Homeschool Curriculum 2016-2017

Now that our school year is finished up for the year and Olivia will take her test for the 5th grade on June 7th in Wilson, I have already started gathering her books for next years curriculum. You can never be too prepared to have as many books and to be ready for the next school year! I am though shying away from the box curriculum this year and doing more of classical and Charlotte Mason Homeschooling instead this year. I am feeling more confident this year as Olivia’s teacher and Mom to know what works best for her.

The very first year that we homeschooled I felt really overwhelmed with what to start her out with. I didn’t know where to start her out with and what curriculum would be best for her. I did so much research on so many different starter curriculums from Bob Jones University to Abkea to Apologia. We ended up settling on Bob Jones University for Olivia because we felt it was the right fit for her. Then the next year we looked into doing Abeka for her but to buy the whole set was so expensive so we looked into doing it used as it was cheaper for us. Then we decided to put her into public school again which turned into a bad idea after all.

This past school year we redid 5th grade and did some 6th grade work as well. We did BJU again as the Box Curriculum as I still was not confident enough to do anything else and honestly I was scared to shy away from it. I was afraid that if I did shy away from it would she understand it or would she be bored from what I was trying to teach her? I was also doing school full time myself and I was feeling quite overwhelmed myself with my workload I had to do so I liked the idea of having all of the lessons planned out for me. Well let’s just say that I found that some of the items worked for us in the BJU set and then some did not! We did not do the BJU Math as it was not helping Olivia at all. We ended up doing Math-U-See with her and she loved it! She hated math when we started it with her and now she absolutely loves math!!! We plan on continuing math throughout the summer minus when we are on our mini vacation in June but she doesn’t want to stop learning math! We feel that when she starts 9th grade she will be on grade level if not advanced for it! Yay! Finally! But after this school year I have found that I don’t like dealing with the box curriculum and I would rather piece together a curriculum rather than purchase textbooks! As one child does not learn just based off of what is inside a text book but based off of what is inside books! So I feel so much more confident in what I am going to teach her and how she learns! I have learned what works for her best and what doesn’t. And how she learns too! Plus we plan on putting her in many different activities throughout the day which in return is good and plan on putting her in dance which is a good thing! So here is what we have decided on so far for next years curriculum.

History: The Story of the World: Volume 1. Olivia decided on this book for History because we love history but we felt that this could be family book we could read together. Each chapter is short but we did get the activity book for her to do the added activities to do and crafts to do as well. Then she will also be able to do the tests after each chapter too. She is very excited to get started on this and we will most likely start school in August if not July!

Science: We are still deciding on this one but we will most likely go with Apologia on this one. Just not sure which one yet.

Writing and Composition: We will be using Writers in Residence Volume 1 by Apologia. We received this as a Review and had already started using this, but we will start from the beginning again since we aren’t using BJU and it won’t conflict anything that I am teaching her. I am really excited about this one and she is excited about doing this one too!

Literature & Vocabulary: For literature we will be working on Study Guides and reading books to go along with the study guides. This will also go along with her vocabulary as well and she is very excited about reading different books during the year. She loves to read and after the horrible experience she had with BJU Reading 6 last year we decided that this was the route to go with her this year! This way she picks the books that she wants to read and she gets her literature in and vocabulary as well out of the books she is reading!

Math: we will be using Math-U-See again this year! We will finish off Delta this summer and then we will start her on Math-U-See Epsilon after she finishes that up. We have noticed that she has gone from hating math to loving math!

Bible: We will most likely do a daily devotion with Olivia on this one.

Art: We will be most likely enrolling Olivia into an Art class through the homeschool co-op locally. Also I am looking into doing a class or possibly a photography class or something. I think it is something that I can do since I do like photography. It’s something that I would need to look into doing.

That is all I can think of right now. I will update more when I can figure out more.



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