Our Curriculum for 2009/10

Well, we are officially ready for our next school year. I have finally placed an order for the rest of our curriculum. I am so excited to start! During the summer, we will continue with spelling, reading, and some math. We usually start our school year with the cores sometime in July. I like starting early. It allows me to take breaks throughout the year without out feeling guilty. This is especially helpful for me since I've been going to college. When the semester starts to get rough and I need study time for myself, I can ease up on my teaching duties at home and not feel like I'm failing my kids.

Here's the line up-

Drake grade 6:

• Sonlight Core 5 (5 day schedule) Study of the East - includes History, Readers, & Read-Alouds
• Horizon's Math 5
• Growing With Grammar 5
• All About Spelling
• Wordsmith Apprentice
• Wordly Wise 3000 5
• Apologia Science Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day
• Handwriting Without Tears Cursive
• The DK Illustrated Family Bible
• Rosetta Stone Spanish

Ava grade 2:

• Sonlight Core 2 (5 day schedule) Study of the second half of world history. Fall of Rome to present- includes History, Readers, & Read-Alouds
• Horizon's Math 2
• Sonlight Language Arts 2
• Modern Curriculum Press Phonics Level C
• All About Spelling
• Explode the Code books 5/6
• Wordly Wise B
• Apologia Science Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day
• Handwriting Without Tears Printing
• The DK Illustrated Family Bible

Extras:

• Mark Kistler's Draw Squad
• Real Science 4 Kids Chemistry 1 (I just had to get this. It looks very informative. I'll be taking come chemistry classes next semester; why not study it with the kids too right?)
• Story Starters by Karen Andreola

All About Spelling

I have a child that struggles with spelling. Now that was a bold confession! But seriously, it has been a cause of frustration for both of us, more so for myself I think, thanks to my English teacher in college. I can still hear his voice drumming in my ear. He was always annoyed with spelling and punctuation errors, which is completely understandable. But this has made me overly obsessive about my own writing: fear of making dreadful spelling or writing mistakes. I suppose that can be a good thing. The point is that we all want our children to do better than we did ourselves right? I know I can’t expect college level spelling or writing from my children right now. All I want is to see improvement. That is what causes the most frustration. We've been home schooling now for two years, and I haven't seen any improvement at all. The program we have been using is called Sequential Spelling. Here's how it works. There are 180 tests/lessons with 25 words for each test. The student has to do one test each day. The words usually start with a base word and build each day, for four days, by adding prefixes or suffixes. For example, fox, foxes, foxed, foxing. After four days, there is a new set of words that build. This method may work for children who can follow the patterns and know rules about spelling such as changing 'y' to an 'i' and add 'es'. For those who don't know a lot of the spelling rules, this can be difficult. While researching various programs, I came across All About Spelling. A friend had also told me that she uses that program and highly recommended it. After reading reviews and seeing such excitement about the program, I have decided to try it out. I’m very excited and can't wait to see results! What I like is that the program teaches the child why a word is spelled the way it is instead of the usual memorization list that most children get.