Family Friday

By now you should know that we homeschool. So today I'm about going to talk about the curriculum we use. We felt that God was leading and convicting us to keep our kids home with us. I'm currently reading a book called Rise Up, a Covenantal Approach to Homeschooling. I encourage you to read it. (I have it in my side bar.) After reading part of it, I'm beginning to think that every Christian's response should be homeschooling....not completely sure. And I don't want to alienate any public schoolers here, but he sure makes his case well. Seriously, read the book and we'll discuss it and you can tell me I'm wrong. I look forward to it.

I know by now you probably think I've forgotten what I was talking about, but I haven't. (He does that in the book a lot, so I was just trying to be like him.)

We LOVE Veritas Press for almost all our curriculum. It's classical, it's challenging, its fun!

We gear our school days based on each child's needs. Ashlea is about to graduate and, of course, should be doing more. Kori likes learning so she has more. Kati can barely stand doing school work and has to be stood over to get work done, so she does less. But whatever the case, Veritas has it. They do sell some stuff that I just can't afford, like Spelling, so I found another Christian based program to go with. We do feel it's important that our curriculum be from a Christian worldview. We want everything to be used for Christ, including how to do Math, spelling and phonics.

Just a brief overview of what we use and why we like it:

Phonics: VP - Our K and 1st graders will use this. I feel it's important to learn to read the words and not just guess, based on what's in the picture. But since there are so many words that don't follow phonics rules they need to learn some by sight too. And VP incorporates ALL styles of learning, including kinestetic which was great for Kati. (That's all our k and 1st graders do.)

Math: Saxon - We start math in the 2nd grade. We try to make it very hands-on as well. We have a really fun manipulative kit. Once they finish the self-led math in 6/5, we start with Jacobs for math.

History/Bible: VP - This is by far the best thing they sell. By the time we had finished the first set of cards there was nothing in Genesis that Kori didn't know. It was just amazing. It has flashcards and worksheets but also read-alouds and a song. The girls love it. Once you've done 6 years of it, it wraps right into the Omnibus.

History/Bible/Literature: VP - Omnibus. A wonderful curriculum for Jr High and High School, especially if they did the cards first. They read classic literature and historical books and then discus them. Right now we are finishing up Lord of the Rings and Eusibuis, The Church History.

For spelling and Kati's writing we went with A Reason for Spelling/Writing. But for Kori's we used Classical Writing.

That's about it. Next Friday I'll talk more about what we do for homeschooling.