Our Curriculum

So, homeschool moms are always interested in what everyone else is using for curriculum and how they have their schoolroom set up.  I know I am and I love getting great ideas!  So here's a peek at what my kiddos are working on this year - more on our schoolroom in a bit...

"Slim" - 3rd Grade

Calendar Work - Daily Learning Notebook. This is a new addition to our routine this year and the boys love them!  It is available as a free download from Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler.  
Bible - Egermeier's Bible Storybook, The Awesome Book of Bible Facts & George Muller of the (Christian Heroes: Then & Now Series of books about missionaries).  We take turns reading out of different books on different days, not all of them at once.  
Math - Singapore Math 2B.  We switched to Singapore partway through last year and went back to do 1A & 1B for review to catch what we missed, then finished with 2A.  
Handwriting - BJU Handwriting 3 Our first year trying this one.
Language Arts - Critical Thinking Company's Language Smarts Level C.  Our schedule got crazy last year so we still have some of Level C left before we'll move on to Level D.
Writing - WriteShop Junior Book D.  Slim is an avid reader & writer and frequently writes his own stories & journals for fun so I thought this would be a nice change from Writing With Ease since we had done that for 2 years.  
Spelling - All About Spelling Level 3.    
Science - Elemental Science EarthScience & Astronomy for the Grammar Stage.  We started using Elemental Science Biology in 1st grade and LOVE it.  It is easy with very little prep for me, 2-day or 5-day schedules in the teacher book and great "real" books that go along with the activities and student pages.  Last year in 2nd & K we covered the Earth Science portion of this book so now we're working on Astronomy.  
History - Story of the World Volume 3.  I cannot love SOTW more.  I "interviewed" the Volume 1 audio book from the library when Slim was in K and Birdman was 3 years old.  When I first got it from the library I put it in the cd player on the ride home to check it out.  The boys both wanted to know what it was and they ended up getting so engrossed that they would ask for it every time we got in the car.  We ended up listening to all 4 elementary audio book volumes that year "just for fun" because none of us could stop listening and when Slim was in 1st grade we went back and did it with the Activity Book and took our time with it.  I don't even buy the text book anymore, just the audio cd & activity book.  Listening to the cd is a really enjoyable end to our school day!

 "Birdman" - 1st Grade

Calendar Work, Bible, Science & History - Same as Slim since we do these all together.

Math - Singapore Math 1B.  Last year Birdman worked all the way through Critical Thinking Co's Mathematical Reasoning Level A so we started him on Singapore 1A.  

Handwriting - Zaner-Bloser Handwriting 1

Reading - We are still working our way through the I Can Read It! book.  Sonlight splits these up now into cute books but we found one second-hand that was in one giant book.  We also do 30-minutes or 1 chapter of a Read-Aloud book; right now we're starting with Charlotte's Web and I have the read-alouds from Sonlight K & 1st grade to work through.  

Language Arts - Crictical Thinking Company's Language Smarts Level B and First Language Lessons.

Writing - Writing With Ease Level 1.

Spelling - All About Spelling Level 1.

"Shorty" - Pre-K

I have a whole array of learning games, manipulatives, activities etc... that I've collected over the years and from my stint selling Discovery Toys!  Shorty is up to anything that keeps him relatively quiet and busy!  Eventually I will post a list of what we find works to keep our preschooler busy while we do school.  Who knew the hardest part of teaching elementary school at home would be not the subjects themselves, but juggling the other littles in the house!  

Now, let me show you around our schoolroom...