First Year of Homeschooling...Review of Curriculum

Well, we have officially....yet not officially are done our first year of homeschooling.   I say unofficially because we didn't quite finish, everything for the year. But with the death of Auntie Katie, and now the VERY soon up coming birth of baby #4, we decided to take a break for the next 6 weeks.  We will work on some math and Reading through out the summer when we feel up to it, and pick it back up in August to finish out Grade 1. 

What a Whirl wind year it has been.  Curriculum that we used this year For GRADE 1

1.)  Sonlight Grade 1 Full Kit.  $1000+

This however only lasted for about 7 weeks, and then we pulled it out of our daily routine.  Reading, science and writing were a struggle to get her to do anything with out tears.  We found that it was very monotone teaching. There was nothing really exciting, or bright or colourful.  We found that Lady Tor Tor was just hating stand getting frustrated and bored. So I contacted my aunt a Homeschooling coordinator, and asked her what I should do.  She told me, make the curriculum work for you, not the other way around.  I was suffering from morning sickness, I was having a hard time making the curriculum work at all for us.  So I pulled the plug.  I felt awful that we had spent that kind of money, and then we were not going to be using it.  However it comes with LOTS of books, that we can in fact use again.  

So after our trial of Son light, we decided to go Eclectic and do what worked for us. 

So the Subjects were as follows:

Language Arts:  All About Reading Level 1. $165 Cdn  We were about 3 lessons in and all the frustration we had experienced at the start of the year, melted away, and she all of a sudden was reading, truly sounding out words, and feeling confident in her work.  

Simply spelling ( Didax) $5-15 Cdn- This was a pretty simple and yet fun way of doing spelling, and the work book is rather inexpensive. 

A simple Journal- $1.50 Cdn-  I encouraged her to journal, by drawing a picture first and then telling me about it, as the year has gone on she has improved on realizing that she can actually write words, and use her creativity in more ways then Drawing. 

Print outs from Pinterest- This is Great way to supplement or break up monotony I did writing, and journaling and colouring from Pinterest.

Bible: Olympians- Challenger Quiet time( word of life Ministries) $20.00 Cdn- One year of daily devotions for kids in grade 1-2.  This is a very simple read a verse, do an short activity and get on with the day.  I did not want to spend a huge amount of time doing Bible per say a day.  Lots of people choose to do it differently but we wanted to get into the word, but still make sure we had lots of time to get our other school work done. 

Math:  Horizons Grade 1 Math- $125 Cdn-  This is a spiral learning system, where the child is taught and concept and it is repeated at a deeper level in another lesson.  The pages are printed in colour, and the lessons are about 2 pages long, plus there are lots of extra activities in the Teaching manual, we found that the lessons themselves were enough to do for math in a day.  One draw back for Canadians doing Horizon math is that Money is in American funds, so I have had to supplement with Canadian curriculum. 

Mammoth Math: Canadian Money $15- Working well for us, we really just started into it but it seems to be working well.  We also have access to our own currency to do hands on approach as well.    

Social Studies:   Our Fathers World Social studies Grade 2- Rod and staff $12.00 Cdn- This is a nice simple way to do Social studies, read a story answer some questions, and be done with it.  It was for grade 2 but it worked perfectly and included world studies, North American, and Canadian studies.  It worked well for us.  Some of the names were a little dumb, but over all they worked pretty good. 

Around the World with Kate and Mack- This was a book that we got in our Son Light Package, and we used it for bible/Social studies. Wycliff bible translators is the publisher, and the book is all about different countries that have had the Bible translated into their native tongues.  We really enjoyed learning from this book.  There are fun facts, and interesting information about the language and country.

Science:  FREE: We didn't use a Curriculum but rather, picked things to learn about,  Butterflies, and Frogs, and other science activities most of it did come from TPT (teachers paying teachers) Website, and Pinterest.  We made lap books, and coloured pictures and read, and also watched You tube video's on the topic we chose.  I let Lady Tor Tor pick what she was interested in.