Monday, August 30, 2010

What We're Using This School Year



Even though we are now in our ninth year of homeschooling I am still always interested to read about what other homeschooling families are using in their homes to teach their children.  So I thought I would share what we will be using this year with you!

For our 9th grader:

*Math- Life of Fred Pre-Algebra with Biology, Pre-Algebra with Economics, and Beginning Algebra (she should be able to finish all 3 of these books within this school year, if not, no big deal).


*History/English/Bible- Exploring America by Notgrass along with Queen's Language Lessons for extra grammar review.

*Latin- Getting Started with Latin, Latin from the Roots Up (with her younger siblings), possibly Rosetta Stone the 2nd semester.

*Health & P.E.- What Every Girl Should Know, daily walking with mom or some other form of exercise, sitting in on weekly Weight Watcher meetings (and taking notes) to learn about healthy living, getting her CPR and First Aid Certification, and possibly some other health-type reading book for the second semester(haven't found just the right one yet).


*Typing- Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing (yes, I'm embarrassed to say that we've had this for years but I haven't made her do it.  Unfortunately, she has now taught herself how to type her own way and will have to re-learn the correct way.  Because of this, all four children will be learning to type this year. LOL)


For our 5th, 4th, and 3rd graders:

*Math- (5th grader) finish up Life of Fred fractions and move on to Life of Fred Decimals & Percents; (4th grader) finish up Math U See Delta and move on to Life of Fred fractions; (3rd grader) finish up Math U See Beta and move on to Math U See Gamma.

*Queen's Language Lessons


*History- we simply read from a variety of different books, use Time Travelers (LOVE these!), and make timeline notebooks.

*Science- again, we have so many different science resources that we use a variety to read from and do fun experiments, as well as our weekly nature walks/observations/journaling.

*Geography- Around the World in 180 Days as well as other books, maps, and globes.

*Latin- Getting Started with Latin, English from the Roots Up

*Handwriting practice (Handwriting Without Tears is what we have always used) will be in the form of copywork/copying scriptures to memorize.


*Other misc. things we'll be doing together as a family over the school year are weekly nature walks/journaling/picture taking, famous composer and artist studies, reading poetry, and at some point I want to find a Shakespeare play to take them to. Before we attend the play we will read about it (so we can understand what we'll be watching) from Tales from Shakespeare. Each child will also be reading a list of classic children's literature books. I'm using the lists from the Simply Charlotte Mason site.



I'd love to hear what you are using this year!  Leave a comment telling us, or, if you have a blog post about it, please share the link to it.


3 comments:

Christi said...

Christy,
You'll likely recognize the header on my blog :) hee hee soooo funny.

I'm always interested in what those who are ahead of me in the journey are using. I take notes on those things and tuck them away:)

Mary Lou Casada said...

We are using Notgrass for History/Bible, etc. this year, too, Christy! Sam, my 11th grader, is doing American History. We'll do World History and Economics and Government next year.
And yes, the Time Travelers are sooo cool, aren't they!? Love the stuff from Homeschool in the Woods.
My 6th grader is doing Sonlight, and we've pretty much always done Saxon math.
Three weeks in, and so far so good!
Blessings,
Mary Lou

Dawn said...

Some great items here! Thanks for the info!