Our Curriculum

This year I am teaching my 1st and 2nd graders with many different things.

1. We are starting the day doing our Soapy Notebooks. This is something our church is doing. We read a scripture each day and then journal about what we have read. We "S" write the scripture, "O" observe what we read, "A" apply what we have read to our lives, "P" pray about how we can use God's word to serve Him. "Y" is for why will I be different because of what I have read today?
   
2. I just added (10-1-08) a new writing curriculum that goes along with the First Language Lessons. The Complete Writer: Writing with Ease: Strong Fundamentals. We will be using the workbooks along with them. I want to give them a great baseline to be able to be good writers. Expressing yourself with the beautiful language we have is so very important in our world.
   
   
3. Next, we alternate doing Math and Spelling so that one of them works independently while the other one works with me. We are using Making Math Meaningful this year as well as doing some side activities like drills and critical thinking worksheets. For spelling we are using Building Spelling Skills. This seems to be a great book so far. We also use spellingcity.com to practice our spelling skills.
4. For Handwriting we are using A Reason for Handwriting.
5. We are using The Ordinary Parent's guide to Teaching Reading with my first grader for phonics. It is a classical type program.
   
6. We are using First Language Lessons for their grammar. It is by the same author as the phonics program. I chose to put both of them in the same level to really hammer out the basics of grammar.
   
7. For foreign language, I am teaching them American Sign Language using the Signing Time CD's. I grew up signing and have been an interpreter for eleven years. We are learning one song each week and that usually has about 12 words that they learn in sign.
8. In the afternoon, we do our Geography, History, and Literature curriculum. We are using a unit study called Galloping the Globe. I am very excited about it. We will be learning about the world around us. We will be studying each continent and many countries within each continent. While we are in each country we will be learning about their flag, famous people, authors, celebrations, customs,music, art, food and so on. Right now we are in the introduction learning about the globe and maps and how that will help us know where we are as well as other places. We will be doing many projects with Galloping the Globe and using notebooking to keep our journeys on track and memorable. I bought a ton of books with this book to make sure we covered our bases. I put off buying The Big Book of Books and Activities. However, I decided that it would be worth it to get it.
   
9. The science curriculum will go along with Galloping the Globe. We will be studying the 106 Days of Creation. I bought this from the Simply Charlotte Mason site.
10. For our reading program we will be using Sonlight Language Arts 2 with easy readers and Sonlight Language Arts 2 with chapter books. This will also supplement some of the grammar with extra practice and an introduction to more in depth grammar rules.
11. We will hopefully being doing Art once a week. Although, we may interchange it with classical music every other week. We will be using Art Adventures at Home for our art curriculum. I also have another book called Discovering Great Artist: 150 Art Ideas for learning.
12. We will be doing a co-op every month 3 times a month. The first week will be a lesson, the next will be a field trip related to the lesson and the third week will be just a fun play day for the kids.
13. We will also be doing a group physical education class once a month with our homeschool group. As well as, being involved in some sort of group sport like Upwards, softball, soccer or cheerleading. In addition, we will have many playdays at the park and days of walks and riding scooters and bikes.
14. For Music, the girls will also be taking piano lessons from a friend of mine. I am going to be teaching her daughter ASL while mine are learning piano.
15. I became a member of EnchantedLearning.com and Edhelper.com. This has a plytheria of worksheets and craft ideas.

Most of my curriculum was purchased from RainbowResource.com, Amazon, Ebay, Homeschoolclassifieds.com.

I am hoping our schedule will be 4 days a week for about 4 hours total each day. Of course, these won't be 4 straight hours and I will be twining life lessons within the day even when they don't know they are learning...smile! I want to read aloud to them as much as possible in hopes to hook them on to the love of reading and learning!