this! I've been having trouble figuring out what to do with Caleb for the next year. I tried to start him on OPG about two months ago, but he's not responding well to the poem it starts off with. So, I think I'll look into the math program you are doing. He does know the sounds that all the letters make, I think he just needs some time to get into the more regimented stuff with reading. ? But, then again, I have no idea what I'm doing at this point. So, it's nice that you guys talk about this stuff.

Krystal said...

Okay... so, my son is 4. He's in the Early Childhood Program at our local Elementary school. He'll start kindergarten in the fall of 2010 (yep, not this fall, but NEXT fall).

So, I'm starting to think really hard about my first year homeschooling him, because it's only like a year away now.

Based on what you posted, it seems as if you simply order and use items from whatever curriculum best fits your family. Is that correct?

So, for example, you mentioned not caring for Sonlight's L.A. and Math that much, and you listed other sources for your curriculum in those subjects. So do you tend to just use whatever you feel is the best fit for your child(ren) in a particular subject? Kind of like the perfect mix of available curriculums, tailored specifically to your family?

Anonymous said...

Those sounds good :) I am no where near that organized, of course, but I went to a book sale the other day and found this really cool OLD Biology book. We are using it for science next year. And I may have found a good Algebra and Geometry curriculum too. But I am looking into a different one first and I got the lady's number so if my first idea falls through I can call her and get hers! :)

My curricula cost no where NEAR the amount you paid. But I buy used for the most part :) Plus Rod and Staff are really cheap even new :)