Homeschool Curriculum Choices: Kindergarten and Third Grade

Yea, the first week of the Not Back-to-School Blog Hop at Life With My 3 Boybarians.  Can you stinkin’ believe it is August already?  I refuse to accept it.  Or, to quote our favorite MythBuster, “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”  So there.

Anyway, for the first week of the blog hop we share about our curriculum choices for the year.  I have two schooling at home this year, ds3 who is 8 and will be in 3rd grade, and ds4 who is 4 and will begin Kindergarten.  Let’s start with ds4, the easiest since I broke down and decided on a boxed curriculum, My Father’s World Kindergarten.

We have actually done the first few weeks of this program (earlier this year) and I have to say I’m 100% happy with my choice!  Ds loves it, I enjoy having it all laid out for me, and the price was quite reasonable at around $100.  That was for the student workbook, teaching manual and various teaching aids.  You can get a deluxe version with more in it for much more, but you can also do just fine with the basic set.  I have a post here detailing how I organized the curriculum to suit our needs.  I also like how there is a message board and a yahoo group to get additional support and ideas.

Ds3 is my smart but stubborn learner lol.  We had it rough last year, going through Abeka (which I used with my older 2 boys with great success) and several other workbooks until I found Time4Learning and lapbooks to be the combination that worked for him.  Let me say Time4Learning was great (he loved it, it improved his reading and math skills greatly, and all I had to do for evals was print a report) and it helped us through a rough patch, but I can’t honestly afford the $20 a month this time around.  Plus I am hoping ds has matured enough to handle a little more “traditional” schooling.  So I have made his up from scratch this time around. :)

1. Math:  a cd to help him catch up on basics, then an appropriate workbook.  (He thought Abeka was too “childish” with it’s colorful illustrations and such, so I’m going to have to find something else.)
2. Language:  Spectrum Language Grade 3
3. Spelling:  Spectrum Spelling Grade 3
4. Handwriting:  Handwriting Without Tears
5. Art:  Art Adventures At Home
6. Geography:  Galloping the Globe
7. History:  lapbooks and unit study based on A History of Us
8. Science:  lapbooks and unit study on the following topics; animal classification, dinosaurs, ocean, water, insects, space, rocks and minerals, earth, heat, light, energy, magnets, electricity, weather, conservation and the scientific method.
9. Reading:  Lessons found on the internet for the following; Flat Stanley, Chalk Box Kid, Henry & Mudge, Box Car Children, Muggie Maggie, Frog and Toad, Amelia Bedelia, Mouse Soup, Magic Tree House, Freckle Juice and Nate the Great.
10. We also will continue following The Outdoor Hour challenges at Handbook of Nature Study.

That’s about it!  I look forward to hopping around and seeing what everyone else has picked for this year.  Thanks Darcy for hosting. :)