Our 2015-2016 Homeschool Curriculum Choices

I’ve had most of our curriculum chosen for quite awhile, but since I’m finally done with my lesson planning, I figured I would share it.  Everything is for both Jonah (Kindergarten) and Matthew (Pre-K), unless otherwise noted.

Bible Time: Okay, I lied.  This one we still haven’t fully decided what we’re doing.  For now, we’re keeping it to our daily devotion time (which we’re using this book for), and we’re 3 devotions away from starting over, so that coincides pretty perfectly with school starting.  The book runs through the entire Bible, with both common and not so common stories, so it’s a good way to get the kids familiar with Bible History.

We’re also using On My Heart memory cards.  We got about halfway through memorizing the Old Testament books last year before we stopped school, so we’ll start over and see how far we get.

And finally, we’ll be learning a new hymn or hymn verse every two weeks to coincide with the church year.

Calendar Time: We have a dry erase calendar on the wall in the homeschool room, as well as days of the week, months of the year, a weather chart, and a 100 days chart.  The weather chart, days of the week, and months of the year can be found for free here. I have laminated all of these, so we can continue to use them.

We also use specific day/date pages, which you can find here for free, or as part of the Letter of the Week curriculum (which we purchased last year).  I have these laminated as well, so I just have one of the kids fill them out each day.

Math (Jonah): Saxon Math 1.  I’m a fan of Saxon math, and I like having everything laid out very specifically with worksheets as well.  We didn’t buy the meeting time part of the curriculum, but it’s mostly calendar stuff, from what I can tell, so we’re covering that anyways.  We also didn’t buy the manipulatives, because they’re expensive.  Hopefully we can find suitable things to use instead.

Math (Matthew):  I made a list of about 15 pre-school/kindergarten math concepts, and I’m working on finding projects and activities to go along with them.  Think things like shapes, matching, largest/smallest, measuring, etc.  Each week I’ll pick a concept and find ways to reinforce it, mostly using Pinterest.

Reading (Jonah): The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading.

Reading (Matthew): A combination of the Letter of the Week curriculum I mentioned above, along with a lot of resources from The Measured Mom (we especially love her book lists and project round-ups) and projects I find on Pinterest.

Each week we’ll have several library books for the letter.  Each day I’ll have one worksheet for Matthew to do (some handwriting type sheets, some dot pictures, some coloring pages, and so on), and one project or activity.

Read Alouds: Each day we will have read aloud time for picture books.  The kids will pick one school book and one “fun” book each.  School books will be letter of the week books, along with extras we get to go along with science and history, plus I’ll pull down a few of our Arch books to go along with the Bible stories we’re hearing.

We’ll also be reading aloud a chapter book, starting with The Indian in the Cupboard and Mr. Popper’s Penguins.

Science: Elemental Science Exploring Science Curriculum (with experiments from Science at Play).

History: Story of the World Volume 1.

Life Skills: This is my chance to get things done around the house, but also teach the kids as well.  We’ll cover cleaning basics, some cooking, menu planning and grocery shopping, and who knows what else.

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