Our Picks
After deliberating over each and every decision for much too long, we finally pulled the trigger. Here is where we landed on curriculum, co-op, and schedule.
CURRICULUM
Language Arts
Reading - As a trial over the summer, I used How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It was great and very cost-effective because I bought it used for $5.00. However, moving into the fall, I wanted something that offered a little more in the way of activities and practice. We have been using All About Reading, and so far we love it. It's a good mix of instruction, activities, stories, and fluency practice. Some lessons we do in a day while others we stretch out over two days. We've been at it for three months and are just about through Level 1, so I've ordered Level 2 (of 4 total).
Writing - Every morning L "writes" in her journal. I brainstorm prompts the week before and write a prompt for each day in a spiral notebook. She usually draws a picture to illustrate her answer to the prompt and will sound out a word or two to describe it. We also do penmanship most days, courtesy of another used book sale.
Grammar - I don't spend a lot of time here yet. Our Classical Conversations co-op curriculum covers this.
Real-Aloud - We read stories to the girls everyday. I usually let them each pick a book for me to read before quiet time, and the hubs reads them Bible stories before bed. I *try* to read a chapter book to L everyday while the little one naps. We've read the first two books in the Chronicles of Narnia series, a few books from The Magic Treehouse series, and we are now on the second book in the Little House on the Prairie series.
Math
We have been using Horizons K math. It is super simple (you really don't need the teacher's manual at this stage in the game), and offers review in each lesson. I also try to work in some games and activities other than the worksheet (go fish, playing "store" with money, writing on a mini whiteboard, etc.).
Social Studies
History and Geography are covered in our Classical Conversations co-op curriculum. In addition to the memory work, I try to get library books that go with each week's topic as well as plan one hands-on activity (that I usually get from Pinterest) each week.
Science
Also covered in our Classical Conversation co-op curriculum. As with social studies, I try to reserve library books ahead of time and plan one hands-on reinforcement activity. On our co-op day each week we do a group experiment.
Extra-curricular
Physical Education - we homeschool...we have all the time in the world to be active. We do a lot of playing outside, riding bikes, going for walks, dancing to Just Dance on the Wii, and doing yoga (Cosmic Kid's Yoga on Youtube is awesome!)
Art & Music - Classical Conversations covers both of these on our community days. I also have a couple of Usborne step-by-step drawing books that L absolutely loves.
CO-OP
This was by far the most difficult decision to make. I wanted to do a co-op mainly for social reasons - to work on social skills and have a solid community. I found that the strictly social co-ops seemed to lack the regularity and consistency I was looking for, while the curriculum-based co-ops weren't quite what I was looking for in content. Ultimately, we decided to join Classical Conversations, and I'm so glad that we did!
I was hesitant at first because for the younger groups it is so heavy on memorization. I get that at this age they are great at memorizing, but coming from and educational background, I wanted hands-on activities and understanding of what we were learning. I realized that we could actually have both; as the educator, I can choose what I want to do with it.
Socially - we meet once a week, and go on monthly field trips. Classes are groups of 8 based on birthday. There is consistency in the people we see, so we are getting to know other families well.
Academically - the curriculum covers history, geography, timeline, latin, english grammar, science, and basic math principles (skip counting, formulas, etc.) Every week, each topic has one sentence/fact to memorize. We practice our memory work every day, and on Wednesdays we review everything we've learned from previous weeks as well. For history and science, some days we will also read library books on topic, and we try to do a least one hands-on reinforcement project or activity each week as mentioned above.
DAILY SCHEDULE
I'm your typical type-A, scheduled, detailed, ritualistic person. However, I've been very intentional to see our schedule as flexible. One of the benefits of homeschooling is that it IS flexible. We are in control of our daily, weekly, and yearly schedule, so I try not to let it control ME. Below is our general structure, but I try to be quick to throw it out the window or push it back if something of higher priority comes up.
I spent a great deal of time researching every option out there for curriculum and co-ops because I didn't want to be in the situation where I needed to change course from one year to the next. That may still happen at some point, but so far, things are going so well that we plan to stay with our selections for the foreseeable future. If you are still in the "checking things out" stage, I recommend exploring all options but remaining flexible enough to switch it up if something just isn't working. Happy picking!
CURRICULUM
Language Arts
Reading - As a trial over the summer, I used How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It was great and very cost-effective because I bought it used for $5.00. However, moving into the fall, I wanted something that offered a little more in the way of activities and practice. We have been using All About Reading, and so far we love it. It's a good mix of instruction, activities, stories, and fluency practice. Some lessons we do in a day while others we stretch out over two days. We've been at it for three months and are just about through Level 1, so I've ordered Level 2 (of 4 total).
Writing - Every morning L "writes" in her journal. I brainstorm prompts the week before and write a prompt for each day in a spiral notebook. She usually draws a picture to illustrate her answer to the prompt and will sound out a word or two to describe it. We also do penmanship most days, courtesy of another used book sale.
Grammar - I don't spend a lot of time here yet. Our Classical Conversations co-op curriculum covers this.
Real-Aloud - We read stories to the girls everyday. I usually let them each pick a book for me to read before quiet time, and the hubs reads them Bible stories before bed. I *try* to read a chapter book to L everyday while the little one naps. We've read the first two books in the Chronicles of Narnia series, a few books from The Magic Treehouse series, and we are now on the second book in the Little House on the Prairie series.
Math
We have been using Horizons K math. It is super simple (you really don't need the teacher's manual at this stage in the game), and offers review in each lesson. I also try to work in some games and activities other than the worksheet (go fish, playing "store" with money, writing on a mini whiteboard, etc.).
Social Studies
History and Geography are covered in our Classical Conversations co-op curriculum. In addition to the memory work, I try to get library books that go with each week's topic as well as plan one hands-on activity (that I usually get from Pinterest) each week.
Science
Also covered in our Classical Conversation co-op curriculum. As with social studies, I try to reserve library books ahead of time and plan one hands-on reinforcement activity. On our co-op day each week we do a group experiment.
Extra-curricular
Physical Education - we homeschool...we have all the time in the world to be active. We do a lot of playing outside, riding bikes, going for walks, dancing to Just Dance on the Wii, and doing yoga (Cosmic Kid's Yoga on Youtube is awesome!)
Art & Music - Classical Conversations covers both of these on our community days. I also have a couple of Usborne step-by-step drawing books that L absolutely loves.
CO-OP
This was by far the most difficult decision to make. I wanted to do a co-op mainly for social reasons - to work on social skills and have a solid community. I found that the strictly social co-ops seemed to lack the regularity and consistency I was looking for, while the curriculum-based co-ops weren't quite what I was looking for in content. Ultimately, we decided to join Classical Conversations, and I'm so glad that we did!
I was hesitant at first because for the younger groups it is so heavy on memorization. I get that at this age they are great at memorizing, but coming from and educational background, I wanted hands-on activities and understanding of what we were learning. I realized that we could actually have both; as the educator, I can choose what I want to do with it.
Socially - we meet once a week, and go on monthly field trips. Classes are groups of 8 based on birthday. There is consistency in the people we see, so we are getting to know other families well.
Academically - the curriculum covers history, geography, timeline, latin, english grammar, science, and basic math principles (skip counting, formulas, etc.) Every week, each topic has one sentence/fact to memorize. We practice our memory work every day, and on Wednesdays we review everything we've learned from previous weeks as well. For history and science, some days we will also read library books on topic, and we try to do a least one hands-on reinforcement project or activity each week as mentioned above.
DAILY SCHEDULE
I'm your typical type-A, scheduled, detailed, ritualistic person. However, I've been very intentional to see our schedule as flexible. One of the benefits of homeschooling is that it IS flexible. We are in control of our daily, weekly, and yearly schedule, so I try not to let it control ME. Below is our general structure, but I try to be quick to throw it out the window or push it back if something of higher priority comes up.
I spent a great deal of time researching every option out there for curriculum and co-ops because I didn't want to be in the situation where I needed to change course from one year to the next. That may still happen at some point, but so far, things are going so well that we plan to stay with our selections for the foreseeable future. If you are still in the "checking things out" stage, I recommend exploring all options but remaining flexible enough to switch it up if something just isn't working. Happy picking!
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