Hi there... Deep in decision making for next year. Money is tight this year...so I'm trying to figure out if I can do all this from what I have and spend less than $200 this year. I will have a 3rd Grader and a 5th Grader next year. My thoughts were this... Abeka History of the US (we have this curriculum) using it for BOTH kids and just kind of "dumming down" a little for my 3rd grader) My thoughts were to create their Language Arts program using Historical Fiction that goes with the time period we're learning in the History book. Having each of them read a chapter a day writing down words they don't know/understand. Taking those words and looking them up in the dictionary and keep a vocabulary notebook. I'll also get Easy Grammar/Daily Grams for them to do a grammar sheet a day. And Sequential Spelling 2 for the 5th grader - and the 3rd grader will either do SS 1 OR I'll use the freebie from Super Teacher Worksheets...and just add that each week he needs to write a sentence using the word. Their handwriting could be either the documents that the book recommends memorizing for the year - using a free website - or making it copywork. I'm planning on using Writing Strands 2 (3rd Grader) and 3 (5th Grader) for Writing. We have Considering God's Creation for Science and will NOT be done this year...at all...so it will definitely stretch to next year. Math - they both use Lifepacs...so I'll get those - they'll be my purchases. Good thing for my 3rd grader, I just need to buy workbooks. Already have the teacher books. AND he's not quite done - and might not be done with the 2nd grade books by then anyway. Bible - I'm kind of up in the air on this one. I received a Free Philipians Bible Study Guide that's geared for kids...AND we have all the Nest Family Videos & Workbooks....so I could use those as well. How does this sound? Do I sound crazy???
Krista it sounds great! Very well planned and yes the CGC will stretch two years! Sort of what we did this year part that and some other things from library and online etc. for science that is. The rest of it sounds perfectly wonderful! Good job!
You can save some money by using things that you can get free online. the zaner-bloser spelling is good. I add sentences to it sometimes (but not always). http://www.zaner-bloser.com/spellingconnections/practice-pages.html Also you can use the grammar workbook from scott-foresman and it covers the grammar and writing. http://www.sfreading.com/resources/ghb.html
The readers/readalouds in Sonlight's Core 3 and 4 would be a great fit for the Abeka US History. Most of them are historical fiction and award winners (so libraries carry many of them). My oldest has completed Core 3 and is working through Core 4 and loves the historical fiction that are in them most of all. You can see the reading lists online at www.sonlight.com.
Krista, This is what we did since we are working on an even tighter budget than you are. First, I wrote to Book Samaritan to see what help we could get there. Secondly, I started with what we still needed and hit Jennifer's site of links: http://www.jennifererix.com for everything else we need. The Scott Foresman and Zaner-Bloser are good links to follow. Another good spelling resource is right here: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPorta...i&_pageLabel=ERICSearchResult&_urlType=action for Spelling for Writing books. One other math resource could be MEP if you aren't afraid of some British measurements tossed in there. Other than that, I think you've got a good plan going! Good luck!!!
Those links as well as what I posted are definitely free. The only real cost, if you want to associate one, is the paper (and toner/ink) to print them off.
thats great though cause if you have a binder like I do you could print the whole thing up for less than buying one , and it looks great, I looked at ZB for my 7th graders Spelling next year! Gonna give him a trial run if we like I will d/l the whole years Spelling and only have to get his lIt /grammar! I totally suggest using this!
They are free It's what we use, and will continue to use! I don't care for the MEP math.. it's tooooo British for me to handle.. I get confused, I can't imagine how lost it could make my kids!
To save on paper and ink, I print mine 2 pages per page.. does that make sense? It cuts the amount of paper in half... I also print on fast normal to conserve ink. I dont' do this until about 4th grade, when I expect that DS can write smaller. So for up to and including 3rd, I would be printing out on a full sheet of paper.
Thanks guys....do you ever get to your own thinking, and then you start to sound crazy to yourself? LOL. Thanks for the Eric portal...I've seen it before, but never really LOOKED at it. I guess that could be a complete L/A curriculum for a year! Same with the Scott Foresman, which we did use for a while this year -but we had bought the L/A from AOP so we just scratched out the handwriting and spelling and are using it. THANK YOU for the Sonlight suggestion...I didn't even THINK about using their read-alouds list - what a GREAT idea!!!! I love that you can look at them all! I'll just have to see where they fit with the Abeka books. I'm sure I can make some/most of them work just fine! I don't want to go to Book Samaritan b/c I know even though we're tight - we CAN pay for some stuff (and I'm factoring print/paper - but we bought a box of paper last year that we still have 6 or 7 reams left in it....AND hubby got me a great laser printer for Christmas...and the toner makes like 10K copies before running out!). I have been given some stuff for free already, and I'm trying hard to make them all work into our budget. My budget this year is coming from the books that sell at our Used Book Fair at the Convention this year. I so far have come up with about $400 worth of books - figuring I'll sell half. I'm hoping, too, to use half.com to get some stuff - they had the Writing Strands I wanted for CHEAP CHEAP - and currclick has them as downloads, too, so I thought of doing that instead...might be neat way to archive on CD vs. having the book...even could let my kids work off the computer instead of printing it off... Anyway....THANK YOU....I don't feel so "out there" any more.
Krista, I think that sounds great. Are your kids good spellers? If so, you might want to "forget" spelling, and make up lists from their literature, too. Also, with the history, use the textbook more as an outline. Fill in with library books, and you will find that you really don't have to "dummy it down" for the younger one. It will be very similar to what you're doing with Considering God's Creation.
No.. not 2 sided... when you click on the little printer icon in adobe reader, the box that comes up has something about fit to page, that is a drop down and you can click print multiple pages per sheet.. I select that and then select 2, and I think I do it horizontal.. meaning you will have 2 pages side by side. If you can pull off double sided easily that is great too.. you could even get 4 pages on a piece of paper! My printer is a pain in the rump when it comes to double sided printing, so I just don't do it often.
If you follow the link to Jennifer's site, there's a link there to the Glencoe language arts for grades 6-12. Open it in your browser, click the links to the different parts and save it that way. I tried saving it first and opening it normally without my browser but with the adobe reader program and it won't work. You've gotta be connected to get everything. Why pay for anything you don't have to?
Yep I have all the glenco stuff too. I don't pay for anything I don't have to!! We are raising soon to be 4 kids on one income. Our money is always tight! There are times I have less than $100 for 2 weeks worth of groceries (including animal food, toiletries, cleaning stuff).. so I have learned to make every single penny stretch.
it is so funny cause now that we are reaching the "okay we can afford to get the things we want not only theones we can get" there are tons of free things out there! lol! I am all for saving a buck for something else!
Another thing to look at is sites like edhelper.com. The basic membership is $20 per year, but you can get tons of activities for multiple grades and multiple subjects. It may be a bit of a task to create a solid curriculum around it, but it's a good resource for unit studies. Also, check out spellingcity.com. It's a free website. You can get spelling word lists off the web (tons of resources out there for this) and type the lists you want into spellingcity. They the kids can play games, take tests, practice writing the words etc.
Thanks Edies - I'm already a member of edhelper and use it for TONS of stuff. I kinda thought if I got them to create their own vocab lists - I could create fun worksheets and puzzles for them to help them learn them better and such. I do love edhelper for so many things. I'm planning on using them for our State History next year - the Abeka has 6 weeks built into the schedule for state history....I don't think we'll need near as long...but...I'll fill that in with edhelper. THANKS!
Dont' forget to hit the library (some have actual curriculum - and many have the "Everything your XXth grader needs to know" by Hirsh, which is a great resource) and look at the used websites/used curriculum fairs - vegsource.com, half.com, and hslda all have used curriculum available. I had to do it on my own for 8 years with NO budget, just the "how cheap can I get it?" so we used a lot of online lesson plans and downloads, resources from the library, and used curriculum. We were fortunate to have curriculum "fall into our laps" (aka - people were finished and just gave us a lot of stuff) which helped so much, and then anything really pricey I asked for as gifts for birthday/christmas. So you might try prayer too, and ask God to help you get what you need for the kids. We didn't buy any major, new curriculum until my ds was in 4th grade, and we bought "History of science through literature" which we LOVED - so we also got history of the horse, and US history as well. You might also see if friends in your homeschool group have something you can borrow - I lent my entire History of Science through LIt to a friend for all of last year since I didn't need it til next year. She loved it and loved that she didn't have to pay for anything. Maybe your homeschool group could start a lending library of its own? Any how - that is how I did stuff on the cheap. My familyd.50megs.com website has a link called "the cheap way we do things" --you might see if you can use anything there. Good luck!
