Homeschool Curriculums

 

WHAT is my problem?! I am seriously so lazy about posting photos on these homeschooling posts. Sorry. There is nothing worse than a blog post without photos, right? Except burned cookies.

And by the way, that last post made our homeschooling seem so organized and smooth and OF COURSE that next day was the pinnacle of havoc and frustration. I had to badger my kids for about 6 hours and I think they finally eeked out some sort of half-committed effort. I was frustrated, they were frustrated… the day was shot. This  is why I have much to learn. I should have just gathered them into the living room and read them a good long book. Or got them started on an art project. Or took them to the library. But, I didn’t. I just got mad. But, I think we have made progress. At first these sorts of days were many, but they are getting more seldom as time passes, so there is hope for us all. In fact, the next day I was gone for two hours in the morning, and they got everything down without me. Maybe I just need to step out of the equation more often.

 

Okay, our favorites right now:

I really enjoy most of the workbooks we have used from The Critical Thinking Company, especially their math books like Math Analogies and Balance Math. They will mail you a free catalog and are really good about returning or exchanging books you don’t love 100%.

A fantastic, wonderful resource is TIMBERDOODLE.COM. They are a retailer of homeschooling curriculums and products, and they write accurate and generally unbiased reviews of their products. Their mailed catalog is especially good and gets your mind going on what kind of curriculum you really want.  Timberdoodle saved me when it came time to start ordering for last semester. I haven’t bought their Complete Curriculum Packages, but I have used them as a guide to which books to get for my kids. If you need more in depth explanations of different curriculums, or can’t find the perfect fit from Timberdoodle, order a Rainbow Resource Catalog (or read it online). They have everything and the write-ups are exhaustive. Plus, their prices are fantastic.

I have never personally used the k12 program. But, I have looked at it and seen kids using it and it looks really great. It is a little more intense and structured for people following TJEd, but is a good program for people who might have their kids go to public school in the future, or for those who would enjoy a more organized program that requires a high level of accountability. I know that the language arts curriculum is especially well reviewed. K12 is an online and real book mixed program, and they send you everything you need that isn’t online in the mail (like textbooks, math manipulatives, novels, etc.) You can also opt to have a personal advisor who checks you child’s progress and counsels with you as needed. Many states and districts actually cover the cost of the k12 tuition since it is so well accredited, but if you have to pay for it yourself, it is about $150-$300 per subject, per semester.

We had a hard time deciding on a math program—we had to order a secular math curriculum because of the stipulations of our  homeschool program… and you would think that would be easy because math is fairly secular, right? Nope. BUT, I listened to the advice of a homeschooling mentor and went with SingaporeMath.com. The books are straightforward, inexpensive, and challenging enough to be enjoyable for my kids. Just order the Textbook and the Workbook. There’s an online placement test so you get the right books. Each semester is about $20 and the textbooks are reusable  (or resalable on ebay).

As I mentioned before, I LOVE LVOE LOEV the Music Tree piano method for so many reasons. I can’t even begin to write them all. Plus, the books are really inexpensive. You can get by just fine with just the main lesson book which is about $8 a semester.

I was reminded in a comment that The Well Trained Mind is an excellent resource for homeschoolers, and it is! I got my copy from the library. I should check it out again soon now that we have been in the trenches for awhile.

 

We try not to have the kids on the computer too much, both because we try to limit screen time and because we only have one working computer right now. But, there are a few online resources that have been indispensible for us this year:

Our homeschooling program provides us with a free subscription to Rosetta Stone Homeschool Edition. This is a fairly awesome program, though I don’t know how I’d feel about it if I was paying for it because it is very expensive. It is a terrific, everything-I-would-want in a foreign language learning software, except that it doesn’t teach any songs or rhymes, and it doesn’t really have any fun games for the kids or any kid-based graphics. If anyone out there has a good suggestion for a free, completely perfect language learning software, please share.

My kids are rewarded with Brain Pop which is an animated educational video site. You really have to watch the videos to appreciate them. Subtly funny and amazingly accurate and nonbiased. To say my kids would watch them all day, every day is an understatement. It is sort of like khanacademy.org in a totally kid-friendly way. (Khanacademy is a free site with thousands of educational videos about nearly everything). Brain Pop does have a subscription fee, but it is covered by our Homeschool Program; I don’t know if it is worth it to everyone to pay $300 a year, but my kids have definitely absorbed $300 worth of learning from it in the last three months.

Another subscription based site that Elsie' uses is Reading Eggs. It’s $75 a year and until last month was only appropriate for pre-readers and early readers, but they just expanded their site to cover readers up to age 13, so I need to get my older kids on there too.  I like it much more than Starfall, which I know is a popular educational website, but I didn’t feel like my kids were learning much for the amount of time they would spend on there.

For typing practice, the kids and I love the free BBC typing program, Dance Mat Typing. In fact, the BBC website has lots of free learning tools you should check out.

As I mentioned before, my kids like to “log in” their fiction reading on Magic Treehouse and Book Adventure.

If you have favorite curriculum or websites, please share!!

 

So, to recap: if you are just starting out with homeschooling or are thinking about it in the future, just order the Timberdoodle catalog and it’ll show you how cheap and easy it can be to get started. I am NOT a book or curriculum hoarder—I was told by not a few homeschoolers that the homeschooling materials would take over my house. This has not been the case. We get ALL of our reading and resource books from the library, I don’t buy materials or manipulatives unless I know for sure they will be used constantly, and we never keep anything the kids created unless it needs to be framed and hung on the wall forever…. we just photograph (much faster than scanning) everything, put it on the hard drive in their school folder,  and recycle the original creation (fire or paper recycling). The kids don’t mind one bit, trust me. It is SO liberating to be done with folders and files and piles of paper…. but that deserves a whole ‘nother blog post, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Best to you in your homeschooling adventures. Happy Trails! Thank you for your comments and suggestions and for supporting our sponsors.

 

Jonah’s youngest sister just arrived on the island today! She is in for some crazy adventures—I’ll keep you posted.