Monday, April 25, 2011

curriculum time again

Our official home school schedule tends to follow along with the public school schedule in our town give or take a cpl weeks. We of course still learn all summer long, even when the kids aren't aware of it. Our first partial year of homeschooling we did workbooks and online printables, the second year we did workbooks, text books and online printables and games, and this year we did an online program called Time4Learning. We enjoyed T4L but Maria (our oldest) and I believe she did better when we worked in actual books. Connor was indifferent in most areas but his math seemed to slightly lower (usually his strong subject). Becky did amazing with T4L. It is an awesome program and it worked really well with her. She is up for switching back to books regardless, she just loves to learn.


So now comes the fun of researching all new curriculum. I don't really want to go with a boxed set because I like to have flexibility when it comes to determining what is the right level for each subject/child. I am not particular when it comes to a christian or secular program. My two older children do not have a real love for reading. They of course will do it, but a curriculum based on literature wouldn't be beneficial to their desire to learn. They both are very hands on learners. My youngest schooler can pretty much learn in any environment.
Maria will be in 7th grade this year and I would like to do some art program with her as this is her passion, maybe even a photo editing program. Connor will start 4th grade and his strength is math and would like to do something with music. Becky will start 2nd grade, however she works higher than her grade level in everything except math. Electives for Becky are still undecided as she wants to do EVERYTHING :). I think a foreign language is what we are discussing at the moment.

I would love to hear some reviews of your favorite curriculum, suggestions for us or things we should probably steer clear of. Remember I have 5 kiddos at home and I do not have a lot of time for lesson planning,etc., so a program that includes that or helps with that would be great. Feel free to share links with me as well.

Some programs I have looked at are Alpha Omega's Lifepac, Saxon math, and Sonlight. I would love to hear reviews on these and any others you love or loathe.

1 comment:

Katelynne said...

When I was homeschooled we did Saxon math, Sonlight and Apologia with some other stuff thrown in. Sonlight is almost entirely literature based which worked well for me since I love to read and I hate history, but if the child doesn't truly enjoy reading...its probably not the set for them. Saxon math is good in that it reviews all chapters that have previously been done in the homework for the new chapter (just a problem or two) so I think it works better than the compartmentalized approach in other curriculums. However, the explanations of the problems are incredibly tedious to read and hard to understand (even for someone who loved math)..they might have fixed this some in updated editions.