Sunday, June 16, 2013

New Curriculum arrived!

I have been homeschooling for about six years now and every year I ponder anew which curriculum to choose. I have tried textbooks, but that doesn't seem to work well for my lovelies. I really liked  Ambleside Online. A great curriculum fashioned after Charlotte Mason's style of teaching. I really enjoyed it when I had only two kids and they were in the same grade level. It didn't work so well for me when I had three kids in three different grade levels. I don't know how others are doing it, but it drove me crazy, it is quite possible that I could have done something different and make it work, but I couldn't figure out how. Then I tried to put my own curriculum together, which worked well but was VERY work-intensive! I also tried Tapestry of Grace, which I thought was super because I could put all three kids in the same curriculum and we were all learning the same but at different levels. The difficulty I had with TOG was that I couldn't just pick a few books. I constantly had to battle the want to read every book, which TOG clearly states is NOT intended.
This year we will be a very different year for us for many reasons, some I will talk about in a week or two, the other reason is that one of my kids is starting college work. She is going to do 'her own thing' and I have only two left to teach. I really needed something this year that spelled everything out for me and was already all done, so that basically all I have to do is open the folder and start teaching. Sooo, this year we are trying Sonlight. I got the first box with curriculum and I am excited! It is ALL done for me! I don't have to do much at all. I can't believe how easy it can be to plan a school year! Would you believe that I am pretty much done with planning for one of my kids? I opened the box, put all the stickers on the books, so we know which books is for which week. Next I loaded the student and teacher folders and I am done :)  I can't believe it! Okay, so I have to add Math and Science, but they are really easy to plan, because they are pretty much scheduled when they come. This year the kids will do Wordly Wise on the computer, I got a really good deal on that. The only thing I have to do is move some of the scheduled work, because it is planned for five days but we want to do it in four days. That way we don't have to worry about things when it is co-op day. So Fridays will be for co-op, field trips and catch up if needed.
I would like to mention that there is nothing wrong with any of the other curricula, I just really don't have the time to plan so extensively anymore.

So anyway, here are some pictures from 'box day'  :D








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