• Sep. 2, 2008
Homeschool Memoirs... Agenda
This year the main agenda is to become more consistent with our homeschool journey. Hopefully this blog will help me out with that. You all will help me to stay accountable, right?
I have a three homeschooling children in fourth and first grades, and kindergarten. We will also have a baby joining our household at some point this school year, so that is when consistency will be the toughest.
For my fourth and first grade boys, we are trying out Ambleside Online for history and literature. Many of the books suggested in the course of study are available at our local library or online (free). We do a lot of narration with our reading of these "real" books. The boys have to tell me back what they remember of what I just read to them. They impress me every time with their narrations! For history, my older son is also entering his narrations (either typed by me or hand copied by him) into a "Book of Centuries" along with placing the event or person we are reading about on the appropriate place in the timeline. The forms we are using for our Book of Centuries we downloaded from http://higherupandfurtherin.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-and-when-to-begin-book-of-centuries.html.
Our Math curriculum for everyone is Math U See. The kids all love it, understand it, and are doing great with this hands on approach. I cannot say enough good things about this curriculum.
Our handwriting curriculum is just copying verses, poems, or sayings/speeches of famous people. My oldest son is also starting to copy his own narrations. My Kindergarten age daughter is learning to form her letters as she is learning to read.
Our phonics and spelling program is Phonics Pathways. I love this book; it is written in a way that is simply laid out, with plenty of practice for learning to read and spell.
My fourth grade son is also working his way through Easy Grammar and Daily Grams. He is in book 3 on both of these as we did not start them until late this spring.
He will also be learning Latin from Memoria Press; we have a Prima Latina book that we are working through before I order the Latina Christiana set.
Oh, don't forget science! We are working through the book, "Exploring Creation through Astronomy" by Jeannie Fulbright. We will be using narration, copywork, and of course fun hands- on experiments to learn from this wonderful book.
Our Bible curriculum is a little of everything. We read a Keys for Kids devotion together each morning. We are work our way through memorizing passages of Scripture. I am also trying to establish a time each day where I purposefully train each child in a characer trait that needs a little strengthening. My husband is reading through a Children's Bible with our daughter each night, and through the Proverbs with the boys each night. The boys are in a Royal Ambassador's group at church (it's like a Boyscout/AWANA group). I have started going through the "Little Keepers at Home" book with our daughter, while the boys and dad are gone at RA.
Other than that we are trying to fit in violin, guitar, ballet, baseball, basketball, and possibly gymnastics.
That seems like a lot, but it really isn't. It is very ecclectic, but that's just the way my random brain likes it. 
Comments
• Sep. 4, 2008
Untitled Comment
Posted by 4sweetums
We are trying hard to keep think together this year too. Your plans look great.
Blessings,
Dawn~4sweetums
