Our Curriculum, 2014/2015

I usually post our homeschool curriculum choices here every year. A disclaimer: by posting this list, I’m not necessarily making recommendations. We do what works for us as a family and the children individually. I’m not claiming to know what’s right for your family. Reading through this list may look like “less” or “more” than what other families do, depending on their homeschooling style. And that’s just fine. Every family is different.

Victoria: 

Victoria just turned 2, so she will be working on mastering potty training very soon. Other jobs include being sweet and adorable, and resisting the incredible urge to write on the walls (please don’t look closely at the wall behind Ruby in the photo to the right!).

Ruby:

Ruby is 4 now, but I don’t do formal preschool. I find that kids this age are naturally pushing themselves to learn new things, so all I need to do is follow their lead and offer help when asked. For instance, Ruby figured out how to write her name and I have no recollection of teaching her that. She’s been coming to me lately, holding a book and pointing to words asking, “What does that say?”. She also grills me about French vocabulary (which helps both of us to learn!).

My goals for her this year are to help her with letter practice and do read alouds twice daily at least. I also have a Rod & Staff PreK math workbook if she’s into it. If not, no biggie.

Sadie:

• Math: Life of Fred “Cats” and “Dogs” and depending on how quickly she goes through those two, possibly “Edgewood” (if you’re unfamiliar with how the LoF books work, I’ll tell you what it took me ages to figure out – the elementary and middle school books are in alphabetical order – the first letter of the title indicates the difficulty, therefore Apples comes before Butterflies, on up to Kidneys/Liver/Mineshaft etc).
• Science:Spectrum Science, Grade 3, the “Was It Designed?” series from Awake! magazine
• Language Arts:Writing With Ease Level 2, First Language Lessons Level 2 (we began these two last year and are finishing up)
• History: Story of the World Volume 1 with test book and activity book. We started this book last year but didn’t make much progress. This year she’s flying through it.
• French: DuoLingo, Bravolol and Le Bon Mot apps (all free!)

Ilana:

• Math: Life of Fred Decimals and Percents and Elementary Physics
• Science: “Life – How Did it Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?”
• Language Arts: Writing with Ease Level 3, Life of Fred Language Arts “Classes” and “Dreams” – the final two books, the first two – Australia and Begin Teaching (there’s that alphabetical thing again) – she completed last year
• French: DuoLingo
• History: Story of the World Volume 4 with test book

Julien:

• Math: Life of Fred Elementary Physics, Pre-Algebra 1 with Biology
• Science: “Life – How Did it Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?” 
• Language Arts: Writing with Ease Level 3 Julien is skipping grammar this year. After we completed our beloved First Language Lessons last year, I searched around for a new grammar curriculum. At this point, Life of Fred had a brand spanking new language arts series, but when I ordered the books and Julien delved in, he declared them “way too easy” and refused to do the work. So I let him off the hook. Ilana is completing the series more or less as a review, and because she finds that kind of thing fun. But since Julien can diagram sentences in his sleep, he’s fine with just a writing curriculum this year.
• History: Story of the World Volume 4 with test book
• Other: Life of Fred Personal Finance

Caleb:

• Math: Teaching Textbooks Pre-Calculus
• Science: Apologia Chemistry
• Language Arts: Finish Writing with Skill. All  he has left to do is the final exam, and then he’ll be done. Taking a look at the types of books he reads, I doubt he has any need for further grammar instruction. It tickles me to no end that while he started off Writing with Skill declaring that he “hates writing“, after nearly a year of slogging through it, he admitted that the curriculum was very helpful to him in non-school areas of life. Cool!
• History: History of the Renaissance World
• Other: LoF Personal Finance, Defensive Driving Class (he got his permit this summer), Woodworking and Guitar

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