Curriculum Choices Part 1

In an earlier post I said that I would share some of our curriculum choices for this year, so here it is as promised. We are really excited to dive into our studies for this year. I have been researching and budgeting for months. Jeff, the official principal of our home school, has been an amazing sounding board through these months of research, helping me work through each of the choices and the different learning styles of our children. The education of our children is a top priority in our home. Together we are thrilled with our choices.

In these early years the Three R's of course are the meat and potatoes of school, but boy are the gravy and dessert electives fun too! So, I will start off with our meat and potato choices.

For Math we will be trying out a program called Math U See.


 

We used a combination of Singapore and Horizons math last year with lots of manipulatives, but it continues to be a difficult subject for both of the boys. Math U See is manipulative based, and has a short DVD segment for each lesson. I usually would be less inclined to have someone else "teaching" for me, but I think in this case it might be better for the boys to have the initial ideas presented via video with Mommy as the back up encourager and instructor. Plus, it will be at least one subject that is not so Mommy time intensive requiring one-on-one instruction.  I thought last year that having the boys do the same thing would cut down on our time, but it does not. The boys both need so much one-on-one at this age!

Language Arts is of course a huge portion of our schooling for first grade. We will be continuing with much of what we started last year.

We started last year with a program called the Primary Arts of Language Reading and Writing (PAL).


This program comes from the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW). IEW primarily teaches writing, specifically for 3rd grade and up. It is what we intend on using in the future. The PAL program, however is a complete Language Arts program for K-2 grade. We will be using it for K-1st grade. It is a unique program that uses the blended sight and sound methods of teaching reading and writing. It is a gentle yet very fun introduction to language arts with lots of games and hands on applications. It also lays baby step foundations in writing the "IEW" way that will be used in the future.

Scheduled into the PAL program is a separate spelling program called All About Spelling. We did not get to start this last year, and are very excited to begin this year. AAS looks like a lot of fun. It is a multi-sensory method of learning spelling that will be especially beneficial for my kinesthetic learner. (I will let you guess which one that is!! :))




The only "workbook" that we will add to our language arts is the Explode the Code workbooks. These are phonics workbooks that are the best I have found. The predictable repetition of these workbooks has really helped to cement phonics rules and concepts for the boys above and beyond their PAL work. The boys will be finishing up book 3 of the 1st grade work and moving into books 4-6 of the 2nd grade work as they are ready. This workbook is generally their school work that I set out in the AM for them to do when they wake up. They can work on it independently and usually are assigned 1-2 pages per morning. We review and go over corrections after breakfast.



For reading practice we will be combining Bob books, Sonlight 1st Grade readers, and a variety of other books from our home library and local library.

So there you have it. Our meat and potatoes for 2012-13. Coming in the next post.....the gravy and dessert!