Curriculum-ish Choices For Next Year

With the homeschool convention coming up in less than a month, it's the time of year when I start trying to think through what we're going to be using next year. This is when life would be easier if I just followed a boxed curriculum, but this is the only time I think that LOL. Besides, what fun would there be in wandering the vendor hall if I knew what I wanted, right?

So, I thought about it, and talked to the girls about it, and here's what we came up with:

Bible - We will wrap up our chronological journey through the Bible over the summer, then for next year we are going to revisit Polished Cornerstones. We went through this comprehensive study of the Proverbs 31 woman the year Little Bit was born, now that the girls are older, it's time to revisit it. I'm looking forward to being able to dig into these lessons at a more "in depth" level AND to include Little Bit in some of this with the "youngest" suggestions in the curriculum.

History - We are going to continue with American History. I am LOVING how much more in-depth TruthQuest History is, compared to what we've been using. Of course the flip of that is that we'll take even LONGER to go through the rest of American History if we have MORE great books to read on each topic, sigh . . . so many books, so little time!

We decided to do some of out other subjects just one or two days per week:

2 days: Science - The girls are enjoying Christian Kids Love Science, so we decided we'll continue with it. We'll plan to do science 2 days per week, which works perfectly for this curriculum.

1 day: Art - We enjoyed Artistic Pursuits when we reviewed it earlier this year, we're hoping to get back in the groove of doing one lesson per week.

1 day: Music - Well, sort of one day . . . when we started talking about music, MiniMe informed me that she wants to take piano lessons. So I did some research and called a lovely lady in our church who teaches piano and MiniMe will be starting piano lessons tomorrow. So that's her music which means one day a week of lessons and all days a week of practice. . . Sassy isn't interested in piano lessons, so we decided to use the Hymns for a Kid's Heart books to learn about hymns/music. We'll start with Passion Hymns, since I happen to have that one, if we like them, we'll get more as we need them.

1 day: Nutrition/Health - Last year we went part way through Vintage Remedies for Girls, and enjoyed it. We've decided to re-visit it this year, one day a week.

So that, along with continuing to review products for the TOS Crew, should keep us out of trouble LOL. As has been the case this year, I consider Language Arts and Math to be well covered through life and the above subjects so I don't find it necessary to have specific "subjects" for them, though we might start moving toward abit more formal math at some point next year . . . I haven't decided yet . . .

OOOOOHHHHH WAIT!!!! One more thing!!! Little Bit heard us talking about school and said "what about MY school?" I asked her if she wanted to start having school too and she said yes so, starting this week, we are going to go through a "Letter of the Week" program with her (I'll do a separate post about the specifics of that). My current plan is to go through the alphabet from now through November (what? That's more than 26 weeks? shhh . . . I know me, we'll miss some weeks! If we get done "early" we'll do a "number a week" for awhile or something . . . ) Then include her in Thanksgiving stuff and Hanukkah stuff and Christmas/Advent stuff along with the big girls. And then, starting in January, I want to use the Waldorf preschool program that I used w/ the big girls, I'm not sure it's still available online so not going to bother trying to find a link, but I actually have all the files saved, and even can find them, or could a few months ago when I wanted something. For some reason, it runs for a year and a half, starting in January, so we'll go with that . . . how scary is it that THAT will take her to "Kindergarten" age? EEK!!!!