Curriculum for 2011-2012 School Year

I'm very excited to order the rest of our curriculum for the 2011-2012 school year. I'm making a lot of changes in regards to the type of curriculum I'll be using next year. I have read review after review after review about the choices I was considering making and after praying and talking it over with my husband this is what we have decided for next year.

The bulk of our curriculum will be coming from Sonlight. I am making this switch because I like that it is a very literature based Christian program and also because from all that I have read, it is very "busy-mom friendly", if that makes sense! If you decide that you want to use Sonlight, I'd really appreciate it if you used my rewards code. It's BZ20321238. When you register for a new Sonlight account, and use my Rewards ID code, I will be awarded points for your first order. In addition, you will receive a $5 discount on your first order if it's $50 or more.  Thanks!!

For our math we already transitioned from the Abeka I was using into Rightstart Math. It is a better fit for sure! My son used to love worksheets but I felt like all the Abeka worksheets were an overkill and it got to be too much for him. Rightstart is a completely different approach I'll admit, but it's waaaay more hands-on and it is working very well for us so far. Since it is hands-on, my 3 1/2 year old daughter joins us for the math lessons. I was pretty pleased the other day when she looked at the cover of the book I was reading (click here if you're curious as to what it was) :) and said, "Mom, those are parallel." And indeed, they were!

Rightstart is definitely worth checking out if you want an understanding-based curriculum versus a rote memory style. I certainly did a lot of reading up on this curriculum before choosing it, but am happy with it so far.

For handwriting, we'll continue using the BJUPress. Sonlight does offer several good options, but I figure if what we're using is working, why switch it up? :)

For reading I'm currently using Abeka, but have also supplemented with Pathway Readers. I have the Pathway 1st grade reading and accompanying language arts workbooks that we'll continue to use throughout the summer just to keep us on our toes. I'm guessing that by the fall we'll have completed them and we'll then transition into the 1st grade (Core 1) level with Sonlight.

So, that leaves Bible, science, spelling, reading, language arts, geography and history that we'll use Sonlight to cover.

I will still implement the AWANA verses and activities and Sunday School papers that the kids bring home each week in addition to the Sonlight Bible Curriculum.

For PE I'm looking into an inexpensive gymnastics group that is geared towards homeschoolers during the school day. I'm praying that will be a great option for us, especially during the winter months when we are somewhat cooped up. If that doesn't work out I try to send the older 2 kids out each day anyways, weather permitting! :)

I'd like to implement some Spanish for a foreign language but am not sure what the best way is to go about that. I do not have any experience speaking Spanish so I don't want to teach them the wrong pronunciations. (also, it must be an inexpensive program! I know Rosetta Stone sells one for homeschoolers but it's $199!) If you have any suggestions for this, please share! And, do you recommend starting them at this age (will be 4 and 6)?

We'll see how the new school year goes! I'm excited about it, but think it will be more involved since 1st grade will have more material to cover than Kindergarten and my daughter will be 4 so I'll be doing more preschool with her than I did this past year. (Although the way it's been working out, she joins us for a large part of our learning time anyways so it'll probably just be adding a few letter tracing worksheets and such. For my son I used the bjupress.com K-4 curriculum and was pretty happy with it. That's all I used with him that year because I had a new baby at the time!)

So, I guess that summarizes what I plan to use for curriculum for the upcoming year. I would love it if you left some comments about what curriculum has worked well for you! If you're looking for more school ideas, be sure to go here and here!

If you're interested in checking out other curriculum reviews, go to The Homeschool Curriculum Review Roundup.

Thanks for reading! I hope you'll become a follower so you don't miss a thing! :)