We have been doing God’s Design Plants for Beginners for a couple months now and I have to say it is a near perfect fit for my three youngest.
They are in 3rd(twins) and Kindergarten, the curriculum says it is for K-2nd.
My girls love the fact they get a brand new workbook every 5 lessons.
To them new is always better and whatever is newest is their favorite so the fact they feel like they get a new book constantly keeps them excited.
The lessons are short and to the point which really helps with limited attention spans.
They always have an easy activity that goes with the lesson and it is easy to make it more hands on since it takes so little time.
On this day we were learning about stems and what grows from them.
I added on to the lesson by going outside and having them find stems and point out the things growing from them.
We have also gone out to find the different types of trees the lesson talked about.
We found these berries and I had them split them open to see what was inside.
They were pretty excited to find seeds!
The only downside to this curriculum for us is that I have not figured out how to tie it together with out history study yet.
I like studying history by timeline and we are not in a time period that makes plants an obvious choice.
I would like for the boys and girls to be studying the same thing so we can actually do more together as well but the boys curriculum has them doing weather right now and the beginners series does not have weather.
But other than that this has been perfect to grab and go.
The program did not work well for my twins because they needed that structure the third line adds and they struggle with making their letters the right size now.
We are also not all that happy with their cursive program and are leaning towards a more traditional style for that.
I went back and forth between RightStart and McRuffy Color Math for her math but in the end RightStart won.
McRuffy is a lot easier for me to teach but RightStart just teaches number sense so well!
So she is doing RightStart Level A this year and it will be my third time teaching it!
I love how All About Spelling teaches spelling.
We switched from RightStart to McRuffy Color Math halfway through the year last year so we still need to finish up the Second Grade book this fall.
I think RightStart does some stuff better but McRuffy is a lot easier for me to teach and the girls have been doing better with it so we will stick with this for now.
I have not been real happy with 1st Language Lessons for a while and have been keeping an eye out for an alternative.
Not easy like Sunday Morning, Sunday morning is a circus and in no way easy…
But I am turning to curriculum and saying good enough is good enough.
I love making up my own science and history but am taking a break. My oldests are already asking for more books because they are used to me getting 50 books from the library for every subject.
I am going to have two 8th graders, two 3rd graders, and one in Kindergarten.
If I don’t make it as easy as I can, I will drown.
So here is to a year using as much curriculum as I can.
Is your homeschool looking different this year or are you sticking with what has worked in the past?