I know this is somewhat early but I was wanted to get thought on a few new curriculums;
What I use now with my daughter who is 4;
reading- teaching reading in a 100 easy lessons (love it) she is doing well with this and has begun slow reading ,various web sites.
math- math u see (love it), LM, various web sites
*science- various readings and projects (looking for a program). Was looking into The Answers book 4 Kids, by Ken Ham.
*Sonlight curriculum- I was lucky enough to have someone give me an old teachers manual and I’ve been checking out books from the library that are available to follow along somewhat with the reading. My kids 4 and 2 could take it or leave it.
My son could care less about most of this stuff he just wants play with his trucks and sword.
My 5 year old boy loves The Story of the World for history. You can get the book and the activity book and we even have it on CD. We read along as listen to the CD. It includes art projects, maps to color and so forth. There is a four year program that you begin in first grade.
We are just getting ready to start Noeo science. It looks like a program we are going to love. Both programs are for a classical education and also include reading other works besides a textbook.
I also love Writing With Ease for my 5 year old.
If you haven’t read The Well Trained Mind you might want to. I wish I had read it when I was just starting out with my kids. It is exactly the kind of education I want my kids to have.
I ordered the history book and the well trained mind from the library, looking forward to going over them . As far as the activity book, I’ll have to google that and see where I can purchase it.
I have heard good things about writing with ease and will look into getting that for the upcoming school year. I haven’t looked into the science yet but will let you know if I do.
I have always homeschooled my children. My oldest is 14. We used Abeka books and also Christian Liberty Press. I was very happy with that curriculum but I did try other through the years. I realized that for my older children we will stick with the Abeka curriculum. I really like their curriculum. I have always wanted to read The Well Trained Mind and I finally did a year and a half ago. I loved the book and how it broke down teaching the subjects. The authors are a mother and daughter and they also produce their own curriculum. The Story of the World is put out by the daughter as well as Writing With Ease. I also use First Language Lessons put out by the mother. I am very happy with these books. My friend just recently exposed me to the Noeo Science curriculum. http://www.noeoscience.com/ She actually had it sent to my house since she lives out of the country and I got to look through the whole program. I loved it. There is a guide book and then it comes with whatever supplementary books you need and experiments ready in a box. They have Biology, Chemistry and Physics, I think. You can check their website. The lessons are short but they still use the classical style of teaching in that the children have to create notebook pages writing down words and definitions that they learned as well as draw a picture and write a few sentences about what they learned.
I really love this kind of schooling because the children have to think to come up with the narrations. A narrationis just a short retelling of what they read or learned. It is very simple in the early years and gets more in depth as they get older. They can’t just answer a fill in the blank or multiple choice question. I think they master the material far better this way.
Let me make one more recommendation for Phonics workbooks. I love the Adventures in Phonics workbooks from Christian Liberty Press. They are so thorough. They have 3 levels beginning with Kindergarten and they teach the rules of phonics and really lay a great foundation. They also help children with spelling. The link to view them is here http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product?item_no=29810. They are inexpensive and great in my opinion.
I did some Doman with my child years ago but she didn’t read as a baby. I had her start the phonics workbook when she was 4 and told her some of the sounds and she was reading on her own in no time. I never sat and pointed at words and helped her sound them out. She literally went from being a non-reader to reading overnight. She wasn’t just reading simple books either, being the youngest at the time she had to keep up with her sisters and was reading Nancy Drew and other chapter books at 5 years old. It is my opinion that you can’t fail in trying to teach your baby to read. You are exposing them to language and that is definitely a benefit. If they don’t appear to read you have still taught them a lot about the sounds of the letters and so forth.
I am a tutor for the home school and public school systems. I have worked with the gifted and challenged children, and am usually given the children who are having difficulty learning to read. My success rate is 93% with these children. There are a few simple things I have learned:
50% of the population are hands on learners…sounds like your son. Hands on learners are very bright children, but are rarely interested in the traditional curriculum. So I use a fun hands on curriculum for all my kids. My kids often cry if they are not able to play the game, making my job so much easier. You can learn more about this curriculum at this website http://www.read-phonics.com/
Nine times out of ten, if a child has difficulty learning to read, they are enunciating some of the sounds incorrectly making it difficult to blend the sounds to form words. Parent/ educators can hear the correct enunciation for free at this link http://www.read-phonics.com/free-phonics-sounds-video.html
Please keep us posted as this is a passion of mine.
Thank you all for the wonderful sites, and info. Keep up the good work finding the best curricula for your child. I always say each child is differnet and each curricula needs to be adapted for that child. Not all curricula works for all children.
Romacox, your product would work well in the US but other countries do have different sounds for different phonemes (or digraphs or whatever the blends are called)…
I looked at your site and you mentioned you’d never hear any accent that pronounces when “wu-hen”. True, I’ve heard worse accents…pronouncing it “Huh-wen”.
You stated on your site that your pronounciation of the phonics is correct regardless of your accent. Which is not correct. This is a problem I’ve encountered with Tweedlewink phonics. Now I know why Americans pronounce things with their distinct accent. They are taught to from the moment they learn sounds of vowel letters, let alone combined letters.
For instance, in Australia and I believe in England too, “er” is prounced “uh” for most words. Not “errr”. So I have to correct this when using US materials, or else my kids would seem weird around here. Much like if kids there said “uh” for “er” in the US. And “O” is not pronounced “ah” like you do in the US. We make it sound more like an o. Shorter and more clipped. So I have to Australianize that. So phonics is different depending on the country!!! Accents do change the pronunciation of the words. Here we would say “her” like an American (without rolling the r at the end like you would.). But a posh Brit would say “huh”. But we would both say Buttuh for butter.
. As far as the activity book, I’ll have to google that and see where I can purchase it.