Our Great Homeschool Expreriment

• Aug. 10, 2007 - Back to Homeschool --Question 5

Today's question regards curriculum. This is my list of tested and essential curriculum. Not all of our books have been thoroughly tested yet but these two have AND I think they are the best.

1) Spell to Write and Read. I love this program. It is the most logical one I've seen. I used to think learning to read and write English was very confusing until I was led to this book. I like the way Wanda Sanseri has laid out a usable format for The Writing Road to Reading. I know I'm fortunate to be homeschooling now, after this program was produced, because even though I'm on board with WRR, I'm waaaaay too lazy to put it together myself.

2) Saxon Math, 1&3--These are the two we have used. A lot of people don't like these books because they are not simply workbooks you set in front of the kids while you go and make dinner. Others don't like them (like I foolishly thought when we were done with 1) because they seem to be dully repetitive and are nothing like the way we learned math--one subject, say addition, then you're done and move on to fractions, then you're done after that chapter and move on to something else.

After a year with Calvert Math I suddenly saw what Saxon was trying to do and how all of the other programs I had looked at were going to fail my son. Saxon builds on itself and continues to test the child's knowledge of previous learning so they do not lose it--which was the sad result of using a disjointed curriculum like Calvert. We will continue to use Saxon. The little kids love all the manipulative work of the younger grade books. It makes Math seem more like play. So it looks like it will be a success for everyone.