Choosing Curriculum

 Well, it is that time of the year again. Time to decide on curriculum...

 For the last several years I have used one main curriculum, Sonlight, for most of our educational needs. I LOVE Sonlight, in fact, I have to watch myself not to come on too strong when telling people about it, but that is with most things I like, I am a little pushy. But I digress, Sonlight for us is exactly what we need. And I think whether you are a homeschooler, or just a parent who wants to add in that extra something, you HAVE to choose the best fit for your unique family structure.

Most of us love, love, love to read; Sonlight is a literature based curriculum. We all love history, animals, and learning about the whole world; Sonlight's core is based in rich history texts from all over the world, and has wonderful books on animals in every core we have gotten. I do not believe in grading everything my kids accomplish, I feel grading is needed in school because it would too difficult to track so many students progress without a grading scale. But at home, I am with them, I see what they accomplish, what they struggle with, what comes with ease. Their Entire school year is planned with their abilities at the center. So, grading for me is a waste of time and Sonlight supports this. This may not be the case with you, again you must not base yourself, family or homeschool on someone else's standards! But, please remember to find the perfect fit for you!

This year the boys will be studying their second year of middle school World History, the girls will be in their second year of elementary World History. A few of the amazing books, (their version of 'textbooks'), are: George Washington's World, The Story of the World: Early Modern and Modern Times, But Don't All Religions Lead to God, How to Stay Christian in High School, Classic Poetry, The Endless Steppe, Out of Many Waters, and Anna and the King. This is just a FEW of the 50 plus books for just History, Bible and Reading for the boys! The girls have just as many including, Gladys Aylward, Good Queen Bess, Michelangelo, A Poke in the I, Tales of Robin Hood, and Marco Polo!

Then of course we have science, Mr. Bookworm will be doing Biology, complete with dissection, Dancing Girl is doing Zoology, and SurvivorMan and Sweetie Pie are doing Astronomy. We will be growing frogs, and have an ant farm, perhaps hatch some quail eggs, and grow butterflies. They will make different types of rockets, a simple telescope, and a solar energy heater. To go along with 4-H, they will be making insect displays, dried leaves and flowers of different kinds, and wildlife conservation dioramas. Not to mention our plan of having a few litters of rabbits and maybe some guinea pigs.

To top it off, we'll have art and music appreciation, along with instruction in the piano, and hopefully guitar and violin. And we have decided we'll be learning German as a foreign language, since Rosetta Stone does not carry Norwegian, our first choice.

They have language arts, spelling, and writing added in with core, and math is separate for each of them of course. We use teaching textbooks, a CD-ROM program for math, as it is so much easier for me. Yes, sometimes, I use tools to make life easier. I hate teaching math! Math is easy for me, but I do it in kinda my own way, so teaching the kids takes a lot longer than I like. TT math teaches the lesson, grades the lessons, and makes a printable report card! This is the only subject I grade by the way! Yes, easy, easy, easy!

I have come to terms with the cost of homeschooling this way. It is NOT cheap; not that there are not ways to homeschool frugally, there are many! But this works for me, and I am willing to cut back on many things so that I can do it my way. If you know me, you know this, I buy our clothes at thrift stores or on sale, do not have my hair or nails done, and make my own laundry soap. It is all about shifting things to get what you need. We always buy our books with our tax return. I figure we get so much per kid anyhow, that money is easily just transferred to their education.

I hope that everyone takes this for what it is, just one persons way of doing things! That is the wonderful thing about the freedom to choose how to educate our children. We all get to choose what is best for our family, whether it is public or private schools, homeschool, unschool, or co-op! Happy Parenting!