Beginning Of A New Year

It has actually been an entire year (more than) since I've written a thing. Too much life has gone by to sum it all up in one post so we'll just continue on from here. What are the chances of me keeping up with this if I try again? Probably not very good, but nevertheless it is worth it to make an attempt. I do love the idea of chronicling our journey.

This year has the potential to be a great year! Hannah is now in 5th grade, Grace 3rd, Elaina 1st, and Sean is just going along for the ride. This year we will try to get him involved, but for now he has just been practicing tracing lines, getting him ready to write his letters! 

Last year we did a side-bar year and tried out a new curriculum Winter Promise American Story 2 which covered the Civil War-Modern Times.  I liked a lot of this curriculum but ultimately it was only intended to be a one-year filler. We really wanted a curriculum that was fairly open-and-go, scheduled a 4-day week, and easily combined grades. That really narrows it down and we eliminated our original plan of doing Heart of Dakota's Bigger Hearts For His Glory because of the 4-day week issue (it scheduled 5 days). I really didn't want to give that up.

So for Hannah and Grace this year, we have returned to Heart of Dakota. This year they are doing Preparing Hearts for His Glory which is the first HOD guide that plans a 4 day week (woohoo!). This year they'll be doing an overview of World History beginning at Creation and ending somewhere near WWII. 

 

We have some awesome "storytime" titles that we'll be reading through. In addition to this each girl has a set of independent reading books that are age-appropriate and correlate with the history that we are studying. 

They are using Teaching Textbooks again this year for math. This has been a great blessing for me and both girls seem to like it as much as they ever like math. 

 

For the first year ever, Language Arts was not a struggle for me to choose. Last year we tried Winter Promise LA because we were doing their full program. Even though this year we aren't doing the history portion, I was a fan of their LA so that was a no-brainer for me. This year we purchased the e-books and though that involved more work for me (printing and printing...) it means that I will never have to buy those guides again. For future years I will just have to print them again! But it saves a lot of money in the end.

 

Within Winter Promise LA, they use Spellwell spelling. We were using this anyway so it was nice to be able to just continue doing so. It is a very simple program and the kids don't mind doing it at all.

Science we are actually continuing from last year. All three girls join in for this subject as Apologia is for K-6. We began Apologia Botany last year after we had completed Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day. So we decided to split Botany between two years. Later this year we will pick up with Chemistry & Physics. 

 

Elaina was a bit trickier for me this year. Last year she had zero attention span for history once we'd made it through reading and math. I struggled for most of the year to get her to recall anything we'd studied with very little success. So I knew I had to come up with something different for her this year. While I was browsing at our Homeschool Curriculum Sale, I came across a used copy of Truthquest. Truthquest is unique in that it isn't a complete curriculum but more or less a book filled with topics and outlines complete with recommended reading lists. What drew me to this was the idea of using mainly picture books for her as the likelihood of holding her attention throughout a picture book was far greater than reading out of a text.

Ultimately I used very few books actually listed in Truthquest, mainly because our library did not carry them, but I did use it as a foundation for my planning. In addition to this I planned weekly activities for her and tried to find applicable coloring pages and movies. I'm hoping it will be a gentle but informational year for her! 

For Math I am still using Modern Curriculum Press. It does the job and so we stick with it. 

 

Elaina is still struggling with reading so we are being fairly informal with it at this point. We are just reviewing and basically saturating ourselves in phonics. I am hoping that when she has a better grasp on things we'll move on and continue with First Start reading. When that happens we'll also begin handwriting and Thinking Skills. At this point, I am trying to save her attention for the main subjects!

That about sums up our plans for this year! We'll see if I can keep this up to date.