2022 Homeschool Curriculum

 It has always been helpful to me seeing what other people choose for their curriculum each year. I thought I would share our curriculum picks for the 2022 - 2023 school year. 

Our main curriculum is My Father's World, and we will be working through 1850 to Modern Times. Maddy is most excited about the U.S. History cookbook we will be using. My Father's World is very heavy in reading material. This year we are going to cut out a few of the extra readings. For bible she will be going through a book called A Young Person's Guide to Knowing God and Tales of Persia. History will be a combination of American History and Story of the World. Geography will be focused on map work. Science will be Science in the Atomic Age and she will complete labs each day.

We typically use BJU for English but decided to try Abeka. BJU English included a separate writing book. We did not need writing as we typically use IEW. After researching it appeared most curriculums would include writing. We decided we would try Abeka for writing as well and drop IEW. What I like about Abeka's program is it seems to be more student led instead of teacher led. She will be able to complete the assignments independently and I will just check her work.

The Abeka English curriculum also comes with spelling and vocabulary. 

We are sticking with the art program we used last year, Artistic Pursuits. She did not complete the first book last year, so we will finish book one before moving to book two. She is very excited about book two because she will be working with pastels and color. Book one mostly works with graphite pencils and black ink.

She will stick with Teaching Textbooks for math. She absolutely hates math, but out of everything she has tried she likes this one the best. We have talked about trying others just to see, but she has been very adamant that she wants to stick with Teaching Textbooks. As long as she shows she understands the concepts and her grades are good, we will continue with this curriculum.

She will also be finishing up La Clase Divertida for Spanish. We typically take two years with Spanish before moving on to the next level.

Homeschool

 We have been homeschooling for eight years. It seems the homeschool journey is ever changing.

 Homeschool seems to be more accepted now, but there are some who still judge. I think every child is unique and for some children the best option is public school, while others the best option may be homeschool. I think instead of looking down on anyone for their decisions, we should encourage and support one another. 

There are so many opinions on which curriculum is the best. Truth is the best curriculum is going to look different for each family. I knew I wanted a Christian based curriculum. The curriculum I chose thought Kindergarten should be more about learning through play than worksheets. I knew Maddy would not do well if I gave her a bunch of worksheets each day. That also felt too much like public school. I wanted her school experience to be as fun as possible. 

I feel like homeschool is a lot of trial and error. When we first started, I thought we had to use everything the curriculum suggested. It took me a year to realize that not everything within the curriculum was best for Maddy and we would need to mix and match curriculum. 

Another question I see a lot is if it is possible to homeschool as a single working mom. My answer to that is yes, it is absolutely possible depending on your schedule. I am a single working mom, but I work from home. If you work outside of the home, I would say it is still possible, but a lot more difficult. The older Maddy gets, the more she does on her own. Her curriculum has a lot of reading. I used to read those to her. Now she does all the readings. The only thing we do together is English, Spelling, and Bible. 

Her biggest struggle in school has been math. We have tried a total of three different math curriculums. She still hates math, but she has found Teaching Textbooks to be the best so far. Teaching Textbooks teaches the lesson and then they work through about 22 problems. This program has taken a lot off of me and I love the fact that it grades them. Each day I get an email that lets me know what lesson she completed and her grade. We chose to go with the 4.0 version, which is the app. We both love the flexibility of doing math anywhere. 

Her bible changes each year. This year she is working in the book of James and has an inductive bible study called Boy Have I Got Problems. I am enjoying this study as this year has been extremely hard for some reason. The book goes through problems, and they use the bible to help find the answers.

For spelling we use Spelling Power. We have tried a few spelling curriculums as well, but we came back to this one. Public school doesn't typically have spelling in sixth grade. I chose to continue spelling because she misspells words she shouldn't. I have learned she gets careless sometimes. She has always been good with spelling. Once she stops making careless mistakes, we will drop spelling. Spelling Power is not your typical spelling curriculum. Every day you give a test and only work on the words that are misspelled. The misspelled words are then retested the next day. At the beginning of the year a placement test is given. She tested a grade and a half above her actual grade level. 

English is part of our mix and match curriculum. We use BJU. BJU alternates between learning grammar and writing. We have a separate writing curriculum, so we usually skip those lessons. I think BJU does a great job of teaching the concepts, but I feel like they review a little too much of previous concepts. I may be looking to change curriculums in the near future. I am also thinking about online English classes. BJU offers this, but there is a significant price difference. 

For writing we use IEW. This is a 24-week writing curriculum. This curriculum comes with DVDs to teach the lesson. The video is broken up over two days, and then the student uses the rest of the week to write their paper. This curriculum also comes with Fix-It-Grammar, and they learn the grammar rules that are taught in the video. 

Her art curriculum is also different than what her main curriculum suggests. This year we purchased Artistic Pursuits. Maddy hated art. The art that came with her main curriculum was art history. It did teach some art concepts, but not what she wanted to learn. She has really enjoyed this year's art, so we will stick with it.

Maddy chose to learn Spanish when she first started school. I chose to use La Clase Divertida curriculum. This is another video-based curriculum. I have been trying to learn along with her, but I haven't been able to keep up. I highly recommend this curriculum.

My advice in picking curriculum is to watch reviews of the ones you are interested in. YouTube has been extremely helpful. Once I find a curriculum I'm interested in, I will go to YouTube to see if there are any flip throughs or reviews. There are also conventions you can go to that allow you to look through books. I went to one, but the curriculum I was interested in wasn't there. The convention is how I found her Spanish curriculum, and for that I am very thankful.

History, Science and Social Studies are included with her main curriculum. 

Welcome to Homeschool!

Before I talk about what this post is about, I just have to address the fact that I pretty much quit this blog for way too long. I had every intention of catching and keeping it up, but I failed. I do want to go back and try to catch up as much as I can. I have fallen in love with the YouTube community and prefer to video our day, instead of capturing a picture. I hope to find a good balance between the two because I really want my blog to be up to date, but I also want the memories of our life on camera. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's talk homeschool!

I want to create several posts about homeschool, with one talking about the reasons I chose to homeschool. This post is jumping straight into how our first weeks have gone so far. Maddy started Kindergarten on August 3, 2015. Our first day did not go at all like I had hoped. I quickly realized that I did not have a good schedule and her day started just like any day would prior to school. She woke up, had breakfast, and started playing with her toys. During my lunch break I did a mini photo shoot with her outside to remember her first day.

The rest of her day while I worked included lunch, play, and nap. She has not had a nap time in two years. She really wanted to have nap time for school, so I of coarse said okay. Once I was done with work we played outside for about 30 minutes, and then came in and had dinner. I wish I could remember what was for dinner on her first day of school, but I forgot. After dinner her school time began. I don't have any pictures of her during school because I am busy teaching. We start off every day with the calandar, weather, days of the month, days of the week, and then 100 chart. It took me a week or two to realize we were forgetting to say the pledge of allegiance...oops! The first unit was about the days of creation. Each day we talked about what God created and then she illustrated it. Once we went through all seven days, we turned her illustrations into a book. I am so proud of our first class book. She did a wonderful job with her drawings. The creation unit was 10 days long. Our first real unit was on the sun and the letter s. Maddy already knows her alphabet and sounds, but the curriculum we are using goes over them for Kindergarten. She has not been bored reviewing what she already knows thank goodness. We talked about how the sun gives us light, the sun is used for measuring time and days, and the sun gives us heat. We made a sundial and I wish I had taken some pictures of it, but I didn't.

The number of the week was 1. Each unit we will add another number. We put the numbers in a box and she will reach in and pick one out. Once she picks a number she will have to count that number using manipulative's, and then write the number on a piece of paper.

Our second unit was on the moon and letter Mm. Once I got to this unit I had already figured out some good ideas. I purchased a Kindergarten workbook and while I work she works on her workbook. I check her sheets to make sure they are correct. She is beyond excited to sit at her desk and do worksheets. My lunch break we spend doing our morning meeting which consists of: the pledge of allegiance, prayer, days of the month, calandar, weather, 100's chart. On my break we start our first lesson whether it be introducing the letter of the next 6 days or theme of the week. We finish up once I am off work. I also purchased the pre-k Handwriting Without Tears program because I thought it might help her write a little better. Maybe I should have ordered the Kindergarten version because so far it's been a waste of money. I think if she had not been taught to write prior to being homeschooled the program would definitely have helped, but it's not helpful to us at this stage of her learning. We did a lot more activities with this unit. I purchased a Melissa and Doug floor puzzle that looks like this:

She thoroughly enjoyed putting this huge puzzle together. We are going to put it together one last time before we move on to our next theme. We talked about the different moon phases and why the moon changes shapes. We also talked about how the moon does not have light of it's own, but is actually the reflection of the sun's light. Our final activity was making a moon cake. There are times I wish I had a photographer follow us around to capture these special moments. I did snap a picture or two in the process of making it, but it doesn't tell the whole story. I also forgot to snap a picture of the "full moon" once it was done. We ended up having to go to the store twice for ingredients. The recipe called for vinegar...I have never seen a cake recipe that calls for vinegar. I was really doubting how it was going to taste and tried my best to prepare Maddy that she probably wouldn't like the cake. Much to my surprise it turned out pretty good. The whole cake was the full moon. We then cut the cake in half to make a half moon, and finally we made a crescent moon to the best of my ability. To make the evening even more fun we had a picnic under the moon. It was supposed to have been a full moon so we spread out an old sheet and ate our cake and admired the moon. Maddy ended up really liking the cake...whew! We then pretended we were walking on the moon. There is no gravity on the moon so we had to do out best no gravity walk. Maddy did not want to go back inside. I ended up letting her sleep in her "spaceship" we had made. I spread her comforter over the end of her bed over to her toy buckets to make a fort. Earlier in the week we had talked about what we might need if we were going to go on a rocket to the moon. She was so happy to get to sleep in her fort. We made a bed out of blankets and all her stuffed animals are nearby. She has a night light she sleeps with, which helped for this unit because it's in the shape of a moon.

I am still learning how to do this homeschool thing. I want to make it as fun for her as possible. Pinterest has definitely been my best friend :) My goal is to make a post at the end of each week to talk about what we did for school and eventually add pictures.

Hello Again

I am beyond ecstatic to have my blog back! So much has happened in between the time I stopped blogging and now. One day I will be an open book and share all the details, but for now I will just say I am happy to be back!

To briefly catch up, Maddy is now in the 4th grade 😲 I can't even believe it! We are still homeschooling and loving it. The older she gets, the more we mix and match her curriculum. I am so thankful to have the opportunity to homeschool her and know at any given time it can be yanked away. Maddy has gotten involved in extra curriculars outside of home to help her socialize with kids her age.

Homeschool

I am so incredibly excited to say I am 99.9% sure I am homeschooling Maddy. It's amazing what one encouraging talk can do to show you that yes, you CAN do what you wanted to do all along. I feel so very overwhelmed at the moment and very anxious and like I have no time to figure anything out, but that's just who I am. Maddy does not start school until next year, I have one year to figure this out. The biggest concern is choosing the best curriculum for her. I know it will be a christian based curriculum, but there are just so many. I've narrowed it down to a few from what I have found online so far. I am finding it is definitely more expensive than just sending her to a public school, but knowing WHAT she is being taught and HOW is worth it to me. I started looking into what is her "zoned" school in our school system. I specifically prayed to live in an area that our house is zoned for because it had the best ratings. In looking at the website I was not really THAT impressed with what it had to offer. I'm sure the school itself is great and I am NOT knocking public schools, but I just know it isn't best for Maddy. I feel schools have too much of a say as to things that are taught and not taught and allowed and not allowed and then of coarse attendance. In our state if your child has 5 or more unexcused absences, and they do not have to be consecutive, it is required they call a social worker and some other organization to have me investigated. So if I can't work a vacation into the allotted days off school than we would just be tough out of luck...I don't like that. I don't like that prayer is not allowed in school. I don't like the science curriculum in public schools as I do not believe in evolution. I do not like the required reading list books. If I'm being real honest, I don't like the peer pressure either but that is something that she needs to learn to handle as there can be peer pressure anywhere. I want to equip her with the tools and resources I feel are best to create a godly/biblical foundation.

Right now I am feeling so very excited to prepare for this journey, but I'm sure I will feel nervous about things along the way. I'm a little nervous as to what the laws are in my state, but I have found a little bit of information to help. I'm also trying to figure out which homeschool group would be best to join as there are also quite a few of those. I have one that I am leaning towards, but again I just don't know. Right now I am not making any concrete decisions...just brainstorming. I do plan on working still as I have to have an income to support us. I have read that she only has to attend 4 hours of school a day for 180 days. I think that is something that can be worked with as far as my work is concerned. I have definitely felt like my life would be changing in a big way next year, but not once did this cross my mind. I wanted to homeschool, just felt it was out of the question, but it's really not. If you homeschool please share any tips or information you have as I am a fish out of water where this is concerned lol. Some of the curriculum I'm looking into is Sonlight, A Beck A, Alpha and Omega Publications, My Father's World, and ABC Jesus Loves Me. Next summer I will attend a curriculum fair that will have several vendors there and I can actually look through the curriculum and then decide which is best. I am also going to be praying for God to direct us and show us which path we should take. It's nerve racking because this is her future. I want the absolute best for her and will do whatever I need to do to give that to her. I am documenting several things at the moment, some I will publish right away and others I am saving for when the time is right. My blog is going to be all over the place, but luckily my blog is just a place I come to write about our life and this is something major going on in our lives. I plan on documenting every step of this journey from brainstorming to actual steps I take. For now these are all the ideas I have come up with so far, so it's time to end ;p