I always enjoy seeing others homeschool curriculum plans. After lots of contemplation, prayer, and discussion with my husband I’ve chosen our homeschool curriculum and set the course for the year. I’m excited to see where this year takes us!
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2015-2016 Homeschool Curriculum:
Together:
One thing I love about homeschooling is learning and spending time together as a family. Here is what we will be doing as a family this year.
- Bible Devotions with Mom or Dad at breakfast table (if this doesn’t happen, when we start school we offer a quick prayer as a family for our day)
- Read Aloud (Late Renaissance/Early Modern period, science, geography, and pure enjoyment)
- Circle time: Hymns, Latin prayers/songs, Bible verses, Catechism lesson/memorization, timeline cards (from Classically Catholic Memory), poetry, picture study, and classical music/composer study)
- Lunch study: Manners (using Manners Made Easy), life, and safety skills
- Nature Study (occasionally)
- Drawing (once per week, loosely following Drawing with Children)
8 year old:
Our eight year old boy has focused on the 4R’s (Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic, Religion) this far in his education, but we feel he is finally ready to take on more.
- Math (Singapore 4A-4B)– This is what we have always used and enjoyed. It offers enough challenge for our mathematically minded boy.
- Penmanship (New American Cursive I (Memoria Press))- This program is new to us this year. We previously have used Seton, which we also liked.
- Grammar (English Grammar Recitation One (Memoria Press))-This is one of the new subjects we will be adding in. It looks fairly intense but doable.
- Composition (All Things Fun and Fascinating (IEW))– I’ve heard great things about the Institute for Excellence in Writing and am interested to try this new-to-us program.
- Spelling (Spelling Power)– We used this the last half of last year. Our son has struggled with retaining the words, but I realized this may be due to the way I was teaching or his lack of exercising his “spelling muscle” in daily writing (or lack thereof!). We are giving it another chance, following the teaching steps laid out in the book and adding in more daily writing. But we will scrap it mid-year if there is no improvement.
- Reading/Reading Comprehension(McGuffey Readers)- aloud to Mom and narrate
- Music-Piano (Children’s Music Journey)
- Literature-Read through required book list (books from History period, science, great literature, and enjoyment)
4 year old:
I started preschool with my four year old last year and plan on continuing on the same path. Our two year old daughter is eager to “do school,” so she will be learning along with us.
- Work on letter names, sounds, and formation
- Work on number identification, formation, and counting
- Rod and Staff Preschool Books
What else are we doing this year?
I’m excited to see how our plans evolve through the year (as they always do)!
What are you looking forward to this year?
(As always, well laid plans can change. See how and why we made the switch to Mother of Divine Grace mid-year here.)
My kids are about the same ages as yours; 8, 5 and 2. I love the Rod and Staff preschool books!
Yes, I do love Rod and Staff. Sweet and simple workbooks. Great for keeping little ones occupied!
I am currently looking into using Classicaly Catholic Memory as well as English Grammar Recitation and was wondering what your thoughts are. Likes, dislikes, etc?
Here is a short response. The first year we did CCM, we did it in a co-op setting. I found it harder to implement at home, but many of my friends have continued to do so. I dropped CCM after the 2nd year for several reasons: 1. We were already memorizing our own poems and catechism, so I usually skipped this portion of CCM, 2. I found many of the science memorization to be information that I didn’t think my children needed and ended up skipping the science portion as well, 3. Personally, I preferred spending my time in other ways. Much of CCM I thought was memorization for memorization’s sake, which there is a time for, but I wanted to spend my time on subjects I deemed higher priority.
As for English Grammar Recitation I found it very mom intensive with not enough practice or review to make the concepts stick. I have floated around a lot of Grammar texts. The past two years we have used MODG’s suggested Language Lessons. These were similar to English Grammar Recitation in that there was not enough review and practice of the concepts. While Seton is not my first choice, we have decided to go with their language arts curriculum for Spelling, Handwriting, and English. I find the texts very dry and the presentation of concepts is rather bland, but the review and practice are there to make the concepts stick. The workbook format makes them very easy to implement as well.
I hope that helps!