Homeschool Curriculum

Our family is starting our sixth year with home schooling, and I thought I'd just comment briefly on curriculum for anyone who is interested. There are so many curriculum choices out there that it can be overwhelming making decisions about what to use and what not use. The spectrum of choices runs from ordering a complete, packaged curriculum for your child's grade level to creating all your own materials. I've never had the desire to create all my own materials (why re-invent the wheel?) and we tried one year using all materials from one publisher. What we've discovered works best is to pick and choose the materials that fit our family's learning style, and the materials that I've found to be tried-and-true for us, while making sure that the curriculum is content-comprehensive for each grade level. We don't want our kids to have huge gaps in their learning. So here are the materials we chose for this year:

Caroline--9th grade:

Teaching Textbooks Geometry
Alpha Omega LifePac Spanish I
Vocabulary from Classical Roots Book B
Analogies Book 2
Bob Jones University Publishers (BJUP) English 9
Sonlight Core 200--History of Christianity, Bible, Literature, Creative Writing
Apologia Physical Science
She's also working on piano lessons, computer keyboarding skills and will be learning to sew.

Mary--5th grade:

Horizons Math 5
Megawords Vocabulary Book A
BJUP Writing & Grammar 5
Piano lessons and learning to sew
(see below for shared curriculum)

Bobby 3rd grade:

Horizons Math 3
BJUP Writing & Grammar 3
Dangerous Book for Boys (going through with Daddy)
(shared curriculum below)

Mary and Bobby both use these:

Apologia Elementary Science: Astronomy, and Swimming Creatures
Spelling Power (each at their own level)
A Reason for Handwriting (at grade appropriate level)
Sonlight Core 3 American History, Reading, Bible memorization, Creative Writing
Powerglide Spanish Elementary Level

So we have our work cut out for us this year, but I think we are up to the challenge. It has already been fun seeing them learn new things in the week and a half that we have been back at school. I'm praying we'll have a really successful school year.