2014-2015 Curriculum Choices

This year, I made some major changes to our homeschool curriculum, so I'll outline them here. My oldest daughter, Heather, is entering the 2nd grade. My middle daughter, Mikayla, is doing Pre-K work this year. She will begin Kindergarten next school year as her birthday is in November. They are both making lots of improvements so far and I'm looking forward to helping them learn throughout this year as well!

Heather - 2nd Grade
Math - We'll be continuing with Math Mammoth this year. She's done really well with it this past year. We are using the Light Blue series that is organized by grade. It is a mastery program, so each grade level is organized by topic. In first grade, we covered basic addition, then subtraction, then addition/subtraction facts, time, and money in that order. The 2nd grade year builds upon these skills and follows much the same topic guidelines.

Reading - We started All About Reading Level 1 during the last quarter of 1st grade and continued it over the summer and into this school year. We are wrapping up with level 1 this month (October) and will be buying Level 2 as soon as possible to continue. She was really struggling with reading last year. We had tried McGuffey's Eclectic 1st Reader and Progressive Phonics among other free/inexpensive options and she just wasn't getting it as easily as I had expected. When she graduated kindergarten (public school), she was barely reading 0.5 level AR (Accelerated Reader) books although she did well with the fluency testing at school and had good grades. So it wasn't just moving from a public school environment to a homeschool environment. So I started looking for different options. I had found AAR early in the school year but the cost was inhibitive so I put it off until I realized that what we were doing just wasn't working and she needed something very different. Finally, in March 2014, I managed to save up the money and buy the first level. We started it soon after it arrived and the difference was HUGE. She loves the program and I like that it's fairly easy to pull together on a daily basis. The activities are fun and engaging. I was no longer having to guess about skill progression. At first, we were able to move through 2 lessons at a time in order to cover any missing skills. About a quarter of the way through, we slowed to only one lesson daily and then about halfway through, we were doing a lesson over 2-3 days to ensure understanding and lessen frustration. But she has thrived with it! She will now pick up a book on her level and read it to her younger siblings just for fun! (And without being asked!) I'm looking forward to continuing her reading journey as we finish up the lessons in level 1 and begin level 2 sometime in November. We will also be adding All About Spelling Level 1 in November as well.

Grammar - First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind: Level 1 continued
This program is almost completely oral with some copywork for the child to complete. We've really enjoyed this curriculum and with Heather's reading issues, it's been perfect for us! It covers nouns, verbs, poetry, story narration and more. We finished half of the level 1 last year and working on finishing the second half this year and possibly starting level 2 sometime in 2015.

Science - Apologia: Exploring Creation with Astronomy
Last year, we did a mixture of unit studies and Abeka 1st grade science. This year, I decided to change course a bit and try out the Apologia series. It is also a mastery based series that focuses on one broad topic throughout the year. This year, we are studying Astronomy. This will include space in general, each of the planets, other objects in space (asteroid belts, moons, etc.), as well as stars and constellations and other topics. We are really enjoying it so far. I'm doing this with both Heather & Mikayla (Michael listens in sometimes but only bits and pieces). We're working on a model of the solar system that I hope to feature on here as we complete it!

Social Studies - Unit Studies on American History
This year, we'll continue doing unit studies on early American history. I am loosely organizing them around the American Girls series and hope to have a series of posts on these as well. We're currently finishing up with Kaya, a Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) Native American from around 1764. We've branched out from this study of Kaya to also study many of the other Native American tribes around this same time period. We will have a brief unit study of the French and Indian War before moving on to Felicity and the Revolutionary War. I plan on moving through most of the historical American Girls in time order over the year. I'm hoping we'll get to Addy during Black History Month in February without having to move out of order.

Bible - The Story For Children
This year I am using The Story for Children (Written by Max Lucado). It's a collection of 81 stories from the Bible. They are beautifully written and illustrated for a child's understanding and enjoyment. I found this gem with the audio CD's on a co-op through Book Depot (a wholesale website) for $7 brand new! I am SO very pleased with this so far! We read a story every 2-3 days and discuss it and do activities to go along with the stories (I find the activities online through google search or pinterest) to ensure memory of the story and understanding. We also memorize a verse every couple of weeks from Mikayla's curriculum.

Mikayla - Pre-K (4-5yo)
Mikayla already knows all her letters, letter sounds, shapes, basic colors, counts to 10, and basic number sense to 10. So far we are reviewing these skills as well as improving her fine motor skills with tracing & cutting. We are also adding sight words and I will begin a slower progress through AAR Level 1 at some point as well.

Fine Motor Skills: Kumon Tracing & Cutting practice books
We are using the Kumon books for tracing and cutting to improve her hand strength and fine motor skills. Her hand strength has been very weak (I think perhaps due to her PFAPA syndrome) and so she really struggles with writing and cutting and other activities that involve using her hands. These activity books are really helping her hand strength and I'm already seeing improvement only a quarter of the way in to them.

Reading the Alphabet by "This Reading Mama"
This is a downloadable curriculum for Pre-K which has a letter of the week style organization but is more advanced than learning the basics. It reviews and reinforces letter sounds as well as introducing initial sounds, sight words and touching on other skills such as numbers and shapes. We also use Starfall as part of this program.

We also use a variety of inexpensive workbooks on the Pre-K and Kindergarten level to practice and reinforce the skills I am teaching Mikayla as well as several hands on activities using counting bears, other counters, Bob Books level 1 (sight word based!), among other things. She usually participates with Heather on her History and Science and I simply give her activities at her level.

We have several "field trips", nature walks, and fun activities throughout the year and they get lots of outside play for P.E. as well. We are all loving this transition into our second year of homeschooling and look forward to seeing what else the year will bring!

Well, I hope you've enjoyed this introduction to our curriculum choices for this 2014-2015 year for Heather & Mikayla! Come again soon!