Our Homeschool Curriculum for 2017-2018

One of the best and hardest parts of being a homeschool mom is you are the one in charge and ultimately responsible for curriculum choices. I've made decisions based on my own individual children's needs and interests. Here's what we're going with this year:

Kindergarten
Mason is 5 and a half years old. In Ohio that means he doesn't need to be registered with the state yet. It frees me up to give him a true, simple Kindergarten year. We have 3 areas we will focus on: learning to read, learning to calculate (math), and learning handwriting. He will join in for other things as he chooses to: listening to stories, doing science, history, or art. Mason will use All About Reading level 1 at whatever pace he is ready for. He knows most letter sounds and is starting with blending 3 letter words. Math will be Math U See Alpha with a caveat. We always spread Alpha out over 2 years. He will spend the first part of the school year doing hands on math with many materials while we work on his handwriting. Then we'll pull out MUS and get through about half of the book by the end of the year. Mason will be my first child to use Handwriting Without Tears because I think it will address his fine motor needs.

1st Grade
Caleb is 6 turning 7 in November. His focus areas are to solidify his handwriting, do consistent reading lessons, and keep making progress in math. He will do the second half of Math U See Alpha and possibly begin Beta. Handwriting/Copywork this year will be using our Draw Write Now books. One day Caleb will draw the picture and the next day he'll do the handwriting for the picture. For reading Caleb is already using All About Reading level 1 and will continue with that. He will also do some Brave Writer projects. At his age the BW program is called Jot it Down. It has the child narrate their writing to you, their transcriptionist. They illustrate and create the final product with your support. He'll participate in our family history and science studies, which I'll explain later.

3rd Grade
Oliver is 8. His focus areas are to master independent reading, increase his handwriting stamina, and begin to write down his own words instead of relying completely on a transcriptionist (mom). He's using All About Reading level 3, Draw Write Now for copywork/handwriting, Brave Writer projects, and Math U See Gamma. We also like to use Multiplication in a Flash during the Gamma year. He will be in our group history and science studies.

4th Grade
Daniel is 9 turning 10 in October. His focus is to improve his writing stamina and confidence. He's really comfortable in all subjects but writing, where his perfectionism paralyzes him. He'll use Brave Writer at the Partnership Writing level and Fix-It Grammar. He will have a list of literature to work through. He is on Math U See Epsilon this year so all things fractions. He is part of our group science and history studies.

6th Grade
Emma is 11 turning 12 in December. Her focus is to improve her spelling, math skills, and math confidence. She will be using Math U See PreAlgebra this year. She'll do Fix-It Grammar, Brave Writer at the Faltering Ownership level, a literature list, and All About Spelling. She is part of our group history and science studies.

7th Grade
Joseph is 12 turning 13 in October. His focus is to improve his writing stamina, spelling, and math confidence. He's in Math U See PreAlgebra. His language arts plan is All About Spelling, Fix-It Grammar, Brave Writer at the Faltering Ownership level, and a literature list. He's the oldest in our group science and history studies.

11th Grade
Makayla just turned 16 this summer. Her focus is to improve her math flexibility (knowing what to do when), and consistency in all her other subjects. She is starting out trying Math U See Algebra 2 but we will review Algebra 1 if needed. (Last year was her Geometry year, so she may need to brush up on some Algebra 1 concepts.) She'll use Writing Fiction in High School and read through a literature list. Science is Discovering Design with Chemistry by Jay Wile. She's finally decided on a foreign language so she'll dive into Latin Alive 1 this year. We've created a history plan this year that has her reading a spine book and a literature list that progresses from the Civil War through the present day with a heavy emphasis on the 20th century. We have a list of movies and documentaries to explore as well. One other thing Makayla has been doing is shadowing at a veterinary office weekly this summer. She is still continuing that for now.

Family Science Studies
The 7th grade and under group will do science together. This year we are working through a variety of topics with a base of living books and hands on experiences or experiments. Our first topic is space and we've got books on everything from planets, the sun, constellations, and the Mars rover to astronauts and the international space station. Different kids will read or look at different books based on their age and interests in the topic. There are many experiments and demonstrations we can do for astronomy, we will choose as we go. We also plan to observe the solar eclipse this month and do some stargazing with our telescope. After a month or 6 weeks of study we will move on to a new science topic. This will be the pattern all year.

Family History Studies
The 7th grade and under kids will all be studying early American history this year. I have a mix of books for each age - everything from picture books and biographies to historical fiction and nonfiction books. We will read some things together and many books will be done on their own according to age and interests. I also have dvds we can watch to go with topics, from Liberty's Kids episodes to movies and lectures from The Great Courses.

Other Studies
Under this wide umbrella we have art, music, picture study, scripture study, hymns, composer study, physical education, and more. These are generally done as a family in a 'morning basket', though the time we use the basket varies. We use so many different materials that I'm not going to list them. We do not use any formal curriculum for these. I may get together a post about them later and I am sure I will mention some in the weekly review posts as the school year moves forward.

That's all I can think of at the moment!