This post has been a looong time coming. WHEW! Finally!
I should have had this up during the summer but for the life of me I didn’t know what I was going to do for certain subjects. One of the many reasons
I love homeschooling… so many options!
When my girls were very young and we decided to homeschool, we chose to allow them a lot of play. If they showed an interest in something we would absolutely take the time to learn about it. It was scary, I admit. I wasn’t positive that that the day would come when they would come to me and ask for more. More studying? Who wants that? I was told the day would come. “Trust the process.”
It came earlier for some than others but guess what… it came!
My girls are now asking for more. Especially Miss K. She is so ready to start the scholar phase. To be honest, I think she was ready long ago. I feel that she is slightly resentful of our first few homeschooling years because she was ready long before I was ready to let her be.
You’ll notice in her schedule that she has a lot more than the other girls.
Remember, we homeschool. That is very different than school at home. We aren’t trying to get through any certain book as fast as we can in order to take an end of year test or make sure they are right on track with their peers. Instead we move at a pace that is comfortable for each child and make sure they grasp each concept before moving on. That could mean they fly through a subject’s book in a month or it could mean we’re working on it for 2 years. It could also mean we decide to toss something out that just isn’t working for us. It happens!
School for us includes real life. Living is learning, believe it or not!
So, without further ado…. Here is our MAIN curriculum! LIFE! The one that we center everything else around.
And secondly… The Family School!
The one we do all together. The boys aren’t quite ready for this one but little C participates when we are doing something that looks fun and interesting to him.
This is from Latter-Day Learning. It is an LDS curriculum that is pretty much all-inclusive. It covers History, Geography, Literature, Science, Art and Music. The only things you really need to add are Math and Language Arts. The reason they aren’t included is because this curriculum is designed to include children from ages 4-12. Math and LA are level based which would make it hard to incorporate with such a wide variety of ages. I love that it incorporates both spiritual and secular together. Each lesson is based on a Gospel Principle.
I will tell you right now that we are absolutely LOVING it so far. But I’m not going to go into too much detail right now. There is a more in depth review of this curriculum in the works. Stay tuned…
Miss K’s curriculum:
Math – Life of Fred (Fractions, Decimals and Percents)
Language Arts – The Giggly Guide to Grammar (I would link you to the Amazon page for this item but it doesn’t come with the parent CD on Amazon. Find it somewhere else for the better deal :))
Tech Class – Mobile Apps for Beginners
Religion – Discover the Book of Mormon Grades 4-7 A more in depth review of this coming up as well.
Drawing – ARTistic Pursuits, Elementary 4-5 Book One Again… an in depth review coming shortly.
This is what I love about homeschooling. Miss K is so interested in learning more about the Book of Mormon and she wants to be an artist. We are able to customize her education to those interests and dreams. I don’t have A or H doing drawing because they haven’t shown the interest in it like K has. Miss A is starting to show an interest. Take a look at her curriculum and you’ll notice in her choice of Tech classes.
Miss A’s curriculum:
Math – Life of Fred (Elementary Series)
Language Arts – informal lessons by Mom :)
Tech Class – Drawing, Sculpting, and Animation Foundations
Miss A really wants to focus on having beautiful handwriting this year so that is one of the things we will be working on. She would also like to learn cursive.
Miss H’s curriculum:
Math – Life of Fred (Elementary Series)
Language Arts – informal lessons by Mom
Tech Class – Engineering Foundations
Miss H didn’t really have anything extra she wanted to work on. I am perfectly fine with that!
The Boys curriculum:
This year for the boys we are going to focus on the letter sounds and numbers. For B we will also focus on shapes and colors as he has not mastered them yet. We will also do a lot of little projects to keep them busy while the girls are working.
In addition to everything already mentioned, we plan on continuing with Nature Study. This is something that I believe comes pretty naturally to kids anyway so it’s not hard. They love exploring the outdoors. Finding bugs and spotting birds are favorite pastimes for my kids.
We are having so much fun already this year. I just know it’s going to be our best homeschool year yet! We’re off to a great start. How about you?
Not sure how this box got here and I can’t get it to go away. So, I thought I’d write in it. Hi! ;)
5 comments:
I am glad you are liking the Family School and look forward to your post about it.
I would love to know more of what the Tech thing is, if you get a second will you send me a quick email about that at thethingsilovemost@gmail.com Thanks Brooke!!
My sister used Family School last year. Is this your first year with it? Her kids learned SO much!
Yes, this is our first year using Family School. We are loving it so much that I'm pretty sure it's something we will continue to use forever! It's been a lot of fun and I feel like we (myself included) have learned more in the few lessons we've done than I could have imagined. Pretty cool!
I'm so glad I found your blog! We have just decided to homeschool next year and I am researching The Family School. We have six year old twins, a five year old and then a little 2 yo. I'm excited for all we will be learning! Thanks for your review and I look forward to following along in your adventures!
Hannah, thank you so much! I'm so glad you stopped by and I wish you luck in all your homeschooling adventures. It's a lot of fun! If you ever have any questions I would be happy to help you out.
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