Curriculum

For the past month I've been researching home school curriculum for next year (you may have noticed the blog postings were a bit short recently). Its slightly exciting and incredibly overwhelming. The amount of curriculum out there is amazing. I thought about getting some sort of curriculum for kindergarten, but I didn't think it would really be necessary. While it isn't necessary, its been a bit of a challenge.

I got a print out of the states kindergarten standards and have referred to that from time to time, but most of our school time consists of reading. We go through a reading lesson every day, practice words that he has struggled with, we review the calendar and the rest is up in the air. While I like the freedom to cover whatever Ben is interested in, I sometimes feel like we are all over the place and we aren't really learning anything. The idea of some structure and a real course of action is exciting to me!

I've heard that if you get a full curriculum from a company, you should have it ordered by now because they are usually on back order by the time summer hits and its 50/50 if you'll get it by fall. I went into full research mode and got a bit overwhelmed for a bit. I started looking at some popular curriculums, some that friends use and moved to what ever looked interesting. I referred back to The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise and looked at some of their suggestions. Then programs and reviews started to run together. I have a basic idea of what I want and what will work for Ben so once I found something I liked for history and science, I bought it and moved on. I'm actually not using a real curriculum for those two subjects. I found a few books that will work together, cover all the major topics a first grader should be aware of and that looked interesting, thought provoking and offered activity suggestions not just sitting and reading then moving on to the next subject.

I decided against a full curriculum from one company mostly because the prices are ridiculous and because Ben is ahead of the game in some areas and severely lacking in others. I wanted to make sure what I got fit his needs rather than getting something a company thought should fit every first grader.

Next, I moved on to spelling/writing/grammar. I took The Well Trained Minds suggestion and am using Spelling Workout for spelling work. A friend uses that and she and her son really like it. I checked out her book and thought it had plenty of diversity in the lessons to keep Ben from getting bored while covering a range of topics. My friend also uses First Language Lessons (also by The Well Trained Mind authors) for grammar and writing. I was torn on the book because it has several poems to memorize, practices story and picture narration and does some copy work. All of that I liked. It just seemed like the actual grammar part was lacking just a bit. I found a program called Growing with Grammar which focuses on everything First Language lessons seems to just breeze over. I think I will use both books and pick and choose which lessons we will use every day.

I would like to cover subjects like art, music appreciation and Bible study. Those wont be daily subjects (unless we are working on Bible verse memorization). While I've looked at several art books, I think we're going to stick to library books for those subjects.

That leaves math. I've slowly weaned out several programs leaving me with 2 choices. They are completely different from each other. One seems more basic, but boasts of being real world applicable. One seems more challenging, but is heavy on the use of manipulatives. Ben is definitely a finger counter so I think the manipulatives would be very beneficial at this point, but I don't want him to become dependent on them or become overwhelmed or bored with the program. On the other hand, I don't want to get the more basic program and have him become bored or become overconfident and stop trying/focusing--something he's been known to do once or twice! I'm going to give math a little more thought before I make a decision. I'm just excited to have a plan for next year. The best part, every book, except 1, has been less than $17. Knowing that should we continue to home school the rest of the kids, they will be able to use many of the same books, makes it that much better!