This Year's Starting Line-Up

We started school last Monday, and I am very excited about this year! With the exception of Math, we have a whole new curriculum for every subject. Here's what we're doing :

Our main program is called My Father's World (MFW). It's a Charlotte Mason approach and it covers Bible and (this year) American History. I like the Bible lessons because you actually sit and read a passage from the Bible, not just a Bible workbook. Some days there's an activity to go along with it, and there's a list of memory verses. Some examples of activities are: baking bread (Jesus is the bread of life), learning the meaning of your name, the names of Jesus, then making a poster of Jesus' names. The best part is, all the things you need come with it. The bread recipe is in the book. The names of Jesus are there for you to color and cut out. For History, they include a storybook-style textbook for some lessons, and then for others you use readers and biographies that you can purchase separately. There are even lessons on all 50 states! History usually includes a page to color or write on to include in your "United States Notebook", which you add to all year. Oh, and you also work on a timeline, again, pieces included! It's only been a week but I already LOVE this curriculum.

For Language Arts we went with Abeka. A lot of people hate Abeka, put I really like their LA program. The workbook pages are pretty short, it includes spelling and poetry, and reading books. I like that the lessons all tie together. You see the "special sounds" (blends) from the workbook in the spelling words and the spelling words in the reading books. I think it's pretty thorough. The only part I'm not doing is the Handwriting. It seems like busy-work when Gracie's already writing for other subjects.

Math is the same, Modern Curriculum Press. I was happy with it last year.

For Science I chose Apologia Science's "Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day". It's a whole year's study on animals that fly- birds, bats, bugs, even pterodactyls! Gracie is really interested in all of that- but we may have to play it by ear. Even though the book says it's for 1st-5th grades, the first lesson included classification and binomial nomenclature. Pretty intense. But it does include cool experiments and notebook activities, so we're gonna give it a good try.

I also purchased a Spanish kit called "Puertas Abiertas". It uses an immersion approach through videos and cds. There are workbook lessons to complete after you listen to each lesson a few times. This is an area I'm not worried about the kids excelling at, but I thought the exposure would be good. So three times a week they watch the video.

Gracie is still taking piano, so that covers music for me, and....we joined a co-op!! It meets every Thursday, and it's only five minutes from my house. We are all really excited about it. (except Luke. He will be really mad at me when he has to stay in his group without me)They have two hours of learning in the morning, followed by lunch and then playtime.Gracie and Caleb both have about nine kids in their groups, so they will have plenty of friends to play with. It will be especially good in the winter when the days start to drag!

As I said, I am really excited about this year. But we have had our challenges already! Gracie is enjoying her books and doing really well. The boys, on the other hand, are not cooperating AT ALL. But that's another entry...