And our 16th year of Homeschool is underway! Our Curriculum for this year.....

Because many people ask me, "What curriculum do you use?"  and it's not that simple to answer when you are eclectic, I decided to type it out to save time.

My 3 year old loves to do school, so this year she will be doing:

• Horizons Preschool Book 1
• Find and Count Bubbles sticker book
• My First ABC Sticker Activity book (from Sam's Club)
• My First Sticker Art (from Sam's Club)
• Leap Frog DVD's
• Reading LOTS of books!!

My 1st grader's lineup includes:

• Math Lessons for a Living Education book 2
• Handwriting Without Tears
• Language 1 Abeka
• Explode the Code books 4-6 
• Christian Liberty Press Phonics Readers
• Veritas Press Self Paced Bible (Genesis-Joshua)
• Veritas Press Self Paced History (Old Testament and Ancient Egypt)
• Science: Inquisikids Discover and Do DVD's K, 1st and 2nd (Sonlight) doing mainly experiments all year long (the little boys favorite!!) 

My 3rd grader is plugging along at:

• Math Lessons for a Living Education 4
• Life of Fred Honey, Ice Cream and Jelly Beans
• Handwriting without Tears
• Language 3 Abeka
• Learning Language Arts through Literature Yellow Book
• Veritas Press Self Paced Bible (Genesis-Joshua)
• Veritas Press Self Paced History (Old Testament and Ancient Egypt)
• Science: Inquisikids Discover and Do DVD's K, 1st and 2nd (Sonlight) doing mainly experiments all year long
• He will be taking an online class this fall to learn Scratch Computer Programming.  He already started learning the ropes yesterday and is really liking it!!

My 6th grader who is my bookworm:

• Life of Fred Decimals and Zillions of Decimal Problems Math
• Science: Answers in Genesis God's Design for Animals, Plants and Ecosystems
• Geography: I created my own curriculum using "Eat Your Way through the World" cookbook as the spine and studying 30 countries
• Fun-Schooling's "Seven Amazing Continents" 
• Total Language Plus
• Cover Story: Middle School Writing Curriculum
• Duo-Lingo Spanish
• An online class called Evangelism 101
• Piano
• Working through list of "200 more commonly misspelled words"

My 8th grader helped me choose:

• Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra
• Answers in Genesis Science God's Design for Matter, Machines, Atoms and Heat (Physical Science)
• Total Language Plus
• Cover Story: Middle School Writing
• Working through list of "200 more commonly misspelled words"
• Online Evangelism 101 Class
• Mandarin Chinese
• Piano
• A Heart for You China-Year Long study of China from a missions perspective

9th grade high school:

• Jensen's Format Writing for English
• Teaching Textbooks Algebra 2
• World History using "Great Courses" and lots of reading of real Historical Fiction as well as a weekly essay on the history topic of the week
• Business 1 using books on Starting Micro Businesses and actually launching a website and business this year of his choosing
• Filmmaking
• Piano
• Evangelism 101 Online class
• Abeka World Geography
• Duo Lingo Spanish
• Dendrology for Science (online class studying trees) 

And finally my 12th grader.  She has essentially finished all of her high school requirements except for Economics....and has also logged 61 college credits as well....so she will be having a very eclectic senior year:

• Economics with Randy Alcorn's "God Money Possessions and Eternity"  and Math U See Stewardship
• College Algebra through ALEKS
• She is taking some college classes this fall: ENG 300 "Intro to Creative Writing" 
• An online college class "The Old Testament as Literature" 
• Public Speaking and Sociology through Straighterline
• Finishing up editing her 2nd Novel and prepare it for publishing
• Continue weekly blog writing
• She is planning on writing a booklet on Godly Relationships later this year as well

And that completes the students who haven't graduated yet.
My 19 year old will be in his 2nd year at Campbellsville University continuing his major or Vocal Music Education.

My 21 year old is getting ready to start his LAST semester of his Master's Degree and will done in November!!

Whew......

Homeschool Math Curriculum: Our choices for the 2017-2018 School Year and How we got here

I get a lot of questions about curriculum.  I have been homeschooling for 16 years, and over the course of time, I have tried MANY different curriculum....and have researched even more.   In the past, we have used:  Singapore Math, Teaching Textbooks, Life of Fred,  Abeka, Horizons, ALEKS and Critical Thinking Press.    Some of those have worked well for certain children and were disasters for others.  My firstborn LOVED Singapore for elementary, but my next two were brought to tears by it.   Those same two really liked Teaching Textbooks but my firstborn HATED how they over-explained and repeated things.  So, there likely isn't a perfect curriculum for every family (or even every child  in the SAME family for crying out loud.) (That is my disclaimer).  Some of the favorites for us, some of our friends don't like at all.  That's okay..we're all different.

Thankfully, with all this experience under my belt, I now know which curriculum is best for which type of math student...and can better choose for each of my children based on past experience with siblings who have similar personalities and math abilities.   For that reason alone, I encourage everyone to have a half dozen more kids or so cause homeschooling really does get easier then. =)  You don't want to have to quit when you have finally figured it all out.  

I'll address elementary first.   Pretty much any curriculum can work for kindergarten and 1st grade.  Even the companies that include "Drill and Kill" (a term where they kill their students by a ridiculous amount of problems on a page until they despise math)...don't typically overwhelm the 5 and 6 yr olds.
But whoa buddy....if you survive to 2nd or 3rd grade, some of those workbooks  should come with a few boxes of Kleenex.  Enter diagram A:

   

Can you even imagine being an 8 yr old boy who just wants to be outside and being given a page (or TWO!!!)   of this stuff?????    They either get it or they don't.  20 problems is not better than 5, seriously...maybe over the course of the week but in one sitting.   Just shoot the kid now and put him out of his misery!!!        This is what I found in curriculum like Abeka and Horizons.   For some reason, everyone just thinks Abeka is the best.   There are some books worth using in Abeka....I'm not denying that, but if that is all  you use for everything....you and the kids will soon hate homeschooling.  It's like school at home, and well, stressful!

There are other options for the little people to help them (and you) enjoy school more.   Using LEGO's,   math around the house,  online math games and if you want a curriculum, I REALLY like Life of Fred  When I use this for my 8 yr old, he is so happy!  After attempting an Abeka 3 math book last year and seeing the drill and kill, he asked me for something else.   We switched to Life of Fred and he thanked me every day for a week!    Because we were zooming through the books so quickly last year, I'm adding  a new workbook to use along with Fred to slow us to a normal speed and solidify some concepts.  I will be using Math Lessons for a Living Education book 2 for my 6 year old  and book 4 for my 8 year old.  I will also be doing a few lessons per week with them in Life of Fred because it's just so stinking fun and we all love Fred.  (Here he is now...)

Okay....my next student is going into 6th grade....LOVES and thrives with Fred and will be doing  Decimals and Percents this year along with Zillions of Practice Problems.   She will probably finish early and will head on into Pre Algebra 0 with Physics which is Fred's 1st of 3 Pre Algebra books.

My next daughter is going into 8th grade and does not think math is the greatest subject in the world.  (scratching my head).  She is learning Mandarin Chinese but the Fractions book was complicated.  Okay then.  So she will be stopping her Life of Fred career as it was not a good fit her for, and using Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra.    Because she has a similar math interest and ability as a few older siblings, I know this is the perfect fit for her.  She will stick with Teaching Textbooks throughout high school as well.

The next in the lineup is going into 9th grade.  He just finished Life of Fred Beginning Algebra and he liked it but it was a challenge for him. This year he will be using Teaching Textbooks Algebra 2 instead as he can use a little more explaining.

My oldest still in home school is going to be a senior.  She will likely take a dual enrollment math course this year in College Algebra or College Math.   I'll let her choose cause she is working on a degree in English.....and she just wants to write ALL.DAY.LONG.    (and she has fulfilled all her math courses required for high school...but she wants to take more).

Let me give some closing thoughts on using Life of Fred in High School.  In my opinion, Life of Fred high school courses are more advanced than pretty much anything on the market.  He doesn't just teach you how to solve an equation, he wants you to know HOW and WHY you do that and THEN solve it.    Since the elementary series seems light and to some people "not very meaty" because it lacks "Drill and Kill" and it's "not the way math is done"  they also (falsely) assume that Fred must not be enough for high school.    That is just not true.   One of my students who used Fred all through high school (and only Fred)  scored a 35 on the math ACT portion (out of 36).  And was able to pass the College Algebra and College Math CLEPS....with near perfect scores.     So nobody can tell me that Fred is "not enough."    I think for some it is "too much" because non math kids sometimes struggle with the challenge of Fred.    It has more math in their books than Saxon and other heavyweights...that you can read about here.    If you have a child that wants to go into Engineering or a STEM field,  then Fred is what you want them to take!!!!  If you have a kid that just struggles with math and doesn't have the interest or desire to dig in and figure out the WHY of math, then I'd probably steer you to Teaching Textbooks.  (We have both kinds of kids in our family....they are not smarter or dumber just different and that is totally okay! Those same kids excel in other subjects that math nerds can't stand!)
So that is my (not so brief) explanation of why we do what we do when it comes to math curriculum.