Our 2012-2013 Curriculum!

It's that time again!  Ringing in a new school year and celebrating the freedom to school right here in our own home!  I had a ton of fun participating in the NOT Back to School Blog Hop last year, so I looked forward to joining in again this year!

I'll have two students doing actual school work this year, a kindergartner and a first grader.  They will be doing some things together, but the bulk of their work will be separate because their skill levels are so varied.

I'll start out with my son who will be doing Kindergarten.  The base of his curriculum is a program from Teach Me Joy.  We've enjoyed his K4 year using their preschool program, Animal Play, that I chose to continue with curriculum sequence. This year we will be using the K4-K5 program, Fruit for Tender Hearts.

This curriculum covers math concepts, basic phonics, calendar time, and Bible.  Aron will be doing something slightly different than the program recommends for math and phonics because he's already completed two years of preschool and is ready for a little more.

For math, he'll be using Singapore Earlybird Kindergarten Math.

For penmanship, I've chosen a program also from Teach Me Joy, The Joy of Handwriting.

For thinking skills, the plans in Fruit for Tender Hearts use the first two workbooks in the Developing the Early Learner series.

To the Bible lessons, my husband will be adding in work from Little Contenders for the Faith.

Science is included in the curriculum plans using worksheets once a week.  I'll also be adding in another program which I will mention later in this post. I'll also discuss phonics further down the page.

Moving on to my oldest who will be working on first grade, we'll be continuing with Heart of Dakota for our main core.

The level that she will be using is Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory.

The guide uses three books as its spine for history to cover early American history from 1565-1860, American Pioneers and Patriots, Stories of the Pilgrims, and Boys and Girls of Colonial Days.

The guide also includes hands on activities for science using God's Wonderful Works. 

We'll be studying character traits while memorizing relevant Scripture and using Morning Bells and Hide 'Em in Your Heart, Volume 2 to supplement.

We'll be reinforcing our phonics lessons and continuing in the emerging readers that HOD suggests.  We have about 4 1/2 books left before we are finished with them.  Gabriella's reading level is above these books, but they are GREAT books and I didn't want her to miss them!

After we complete the emerging readers, I'll have her begin to read aloud from some wonderful  selections to continue to fine tune her phonetic ability.

For the storytime portion of our lessons where I read aloud to Gabby, we'll be using several books to "tour" the various genres from biography to folk tales.

Math has been a headache for me.  We enjoy Singapore, but I have reservations about teaching it in later years so I've waffled back and forth on what to do.  Gabby has also been begging for MORE math.  What to do? What to do?  Well, about midyear this past year, purchased Horizons Math K to use as supplementation.  She's enjoyed it so much that for first grade, we'll be using both HOD's recommendation, Singapore Primary Mathematics, U.S. Edition, 1A-1B along with the available Challenging Word Problems and Intensive Practice books

 

AND we'll have Horizons Math 1 on the shelf for when Gabby wants more!

That's my tentative plan for math this year.  If it becomes too much, I'll get rid of one program or the other, but don't ask me which because I have no clue! :P

To tie into her early American studies, I'm going to begin picture study with Gabby using Come Look with Me: Art in Early America.

We'll be continuing her health studies using Abeka's Health, Safety and Manners 2.

Finally, for general homemaking and life skills, we'll continue working through her Little Keepers at Home book and we'll also begin working through Pearables Home Economics for Homeschoolers Level One.

She's also going to start using The Princess and the Kiss as a bible study about God's desire for women and girls to be pure and chaste.

Phew!  I'm tired putting that all down!  It seems like a lot, but we'll be only using some of it on certain days of the week rather than daily.  Only a few more things left! :)


Both children will be continuing phonics work using Abeka's A Handbook for Reading, each on their own level and

supplementing on their own level of  Explode the Code.

For extra science, we'll use A Year of Hands on Science

 
and Teaching Science with Favorite Picture Books.

We'll also be using a brand new spelling curriculum that I'll also review after we've used it for a bit so keep a watch out for that!  It's called Spelling Mechanics Homeschool Word Study.  It uses word study to teach children spelling patterns and rules.  We'll be using Level 1 with Gabriella and testing out Level K with Aron.  I'm excited to try it out because as much as I love Heart of Dakota, I've not been overly impressed with the spelling portion of it.  Gabby doesn't seem to retain the words for long, so I'm hoping that this program that teaches more than just list of words, but how and why words are put together using games, worksheets, and various other teaching methods.  It looks like a ton of fun!

We'll begin our mornings using devotions from Leading Little Ones to God (which I found at Goodwill for $.50!)

Finally, we'll be starting our LATIN STUDIES!  Yes, I'm excited about that!  I've had this program on the shelf for months, waiting for this upcoming year to begin and we're all looking forward to using Song School Latin to teach us(including me!) some introductory Latin vocabulary!

That's our 2012-2013 year at a glance!  We start our new year right after Labor Day!  Are you trying out any new curriculum this year?