It's that time of year again!
For many of us, it's just about that time when we're finishing our curriculum purchases for the year, putting together our lesson plans, and making sure everything is in order for another school year.
While we school year round, we have started our new school year usually towards the end of July. Since I had to have surgery , we started right after the 4th of July this year to accommodate for the time I needed off. Yet another reason I LOVE homeschooling!
I actually had most of our school stuff planned and bought by April this year. Last year we used My Father's World: Learning God's Story for first grade. We really enjoyed the gentle approach, and next year we'll be using the curriculum again for Miss Bear.
This year, I needed something that was a little more budget friendly as I also needed to replace our printer, so I ended up sort of piecing together our curriculum.
Here's the skeleton of our curriculum.
BIBLE:
We'll be using The Jesus Storybook Bible and The Rhyme Bible again this year, as well as a NIV and KJV bible. We also will be reading through Following Aslan: Devotions for Children by Keri McIntosh. We're going to start the Chronicles of Narnia, so we thought this would be perfect to show how the two are related.
We'll continue with our scripture memorization, starting with Ephesians 6:10-18 over the course of the first several weeks. After that, we'll memorize a verse that ties in to our character studies/habits building lessons.
LANGUAGE ARTS:
We'll be using First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind: Levels 1-2 by Jessie Wise this year. I'm not exactly sure how far into the second we'll get yet, but so far we do anywhere between 1-3 lessons per day.
I do love that the lessons are short and sweet. There is a lot of repetition, but in a good way.
First Language Lessons Vol. 1 is actually meant for first graders, but My Father's World didn't have grammar included in their first grade plans last year, so we are starting there.
READ-ALOUDS:
Many of our read alouds are living books that relate back to another subject we're covering. We're also going to be reading through The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis this year as well.
MATH:
We're going to go through the Life of Fred Elementary Series by Stanley F. Schmidt starting this year. So far, we've been going through about a chapter a day, with games and worksheets to practice.
HISTORY:I purchased Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages by Susan Wise Bauer on my Kindle. I am simply adding my own copywork, projects, reference books, and living books to go along with the Lessons.
GEOGRAPHY:
We'll be using The Geography Book: Activities for Exploring, Mapping, and Enjoying Your World by Caroline Arnold. The lessons are short and simple, and we'll be adding in some worksheets and activities to put the skills to use.
I also purchased the Medieval maps set from Knowledge Quest, which we'll be using to map out our studies.
SCIENCE:
This year we'll be studying Astronomy. We'll be using the Usborn Science Encyclopedia, Usborne What's Science All About? and the Usborne Geography Encyclopedia as our main texts. I have quite a few other books and sources that I'll include throughout the lessons.
Every couple weeks, we'll also be including either an animal research paper or a health topic.
THE ARTS:
Arts & Crafts-
Much of our art will tie in to our History and Science lessons this year.
The kids will also have drawing lessons with Dad and complete various holiday crafts.
Art Appreciation-
We will be using the Art Cards from MFW 1st Grade since we only made it through a few last year. We'll also be discussing art throughout our history lessons.
Music-
So far, I've only planned on studying a few hymns.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION:
The kiddos are really into dancing right now, so we've been learning various dances on YouTube. They'll also have plenty of outdoors time to run, skip, ride their bikes, and play at the park.
Have you made any changes this year? What's your favorite new resource you've discovered?
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