Our "Curriculum" and Resources

At this stage in the game, I have been putting together our "curriculum" from dozens of different sources. I'm constantly finding new things to add to our little school or ideas I want to try out so I don't think I'd ever feel 100% comfortable with a boxed, all-in-one curriculum.

As I've mentioned previously, I start with the Core Knowledge series and then expand outward from there. Here's what we have in place for this year! Note: Everything for each subject isn't pictured, I just pulled out some of the highlights.

Math

As a group, we will start the day with our Number of the Day. This simple sheet will be a fast review on place value, various ways to write numbers, adding by tens and hundreds, equation forms, etc. I will not have all the girls fill out the work sheet every day because it would be a massive waste of time and paper but we will do it all together. Obviously they aren't all on the same level but I intend to teach lessons as a group before they do their own leveled worked. In addition to the four operations, telling time and money sense, we will be spend time learning about geometry, data interpretation and playing all sorts of math games.

Language Arts

Learning to read (or read even better) will be a huge part of this year's language arts plan. I like to combine understanding of phonics, word families and sight words to teach the girls and, so far, this has worked well for us. J, who is well beyond the BOB Book level, will be keeping a reading journal of all the new and exciting books she reads this year. We'll also spend time creating stories together and individually. As part of our weekly routine, the girls get a spelling list to learn and study for a quiz on Friday as well. There are a number of activities centered around these weekly words that have built in writing and grammar practice.

Everything else

As I mentioned before, we're planning to do Unit Studies this year which will bring science and social studies together (along with math and language arts to an extent). We will be watching lots of videos, reading lots of books and probably cruising the web while exploring history and science together! I plan to introduce both Latin (as part of our Ancient Rome study) and Spanish (for practical reasons) to the girls this year though it won't become a major part of the day at this stage.

Every day this week, J has come to me to tell me she "can't wait for school to start!" as all the bits and pieces have come together. I think we must be on the right track then!