What We're Changing In Our Homeschool

Because we homeschool on a year round schedule, our kids change grades at random times compared to public school.  Owen will be heading into 4th grade after the New Year.  We're shaking his schedule up quite a bit.

He currently does Rod and Staff for grammar.  It's a pretty tough curriculum put out by the Mennonites.  But there is a lot of things that just don't happen anymore like diagramming sentences. and while I am not in the "grammar is dead" camp, I think he can use something different.

Read this grammar article for some laughs.  And also this:

  

He also uses Rod and Staff for spelling.  Starting in 4th grade, the lists are all in cursive, and while Owen learned cursive, we'll be emphasizing computer typing more and so will be changing up his spelling.  I am not sure what we'll use yet.  He is a terrible speller.  Like the worst, and I need to research this a little better.

I think for Owen we'll be doing Learning Language Arts Through Literature, which is a curriculum that combines all the things that encompass Language Arts into one curriculum based on literature excerpts.  I have a friend who does it with her more challenging boys and they love it.

Kembia technically entered first grade, and I am once again piecing together a curriculum.  She's doing Horizons 1st grade math, and then I think we'll use First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind.  To be honest, I don't really like the program, but we have it, and I think it will work well for her.  We're also doing All About Reading Level 1, but we haven't been great with it, so once she finishes it I think we'll start it again from the beginning.

Truitt will be in first grade probably in the next couple of weeks, and he'll just use what Kembia uses. His reading is progressing a lot faster than hers because he wants to read every single day.  Mostly because you get to put a star sticker on the lesson chart saying you finished and he loves that part.

Ava won't hit her next grade (mostly 10th grade stuff, with the exception of math) until later in April, so I have some breathing room before we make curriculum changes for her.  They just changed our state Math requirements from allowing Algebra 1 to be a high school math curriculum, to needing it before you enter high school.  She is super bummed about this because it means a whole other year of math for her.  Such is life.