I'll admit, I am probably not normal. There probably aren't that many people like me who will be reading this and that's OK. This year I decided to homeschool the way that works beat for ME and not depend on the opinion of others as to what will work best for MY kids or MY family. I've been homeschooling for 4 years, so I have experience in choosing curriculum and I know already what works best for my eldest (Abbie). I am looking forward to finding out what works best for Anna.
This year I decided to do trimesters - I divided the year up into 60 day increments. We will school for 60 days then take 2 weeks off. When we are finished with our 180 days, we will take a summer break. I planned only the first 60 days so that I have the freedom to change anything that doesn't work well for the second or third trimesters. I wrote my plan in a spiral bound notebook. Each day when we complete our work, I pull out the page and write the date the work was completed on it. I keep it in Abbie's portfolio book.
Our curriculum choices for this year include Horizons Math 6 (Horizon math is ahead of other curriculums - Abbie worked in Saxon 1/2 last year and 6 is where she placed on the Horizon placement test); The Story of the World, Volume 1 (Ancient Times) used with the Student Pages purchased separately (This is our second time through this - Abbie started it in first grade), and Sonlight's timeline book; Rod and Staff's 4th grade English book, Building With Diligence; Spelling Power (this is a multi- grade book which includes a placement test); Word Ladders by Scholastic (Grade 4); Vocabulary from Classical Roots (this builds vocabulary exponentially!); and for science, I have invented my own curriculum for this year. I subscribed to The Young Scientists Club for experiment and content ideas and then I matched these up with books from our local library. For Bible, I purchased bible lessons from our church and we are going through them at home. We also learn one new hymn and one new praise song each week. For writing, Abbie narrates her history and writes reports on her science subjects. Her English book provides copy work for her to do and I make her do handwriting when I find a letter she is forming incorrectly. For reading, she chooses books from the library, we have read aloud time and I assign reading that goes along with what we are learning for history. I have art projects that go along with our other work and Abbie takes violin lessons from a local music academy (WNC Music Academy). Anything else that I feel we need, I add in during free time. Since we only spend 3-4 hours on official school per day, we have a lot of time to pursue other interests.
I plan to post a lot about homeschooling this year, as I have had many people ask me about what I do.
I have scheduled our year in a similar way. Last week was our first week and I am going to try and get in 8 weeks before we go on vacation in October. I think it is so awesome to be able to choose the curriculum that works for each child's learning styles! I try (try) not to pay much attention to how many hours. My two are 12 (girl) and almost 14. They do most of their sit down work in the afternoon and we do lots of interest led/music lessons/group activities in the afternoons.
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