Our first official day of the new school year is Thursday. Of course, for us that just means a fun day with homemade pancakes (I think I’m going to try tic-tac-toe pancakes this year!), front porch pictures, annual interviews, and ice cream for dinner.
Because we do school all year long, I’m constantly tweaking, and we won’t be making a lot of changes to our curriculum with the start of a new school year. We will, however, be adding Classical Conversations memory work and Essentials assignments back in, and I’m going to try switching the big girls from Teaching Textbooks to Saxon when they finish Teaching Textbooks 5 at the end of this month since they’re working out of their textbook and not using the computer program anyway!
I also switched our kindergartener to Explode the Code online. I haven’t been super consistent with her school time, which is okay because we do two years of kindergarten with our fall babies anyway, but this year that consistency is going to be more important, and Explode the Code online helps her work a little more independently (and stay motivated to want to do it!).
The addition of spiral notebooks to our routine earlier this summer has made me feel like we’ve really found our groove, so I’m not messing with a system that works!
Language Arts
kindergartener:
2nd grader:
- Explode the Code
- First Language Lessons (Level 2)
- Rhythm of Handwriting Cursive
- Spelling Plus (using Spelling City for practice and testing)
4th & 5th graders:
- CC Essentials (for English grammar and writing)
- Spelling Plus (using Spelling City for practice and testing)
Math
kindergartener:
2nd grader:
4th & 5th grader:
History
2nd, 4th & 5th graders:
- Story of the World (Volume 4)
everybody:
- CC memory work and related books
Science
2nd & 4th graders:
- Apologia Land Animals
5th grader:
- Apologia Chemistry
everybody:
- CC memory work and related books
Geography
4th & 5th graders:
- The Complete Book of Maps and Geography
- map games on the computer
Languages
Language learning was one of the things we dropped last year when we were having trouble with our internet connection supporting my work time online, but the big girls are itching to get back to DuoLingo, so we’ll probably add that back in in a month or two after we figure out the Essentials work load.
Bible
2nd, 4th & 5th graders:
- Daily Bible readings and SOAPing in their journals
Extracurriculars
2nd, 4th & 5th graders:
- KidZone Worship team at church
everybody:
- biweekly piano lessons
- poetry tea times (with and without tea)
- books, books & more books
For the Toddler
For the first time, I have a toddler with four school-age kids. The girls are so close in age that it was a lot easier to juggle the needs of a 1st grader and toddler, but now we need to make sure we’re keeping Jack occupied while giving the girls the attention and time they need for school work. And with Sean starting a painting business, this juggling act is getting a little bit tougher.
I’m in the process of setting up toddler trays and activity boxes for him, and I’m hoping that by regularly rotating those, we’ll be able to keep him out of trouble most of the time!
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One thing I know for sure is that we’ll continue to tweak and adjust during the school year, but for now it feels good to have a stress-free plan in place!
Lisa
25 Aug 2015As someone who is just starting out, I love reading posts where moms share the blends of curriculum they use. It’s helpful to get a picture for the future. Our first day of kindergarten is today. We are just using My Father’s World this year. i wanted something that would be easy and already planned out for our first year!
Erin Boyd Odom
26 Aug 2015Oh my goodness…I had never heard of DuoLingo! (Will had, so I must be living in a hole! 😉 ). We are about to review Calico Spanish. We are both advanced proficient in Spanish, but we hadn’t been teaching it to our girls, but we are more motivated after Costa Rica!! Our school chooses our curriculum for us, which I love because I have decision fatigue. For 1st grade, we’re using Shurley English, Handwriting without Tears, Abeka for reading…and I can’t remember what else because they just send home projects for us to do! We’re doing a lot of geography and zoology, too, but I’m not sure the names of the curriculum. I think the math is Harcourt?
Bethany
29 Aug 2015I love the idea of poetry tea time! I may give that a try, sticking everyone’s poetry for the week on the table on Thursdays, which is a mellow school day for us, and reading them together.
Ben
1 Sep 2015Thanks for sharing some insight into your curriculum! We’re just starting out with our 1st of 3 and it’s always encouraging for us to take a look and see the tactics of someone who has
done it for a while.
Question about your math curriculum and Teaching Textbooks. This is the first time that I’ve ran across that curriculum, can you tell me what initially drew you to that? We are starting with Saxon for our 5 year old (since most people recommended Saxon). Just curious about what your thoughts are on the different options are out there for math and how they’ve worked for your kiddos.
Mandi @ Life Your Way
14 Sep 2015For us, math was becoming a power struggle between us as parents and our oldest daughter, so moving to Teaching Textbooks allowed us to step out of that struggle so that she could progress under a third-party teacher. It worked just as we hoped, and I enjoy the independence it gives them during math time!
Mandi @ Life Your Way
14 Sep 2015That sounds fun!
Mandi @ Life Your Way
14 Sep 2015Have your girls tried DuoLingo yet? Ours started in 3rd and 4th grade, so I’m wondering if it’s a good fit for younger kids!
Mandi @ Life Your Way
14 Sep 2015I’ve heard so many good things about MFW—are you enjoying it? And Susan Wise Bauer always says you should start your first year with an out-of-the-box curriculum, so I think that sounds perfect!