Ive started organising buying next years' curriculum. Im reusing the calvert second grade stuff for my six year old son. Ive spent a lot of time rubbing out pencil in workbooks and making it ready to go for him. I WISH I hadnt let my oldest write in them! Im going to have to add a few things for him. For my oldest Im having SUCH trouble finding things we will love. She is on about a 6/7 grade level for everything and I am so indecisive about what our goals are this year. How is everyone else doing with the great summer hunt for great homeschool materials?
I'm mostly done. Mostly I just need to get everything prepped and organized - pull supplies together for science and art, and finish putting my kindy curriculum all together for the year.
I just have our Latin to order. Once that is done I will be all set on what I need to buy. I have most everything organized and planned out too. I need to find some good health sheets to supplement the book we are using but beside that I should be good to go..yeah!
I learned that whiteout is much easier than erasing lol. I used to get stuff passed down from my sis and after many erasers the whiteout idea dawned on me.
I had everything bought in May, but I still have a lot of prep work to get done. I'm putting off the printables and stuff till last minute(ink is so expensive I have to budget for it!) but all their binders and things are ready to go! I still need to alter my MOH manual. Need dh to do some spine cutting and hole drilling. That thing is so bulky!
Summer? I start in January! (but that's just me) I think I have just about everything for the to-be-ninth grader. Except math. She's SO weak that I'm just not sure what to do. I may go with Saxon 87 (which I already have), that's what she tested into when we quit in June, after doing CLE 400 and some "extra practice" books. I'll be ordering for the 2nd grader some Bible from CLE, but I think that's about it. For the 4th grader I'll get some Bible and LA, but we'll be finishing up the math and reading from last year (since she just joined us at mid-year) before ordering the next level.
Doing well, think we have it almost all covered! Still need to order MUS Zeta student for my oldest, and waiting on the Amazon order (made from Swagbucks points!!) to trickle in and finish off our history list. Oh, and I guess there's one more novel I'll have to purchase for that directly from the publisher. Seems NO ONE ELSE carries it. *roll eyes* It took me a long while to decide what to do about my 2nd/4th grade reading lists. Finally got it figured out and posted on my blog if you want to look! Has history (middle ages) read-alouds, once weekly novels (to be followed the rest of the week with "word work" and fun unit activities), and scheduled read alone material mostly for my 4th grader as my 2nd grader needs some remediation in phonics in order to better read by himself.
Im SO behind! I haven't ordered even one book, have barely touched on what I think I might want to do for the next year! I think I might need a push to get myself moving and sort all this out! Great blog DaLynn! You look like you have a wonderful year ahead of you! Why didnt I think of whiteout! Honestly that has to be easier than sitting there rubbing out for hours. If I get the books into a useable state, I think Calvert 2nd grade should be fine for my youngest, if I combine it with extra handwriting, and some more reading for him. For my daughter Ive decided on Galore Park Junior Math 3 Galore Park Geography 1 Maps, Globes and Graphs F National Geographic Geography Bee materials Galore Park Junior English 3 Write Source Grade 6 Spelling Workout F 240 Vocabulary Words grade 4 and 5 Close Reading age 9-11 - Mary Firth 100 years of Poetry for Children. Mr William Shakespeare's Plays Marcia Williams When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit War and Watermelon (because she asked to!) The Tempest Inspiring Quotes cursive writing practice. Galore Park Geography 1 Galore Park Science 1 Animals David Burnie GCSE Biology 21st Century Science History - She wants to study WW2. Right now, Ive no idea, but Im a little concerned that we will not be moving forwards cronologically to medieval history, but she hates history with a passion, so I don't want to turn her off it completely! I suppose we can always go backwards. Steck Vaughn Critical Thinking E Mensa Logic Puzzles for kids Mensa Crosswords for kids Famous Paintings Usbourne Activity cards, plus print outs Perhaps we will do some code breaking to go with the WW2 and link it into math. For my youngest, I was thinking about Roald Dahl and the Fudge series, and adding the Horrible Histories box set, to try and get him reading and thinking about history, as I really didnt like the Calvert Social studies. I might get him Maps, Globes and Graphs A, but am not sure we really need to do that yet. See, Ive not got myself sorted at all!
I have mostly decided for the to-be 5th grader: for math he'll do Life of Fred Fractions and the Keys to Fractions books, for LA he'll continue with Christian Light, except we'll probably do Soaring with Spelling as the spelling activities in CLE don't work for him, we may do CLE Reading, but we've never done a formal reading curriculum, so I don't know. For science we'll either do A Reason For or Rainbow science's Colors (if it is ready), for SS we are going to do Notgrass's America the Beautiful, for bible we are leaning towards Bible Study Guide, and for art we be doing some stuff out of the Discovering American Artists book. He will also continue his guitar lessons and he may decide to play soccer again (though he didn't enjoy this past season at all, so he's kind of negative feeling about it). So now I just have to wait until we have the money to order it.... the science and SS are the most expensive by far, but I think they both will be worth it.
Oh to the summer wait for me.... I can't stand it. I know what I want but its just waiting for the money to purchase it. I just told my dh I am getting stressed that I haven't ordered yet. He just gives me a deer in the head light look and says, "Its only July" sigh.... I understand his thinking but I want to have everything set and ready to go. Plus I start back to work the last week of August. I know once I order everything is set up for me. I just need to sit down and get my mind wrapped around it for the year. My kids always want to go back to Bob Jones every time I try something else. So this year instead of looking around I am just going to order the complete grade level. They do a lot of the work independently so it works well.
I have my stuff, pretty much, there is one book I am considering ordering to go with my Notgrass history/lit/Bible, there is now a new workbook to go with it and this may be what we need for ds, or not so we may start without it. I like to try to get things before summer becasue I do lots of camps during the summer ( vbs, and two camps, I work at them) so I have to ber ready p to planning mode. Once August gets here I will get the planning pages set up for at least the first month or so, and get ready with my weekly first two weeks.
If you need some suggestions for 7th grade science have you looked at considering Gods creation? It reaches as high as 8th grade and is really well put together.
TeacherMom, Im afraid we are secular homeschoolers who teach evolution. With the greatest respect, there are some lovely Christian resources out there, but they are just not for our family.
I'm getting there...big revisions as of late. Lots of preparation and reading to do this summer. I've been trying to sort out math the last couple days and realized that it won't be quite as simple as I had hoped. I need to figure things out soon. My oldest will be primarily independent this next year, but it turns out that this is a big time hog for me. Previously we would read together and discuss as we learned. Yes, "we" because my education was lacking in some areas. Now, in order to have any discussions or understanding of what he is learning I have to study and read ahead of time.
Kitson, take a look at Exploration Education. Looks like a really solid science with lots of hands-on and no religious slant.
We had a bad year last year... it was really poor educationally, financially, emotionally, etc... Anyway, this year, hubby with new job... new city... new baby... new church.... new everything.... We are going to get involved in sports, a local homeschool group (never really done that before), and I think we'll use SOS for science, social studies, bible, and math. The kids are really getting tired of book work and writing (they hate writing!) I'm going to hit us with some keyboarding, spanish CD's, and handwriting in August and add Rod and Staff English in September, then we will have time to buy the laptops that hubby wants them to have and set up our home network the way he wants... plus buy the SOS curriculum. We won't be starting the Math, Science, Social Studies, and Bible stuff from SOS until October, but we can work half days on Saturdays... Sorry long...
Pecangrove, science is a nightmare! We tried Real Science 4 Kids, but found it a bit "fluffy", standard McgrawHill Science for the Stanford10 test....which was dry, boring and useless..We quite like Science Fusion. I will have a proper look at Exploration, at first glance it does indeed look good! Now they both want Spanish! Im totally disorganised and need a nice break somewhere less hot! Ive got history more or less sorted out, as in I know what we are doing. Im going to put together a WWII course. Im hoping ot be able to print out some ration books, evacuation tags, propaganda posters, lots of primary sources for them to work with. I WILL get this done!!
Kitson check out Considering Gods creation science, it really is interesting and then there is also Lyrical Science, which I have for sale if anyone wants it just a little over the shipping cost, it has a cd a note book and a teacher book.
sorry to interject what grade level are your kids on --- MATH with SOS can be hard for high school levels unless your kids love typing numbers We have used SOS and AOP nearly every year in some way or another, but the math is one thing we found tedious. it has good stuff in it but its tiring to type in all those numbers.
Already ordered and received. Working now on printing out pages. We are trying GeoMatters Trail Guide to Learning POS this year. It is all inclusive, except for Math and we use A Beka for that. I am adding a few extras, like Cursive for my 3rd grader, and a light Writing program for my 5th and 6th graders, plus beginning Latin for us all.
