Why I decided to homeschool/ my curriculum choices.

Hey everyone, next week Olivia and I are going to try to start our new school year, since the beginning of May we have been doing summer school where we work on what Olivia wants to and when she wants to. The last couple of weeks she has not asked to do any kind of formal learning so we have not but we are both ready to jump back in there. I have a few fun things planned for the start of a new school year that I will share with everyone later; we will also have a busy week with doctor’s appointments and first time at a co-op function so I am not sure how much "formal" learning we will be doing. Since we are going to be starting our new school year I though I would share with you all why I want to homeschool my kiddos, there are so many more reasons but here are a few on the top of my list.

 

1. I know that I can provide a safe environment for them to learn
2. I like the idea of teaching my kids to love learning not just giving them an education.
3. I have been there “teacher” since the day that they were born. (why just because they turn 4 or 5 does that have to change)
4. It fits the way we choose to live our life. We like to be able to just pack up and go away for a few days whenever we feel like it.
5. I do not want someone else to be responsible for how my kids turn out.
6. I know that there are a lot of teachers out there that do fine by there students   but I don’t want fine for my kids I want spectacular.
7. I will be able to give my kids a personalized learning experience that no school or teacher will.
8. It brings my family closer together, If my kids were at school for 7 hours a day 5 days a week and my hubby is gone 12 hours a day 4 days a week we would never be all together. And when we would be together we would have to get all the “must do” stuff done and still not have time for the fun stuff.
9. Most importantly its fun!

 

Now onto my curriculum choices

 

This year Olivia who is 5 will be starting first grade up until now I have not really used a curriculum. And although I have chosen several curriculums for this year we will not be following them completely to the letter but it has been nice to have an idea of things we will be doing.

Math

For math we have decided to use Math Mammoth grade 1.  We have not tried this out yet but it looks like it will be a good fit for our family and covers everything that should be taught in 1^st grade math.  It starts with simple addition and subtraction and covers money, time, and calendar. We are very excited to try this curriculum out.

Reading 

For reading we are going to do a combination of phonics and sight words. For phonics I have decided to try out Explode the Code we are going to start on book 2 which covers consonant blends this is something else that we are trying for the first time this year. For sight words we will be finishing up the You Can Read lessons from 1+1+1=1. I am not sure what we are going to be doing after that I am thinking about this reading in 1st reading series from Enchanted Homeschooling Mom. Plus there will be lots of leveled readers and read aloud from me.

 Science

 I found this Elementary Life Science curriculum that I was able to download for free and include a text book, and teacher’s book. It has everything for a full 36 weeks of science with experiments worksheets and tests all included.  

 Geography/History

 We will be going thru the Road Trip USA curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler this includes a teacher and student books with everything they need to learn about each of our 50 states with coloring pages, games, creating a lapbook or notebook and even recipes from each state. She also recommends living history books to go along with each state. 

 I also have a book of mini lessons for writing and we will be pulling art projects from all of our other subjects. Wow typing this all out it  looks like a lot and like I have said we have not tried to follow a curriculum before so we are just going to go with the flow and the only thing that really matters is that we keep on learning.

If anyone has used any of the above curriculum I would love to hear how it worked out for you. Leave a comment!

linked with

 

 

-Becca

 

 

Links to the blogs mentond above. All 3 blogs have lots of freebees for homeschoolers.