When your child reads above grade level...

Since Babalu learned to read in Kindergarten (at 4!!) he has been an amazing reader for his age (and gender, little boys tend to read later than little girls). Right now he can read 5/6 grade books but he can't really do a language arts program geared towards those grades. This has been a huge challenge for me in terms of finding a good program. At the moment we are working through Sonlight's 4th grade LA curriculum and he is enjoying most of the books and being challenged by the worksheets (Sonlight has excellent books but the actual curriculum isn't a good fit for us). It gets frustrating. For next year my plan is this-

• To use a LA program geared toward his grade level/age (in this case, redoing 4th grade)
• A good portion of his English grade will be independently reading books at his level of ability with book reports. 
• These independant books will come from a pre made list that Big Daddy and I come up with. He will have to choose one at a time. We will take his tastes into account when we choose these books and the list will have more books than we intend for him to read so that he has a lot of options. 

Hopefully he enjoys this. I may actually start this sooner than August, perhaps in a couple of weeks. 

I suck at ending posts.

The End. 

Geography revision

I have decided to throw out the old plan for studying world geography and just go with whatever country Top Secret Adventures and Little Passports has sent us. We can build around the info we receive from them and also incorporate our Expedition Earth. We have not received out first Little Passports shipment (it should be arriving soon) so I can't say too much about it but we love Top Secret Adventures by Highlights. Mystery and adventure really appeal to Babalu and Rookie so it is a good fit.

We have several TSA packets waiting for us on the shelf. They are Australia, Mexico, Greece, and South Africa (we also have Japan which we have already done). One is also on the way. I gather from LP's Facebook page that Brazil will be arriving soon so we are set for the next few weeks.

Curriculum 2013-2014

Here it is, our complete (I hope!) curriculum list-

The work they do together

R.E.A.L Science Odyssey Biology Level 1  The kids are loving all of the hands-on labs. Word to the wise- if you buy the ebook don't waste your money on the physical book, they are identical. For some reason I thought the ebook was just the workbook pages but it isn't. I'm not complaining, it was less I had to print out. We also supplement with The Magic School Bus Human Body Science Kit. We love the Magic School Bus books and the TV show as these kits are very exciting for us. I am hoping to work our way through all of the kits in the next couple of years. There are also a few weeks in our school year that we needed to find another program because the one we picked can be done in 24 weeks. We will be using Sonlight's Science B. We used this when Babalu was in first grade and it wasn't perfect but since we already own it and ran out of time when we used it the end will be fairly new. It also happens to be the section on the solar system that the boys are both interested in. It should be fun. Maybe... 

History Odyssey Middle Ages Level 1 Really loving this... We are looking forward to learning about a viking with the same name as Babalu and an Arthurian knight with the same name as Rookie.

Expedition Earth

Country Study Lapbook to help us make lapbooks for countries not included in Expedition Earth

Music Theory Haven't actually started it

Crafts from Preschool Corner that we have had for many years. We so these occasionally. Hopefully by the time Snuggle Puppy in 2nd or 3rd grade we will have gone through all of them.

I'm still searching for something artsy to do that is geared toward older kids but we might just to crafts and both free and guided painting/drawing (suggestions welcome!).

The work they do at their own grade level

Evan-Moor has the books we use for:

Daily Georgraphy
Daily 6-Trait Writing
Daily Spelling (Rookie doesn't do this)
Daily Language Review (Rookie also doesn't do this)
Daily Phonics

We also use Singapore for grammar and the Sentence to Paragraph book but we may stop soon. Babalu has a lot of work and I'm beginning to think it is too much and these are more review for him.

Here is the handwriting we use. It is very easy for the kids and doesn't take a lot of their time.

Rookie uses the Sonlight first grade Language Arts without the horrid "I Can Read" series. The stories are nonsense and can be hard to read, kind of like a tongue twister. We also skip anything religious because we aren't Christians.

Babalu uses Bring the Classics to Life readers and really enjoys them. We don't use them all of the time, maybe one a month, because they are short. Right now he is reading 20,000 Leagues under the Sea and is enjoying it. He finished The War of the Worlds in May and also enjoyed it.

For math we use Singapore and love it. We do skip the instructor's guides and find mental math sheets free from the internet because the instructor guides are very expensive compared to the textbook and workbook for each level. . We use the CA Standards editions. Erik is doing 3A and 3B and Tristan is doing 1A and 1B.

Classical Academic Press is where we find our Latin programs. Love these. I am excited to use the many of their other products when the boy's are older.

Since we have to do health we are using Horizon. Can't say that I'm thrilled with it but it is requited by the state we don't have too much of a choice.

Social Science planning

When possible I like studying world history and world geography together. When we study the Celts I want us to study Scotland (so excited for that week!), as an example. That isn't always possible because sometimes 2 or more topics take place in the same place and, aside from England, I don't want to study the same place twice because I want to introduce as many places as I can. I also managed to mostly arrange the geography topics by continent, just by luck. We will be reading books on each country and putting together lap books. Many of our geography materials are coming from a program called Expedition Earth and also from Continent Boxes. Some of the countries we plan to study are not included in the Expedition Earth so I have to search the internet to find materials. Hopefully it won't be a problem. As I've mentioned before our history comes from here.  
This is the list of what we are doing when-


     HISTORY                                                             GEOGRAPHY

1. Overview of the Medieval World                     Over View of World Geography
2. The Byzantine Empire                                      Turkey
3. Charlemagne                                                    Belgium
4. Monks of the Christian Church                         Italy/Vatican City
5. Islam/Arabs                                                     Iran
6. The Vikings                                                     Sweden/Norway
7. The Danes/Holy Roman Empire                       Denmark
8. The Normans                                                  France
9. 100 Years War and the Black Death               England
10. The Feudal System                                         Germany
11. Knights                                                           Wales
12. Castles                                                            Ireland
13. Medieval Villages and Towns                          The Netherlands
14. Christian Church/Medieval Architecture           Spain
15. Pilgrimages and the Crusades                          Israel 
16. Richard the Lionhearted and Robin Hood        England
17. The Celts                                                        Scotland
18. Burundians/Habsburgs/War of the Roses        Austria
19. The Mongols                                                  Mongolia
20. The Russians                                                  Russia
21. Africa                                                            Africa  *Africa is listed as it's own topic in history so I thought we would take 2 extra days during the week and study the entire continent at once. We will make time later to study each place on it's own.
22. India/South East Asia                                    India
23. China                                                           China
24. Japan                                                           Japan
25. Explorers                                                     Australia
26. Pacific Ocean Islands                                   New Zealand
27. Native Americans -North                             Canada
28. Native Americans- North                             Mexico
29. Central/South America                                 Brazil
30. Central/South America                                 Argentina 
31. The Turks/Ottomans                                    Peru
32. The Renaissance                                          Panama
33. More World Expansion                               Venezuela
34. The Mughals/Reformation/Counter-Reformation  South Korea
35. Elizabeth I/William Shakespeare                    Thailand
36. Middle Ages Keepsake Books                    Arctic/Antarctica 

Over our Winter Break I am planning a unit on celebrations around the world. We are mostly of German, English and Scottish extraction so I am planning to incorporate more of those countries traditions into our family celebrations (we have been celebrating St Nicholas Day for years and the boys always looks forward to having St Nicholas put candy and a toy in their shoes).

Secular history

One of the hardest pieces of our curriculum to pick has been history. My state doesn't require history specifically only "social studies" which meant that after our pick for Babalu's first grade year didn't work out (Story of the World volume 1) we were able to stick with geography and reading random books about relevant topics. This continued into his second grade year when I became annoyed by Sonlight's Core B "lets pray for the 'godless' people". On the other hand Sonlight has an amazing selection of books about history for kids so we use the books but without the instructor's guide.

Part of the difficulty is that we are a secular homeschool. Most of the history programs I have found are Christian based. I don't have a problem with that but I do not want to teach history with that view in mind. After constant searching I have found History Odyssey by Pandia Press. Basically you buy an e-book that has a schedule, list of required books, suggested books and projects. They also go from ancient history all the way to modern. We follow the classical method in this way (it is also the way I wish I had been taught history).

Because we didn't start this new program until early this year we skipped a great deal of it as to finish in June. It is working out really well. We are skipping the map work this year because Rookie is still young but beginning in the fall (when we begin the study of the middle ages) we will be doing that. So far we have studied the beginning of time, the ancient Egyptians and currently the Ancient Greeks. Babalu is enjoying the reading but so far Rookie finds it a bit boring (everyone loves the projects!). Hopefully as we continue on our homeschool journey he will begin to enjoy it.