Our Curriculum Choices 2012-2013

This week is Curriculum Week! The whole Not Back to School Bloghop is a blast and satisfies my inner nosiness curiosity and allows me to poke around in other people's homeschools! Pure bliss, I tell you.



I'm kind of sad everything is decided! I LOVE researching curriculum and planning, etc. Totally one of my favorite times of the year....the school supplies, fresh notebooks, a new start...I just love it!

And I am excited about this new school year. I snoozed through a lot of last year with my pregnancy and we certainly didn't get as much done as I had planned. I know this year will be very different with a baby, but I am excited anyway!

Our girls are 12 (entering 7th grade) and 8 (entering 3rd grade). Here are our choices for the year:

Science

This will be our last year to do science together. We will be using this

I will not be using the notebooking journals this year. They stress me out and make me feel like we have to fill in every blank. We will be doing science with a friend from our old church who will be experiencing her first year of homeschooling her daughter, niece, and nephew. We have been blessed to do science with a different family every year. It's always nice to do the fun stuff with some friends!

Spelling

No changes here. I am a firm, 100% sold believer in All About Spelling. I'm an affiliate too, so if you need to order, please click here!) We will just pick up where we left off last year and then move on to the next level.

Handwriting

Well, Sweetheart has completed all the Handwriting Without Tears books, so its time to move on. I am going to expect all written work to be done in cursive this year. That should give her enough practice. So instead, she will spend her time with Ms. Mavis.

She's very excited!

Little Bit is not ready for cursive, so I'm going to use our Handwriting Without Tears paper for copywork. She will need to practice every day, but it won't be much.

Math

Sweetheart will be continuing with Teaching Textbooks. We stepped all the way back to 5th grade level to pick up the lessons on fractions and decimals since she had never done those topics. (We bought the 5th grade stuff used) Well, it turned out the entire 5th grade package was a GREAT review for her and her math skills have really increased since she's been going through it. So I plan to have her finish that (she's been working on it this summer) and then start the 6th grade level. I know that still puts her behind, but I think we can get caught up by next school year. We should need to purchase the 6th grade stuff in October.

This summer, Little Bit and I began using Horizons Math and we LOVE it. It is such a good fit for her. She is also off level (and Horizons is about a grade level above anyway), but learning is more important than the number on the book, right? I am excited that we are finally making progress and moving forward! And so far I REALLY like the lesson in the teacher's book for Horizons. So glad I bought the teacher's books! (used) A lot of reviewers I read said they didn't feel they needed the teacher's books for such a low level but Little Bit is REALLY responding to all the hands-on acitities and repetition. It is just working! Hoping we fly through these books and move on to the next level this school year as well.

The theme of this year, in case you hadn't noticed, is "catching up!" That pregnancy really threw my plans for a loop!

But just look at the sweet result:

So we have to work harder this year to get caught up? It was worth it. :)

Everything Else
Bible, Reading, History, Geography, Language Arts....

...will all be covered with Sonlight. This year Sweetheart will be doing Core F, which focuses on the Eastern Hemisphere.

And Little Bit will be doing Core B, which covers World History from Creation to the fall of the Roman Empire.

This is the first year Sonlight's cores have included Bible and Language Arts and I am interested to try them both and see how I like them.

So that's our choices for the school year. Now I just have to get everything organized and planned. Hmm. I'm finding that hard with a 2 month old. It'll get done--just in tiny, tiny chunks of time.

Now hop on over and check out other folks' choices. You really can learn so much!