I am deciding exactly what to use next year. I actually already have a lot from my older children. I bought BJU math for my 7 yr old for this year, but he definitely prefers Singapore Math. He has been asking to use the old hand-me-down Singapore math books that used to belong to the older kids. I only have the textbooks as the workbooks, of course, were used and written in. I am trying to decide if I should still hold on to the BJU math or give it away. I have some books missing from the series and need the workbooks anyway, but it is easy to just pull pages from the BJU book (they are perferated) and give them when he needs extra review. So, we will go one of those ways for him. BUT, he also loves Teaching Textbooks. He is good at math so I don't know if I should forget it with the Teaching Textbooks (I will need to look over it, but I have heard that you can go a level down on each thing. So far, I have only dealt with the high school levels with TT, I have not seen the elementary levels). He likely needs a 3rd grade level before he attempts that anyway. I also like Math U See. My 7 yr old is advanced and gets things quickly. I plan to use Spelling Workout C. I have not decided on English yet. My kindergartener is a completely different person. He is not advanced at all. He does not even know his alphabet or numbers or letters yet. I am thinking of winging it with various things and trying to keep everything multisensory. I was considering purchasing Oak Meadow kindergarten as from the sample, it looked like it had a lot of good hands on activities. He already owns various workbook type things including handwriting without tears..the Get Ready for School level. I wonder if I should consider any formal early curriculum with him. I know a lot of people used to so stuff like Sing, Spell, Read, and Write, but...I never hear of anyone doing it anymore and it seems pricey. Ok...so that is it. I would love suggestions for the kindergartener. I think the older one (who will be 8 this next school year) will pick what he wants.
We used Bob Jones K5. It was colorful and engaging. We were usually done within 30 minutes to an hour. They had lots of songs and little projects you could do [e.g. make a policeman's hat]. It really just consisted in terms of workbooks of math, phonics, and language. The language workbook, however, covered themes like community leaders and science stuff. My kids really liked using the candle to learn what fires need to burn. I loved the K5 math workbook because it was built around a farm theme and had lots of cute farm animal manipulatives. It was colorful and had 3 main characters for the kids to follow throughout. I'd also use starfall.com for phonics/alphabet help. I think my two learned their alphabet sounds more quickly from that site than from anything else. Oh, and the readers from the K5 curriculum were really nice, too. Lots of variety.
For kindy I use the workbooks the walmart type workbooks, and I also use Kumon workbooks ( target or amazon.com) I like the first few levels of the Kumon. They have activites that my two kids fight over doing. Like cutting and pasting, tracing, and dot to dots. My son hated the math numbers 1-30 book but he learned his numbers through it. They have lower level of cutting as well. I like that most of them are things my dd can do on her own while I work with the older boy. Mainly they work on small muscle control, letters etc. I also have just used things online for kindy. It is so easy to find way more then enough free online material. Starfall is great for reading. learningpages has more themed worksheets then you can ever use for free as well. I took a few hours in the summer to put together an outline of topics ( I used the 7 days of creation) then found general websites/worksheets to deal with those topics and the month before I sat down and spent a few hours getting material that was themed and on the level or task we are working on. Like this month we are talking about livestock, so we are doing worksheets with camels, and such from LP and reading books on livestock. Ds is on addition of the 3+ facts so we will use cattle clip art to make counters and groups and worksheets taht have the 3+ facts on them. Dd is intrested in colors at the moment so she is learning about the color of horses, and cows from books we checked out. Very easy and adjustable depending on the kids desires, and levels at that moment.
My DS is like your 7 yr old, he's working in 1st/2nd grade right now so next year we will be in 2nd/3rd I'm thinking based on reviews I've gotten and what I've seen so far... Math - Math U See Spelling - Spectrum Spelling Workbook (will incorporate phonics with spelling) Language Arts and writing - I'm going to use a combination of the spectrum workbook and Scott Foresman Reading - books will be based off History / Science right now we are reading our way through the Magic Treehouse Series. History - Story of the World Science - REAL Science Life Science Vocabulary will come from science , history, reading etc Art / Music will come from the period we are studying in History.
DD4 and DS5 will be doing school together. I am using Little Hands To Heaven and Little Hearts For His Glory. Some people use Little Hands To Heaven for K or they will use Little Hearts For His Glory for K. The first one teaches letters and their sounds, numbers up to 10 and basic colors. Daily bible stories with activies and math activities and you can act out the stories. It's a cute fun curriculum that my youngest just loves. Now my son is enjoying it more than before. You don't need nothing but the guide ($30) and a few what nots around the house for the art activies. If you don't have what is needed it is soo easy to subblement. Now for Little Hearts For His Glory, I just finished going thru the manual and the books that go with it. History for Little Pilgrims, History Stories for Children, Earlybird Singapore Math 2a/b, CLP's Science (The World God Made), family bible or children's bible (I am using Family Time Bible), Doing it Carefully and Finding the Answers (Rod and Staff), and a series of books-Peter Rabbit and 11 Other Favorite Tales and Children's for Devontion Hour, you pick what handwriting and phonics to use. If you go to the site it shows stuff for 1st grade because you can us it for 1st also. I am using Ordinary Parents Guide To Teach Reading, A Reason For Handwriting K. I will say I won't now but I usally end up buying those workbooks from the $1 store or at Borders because they want them. As I type I am looking at about 5 of them on the table. And this summer we will actually use experiments out of all the dicounted science experiement books that I bought thru the winter this summer. It's more for everyone and not just K but some are gonna a bit chanllenging for my DD9
i am using little hearts for his glory by carrie austen. she lists books you need but you can also tailor portions to fit your childs needs. the curriculum book is inexpensive itself and i didn't have to buy alot for it. we skip the music part becuase we do other things music-wise, and use Math-u-see instead. we haven't been doing the handwriting. i love it so far! i used the preschool curriculum from her with both kids . from heart of dakota publishing, but you can get it from many other places. i just relalized the preivois post was talking about the same curriculum i was! jenn d.
