Hi everyone it’s been a bit since I have got on here. so busy with our 30 homeschoolers but I am trying to get things together for you guys to share what we are doing. www.sonlighteducation.com SEM it is FREE to download and use. It is Bible based and the new update will be available hopefully by October. We are using the first lessons from homeschooling folder, Desire of Ages, and family Bible Lessons. IT has a great teachers training program as well for the beginner to the advanced homeschoolers. We also in with this use either Rod and Staff and or Complete Curriculum for Math and History only. I love mixing these together. Now for our 2nd grade and under we use www.kidsparkz.com monthly theme units for light, dark, insects, animals, etc, for grades 3-8 we use www.schoolexpress.com for our theme units like land forms, water, states studies, etc, then www.lesson-library.com for grades 9-12 for out theme units for science. We are so excited to be using these programs. In the SEM curricula it has a plan to follow in the catalogue folder so we just go by those. For week one we use it for month 1 because we mix our content. Everyone that way is on the same page except for math and history. In the SEM there is voice, music, nature, history, language, spelling, health, bible lessons, bible devotion, and more. They are not finished with the curriculum but there is enough there to keep everyone busy. for our PRek and K we use Rad and staff with kidsparkz and SEM.
Is anyone else mixing and matching their curricula this year?
My DD is set to start kindergarten or grade 0 in January next year. I am still trying to find out where we will be by that stage before deciding whether to buy any curricula, but for now this is what we are doing:
Math: DD(18m) - counting anything and everything
DD(nearly 5yrs) - Horizons K (second half), MEP 1, Singapore 1
Reading: DD(18m) - LR curriculum - should start second semester before the end of this year, flashcards, letter flashacrds for early phonics
: DD(nearly 5yrs) - I am teaching the last of the phonics she needs during normal reading (eg the last few days we have covered -tion words which has involved a reminder about syllables, vocabulary lesson and the ending (tion and sion) She still reads aloud to me and I am still reading aloud to her daily - we vary the difficulty level of the books we read so that sometimes we are teaching new concepts and other times practicing for fluency.
Spelling: DD(18m) - emphasising letters in words, teaching letter sounds at the beginning of words when teaching letter sounds (phonemic awareness basically)
:DD(nearly 5yrs) - we have started a very early spelling session that is a home-made curriculum where I dictate a sentence to her and she writes it down with me helping if she gets stuck. The aim is to check basic phonetic spelling while introducing high frequency words at a slow and steady pace. She usually draws a picture of the sentence afterwards so I try to keep the sentences fun. This is also being used to teach basic punctuation.
Writing: DD(18m) - scribbling whenever her big sister is busy drawing/writing. I may start letting her colour in pictures that teach the alphabet letters as she likes colouring a lot more than her sister ever has.
:DD(5yrs) - the dictated sentence is written by her and I expect correct letter formation. We are slowly moving to writing in lines though this is slow work and because I feel the other writing is more important I am not doing too much on this as it needs to be a separate lesson. Once she is capable of spelling at least a few common words we will go back to more creative writing as she enjoys stories more - I was just getting tired of spelling everything for her over and over again.
Bible: DD(18m) - singing christian songs with actions and reading some Bible stories, she has a toddler sunday school class and also attends Moms and Tots at our church
:DD(5yrs) - www.mailboxclubonline.org that we do at home, Sunday school and I am hoping to get her back into the 5 yr old group at church on Fridays
The Rest: Reading lots of library books, story of the world we do occassionally, having experiment days, discussing geography as it links to any literature, science or current events we read about, art projects, listening to different music - all not planned much but it does get done, lots of playing games (some educational and some not), DD(5yrs) is very active and needs to burn off energy so we try to fit in Phys Ed in some form at least twice a day.