I haven't posted here in a while. Things have just been crazy. I have been homeschooling my kindergartener this year and our schedule is pretty light, but next year we need more hours. Our typical day is something like this: Devotional Math (MUS Primer) Reading (RME) Writing (Italics, plus copy work from RME) Read Aloud (FIAR book) Short lesson from FIAR and sometimes yoga. This is working well, but he tires of reading the same stories for five days... usually he can only handle two or three days of the same story. Some issues we are having are the fact that he has a mood disorder and gets easily frustrated. He's very smart but quits easily. That's when he's stable... when he's not everything goes out the window. Because of this I try to keep lessons short and have frequent breaks, the yoga helps him calm down some too. I also have a barely two year old who is into everything. Usually I just let him destroy the house while we work because try as I might, he is hard to distract. He likes to empty the bookshelf, throw my makeup, dismantle anything and everything... Anyway, here's my point - I'm happy with what we have other than science and social studies. I need something that requires relatively little preparation, or at least that can be prepared once a week ahead of time. My son needs something insanely exciting, always new, and hands on to capture his attention. When he gets excited about something he is unstoppable, and is so bright... I just need to tap into that more with social studies and science that is really fun for him, but that requires less research time for me. FIAR lessons just haven't captured his attention unless I've spiced them up quite a bit with my own research. Oh, and some ideas for the two year old would be greatly appreciated also.:| TIA, Chelsea
how old is your non two year old? and the two year old you could do simple science stuff like the 5 sences, the weather , what disolves and what doesn't... what colors mix together to make what even! I have a great science program Considering Gods Creation through Science? Its great CBD has it on its list and you can check it out that way see inside etc. its really great! It made ME personally excited about science for the first time in ........ well we wont say how old I am but all my life! LOL
He's five, so this will be for next academic year when he is six. Forgive my ignorance, but what is CBD?
Okay, Christian Book, right? I googled it. I also think we would love unit studies, but I really need spelled out studies with lots of choices so that I can nix what we don't want to do and still have plenty. Anyway, I don't know... SS and science have always tripped me up. I love science experiments, but I need things to be more organized and to build on each other in a more logical sequence than I've been doing.
I was also going to mention Considering God's Creation. We don't really do social studies per say, but actual history in chronological order. We're using Mystery of History starting next week, with all my kids who are 8, 4, and 3. Check Top of the Class for teachers sites - a lot of them put full unit studies on their sites. Mrs. Cox's PreKinders site (I think it's the first one at the Top of the Class site) is one of my favorites. Would be great for social studies units.
I personally wouldn't do CGC with a child that young. It's a great program, but the cutting and pasting is a bit tedious. I used it with my older two, and Phillilp took part. If you DO decide to go with that, keep in mind you can ENLARGE the stuff that needs cut, and even then you might want to pre-cut them. I'm saving mine, and will use it again with Phillip when he's older. Anyone who's been around here for any time knows how much I love MOH. But again, I'm not sure I'd use it with a 5 or 6 YO unless there was an older sibling doing it, too.
I have a first grader much like your your son. She has sensory processing disorder so there are days she has a very hard time staying focused. I wish I'd done more research on history but I fell in love with SOTW. It has not worked very well for her- mainly because the reading book is so dry. The activity book is wonderful and she LOOOOOVES ancient world history so that is the only thing that has kept her interest. Science we've used BJU Science 1. It's your basic Science curriculum. Everything is laid out for you in the teacher's manual and the lessons are very easy to follow. However, it's not very exciting and I've had to beef it up because Science is one of dd's favorite subjects. But it covers everything and she has learned a lot from it. For the reading I never did the same books. Dd's been reading before K and at this point she reads everything she sees so long as it's nonfiction and something to do with Science or History lol. We are using Horizons Phonics and Reading this year mainly because I want her to learn all the phonics rules and it has really helped in her reading. Each day she has a story in her reader that came with the curriculum. They aren't long stories so she can stay focused most days. There's also www.noeoscience.com We won't be homeschooling next year, but I still plan on buying it because I think dd would really enjoy it and I know they aren't going to be doing things like that in school.
My kiddos love the cutting, that's part of why we like CGC. Even if they don't retain a lot, it's a curriculum that can be re-used in the future for just about any level. On the reading, we don't stick with the same book either. We pick a theme - ours are usually animals that go with our phonics sound/letter for that week - and read several books on that theme. I'm putting together a list of animals and book resources from the things I'm using if you're interested - just PM me your email and I'll send it to ya.
