Curriculum Time! (the 8 and under crowd)

It's curriculum time and, after weeks of praying and researching, I finally have all the curriculum chosen. It's not simple, but I'm excited that it looks like a fun school year.

My goal for this year was to spend time doing Bible with everyone and allow the 3 older kids to be more independent and spend more time with
the younger crowd.
Here is my plan for the 2nd, 1st and K4 year olds (and the 1 yr old when he sits still..smile)

For my together time with the younger 3 or 4, I will be using a combination of things. One that I'm excited about is Five in a Row volume 3 with the Bible Study supplement and the Cookbook supplement.
FIAR is a program for younger kids where you read 1 book every day for a week and each day touch on different learning aspects: Social studies, science, nature, math etc. We will be tying in the Bible and the cookbook to each story as well.
I will also alternate that with History for Little Pilgrims... a Christian Liberty press that covers basic history and has coloring pages you can buy to go with each day's lesson.
I will continue with read alouds that I implemented this summer as well. For now we are reading through some of the Sonlight Kindergarten and 1st grade books I have from the older kids. 30 minutes before naptime, we have snuggle time on the couch and I read a longer type book to them. It is one of my favorite times of the day as well as theirs.
Since FIAR doesn't have Bible every day, I will be reading a Bible story every day and using a coloring page. We will use The CHildren's Illustrated Bible by Hastings.
My 2 favorite Bible story coloring pages are
Calvary Chapel

and THIS ONE.

We will continue with memorizing 1 verse a week using the CD called "Sing the Word from A-Z" We started this summer a few weeks ago and are up to "D".."Do to others as you would have them do to you for this sums up the law and the prophets and this is Matthew 7:12" I can't type it without singing the song.

Chris will be tackling elementary science again using the curriculum from Answers in Genesis called God's Design for Life studying the World of Animals, World of Plants and the Human Body.

We will also try to fit in art a few times a week using I CAN DO ALL THINGS from the company How Great Thou Art.
We started that book last year and they always begged for more than I could find the time to do. grin.

They will each have their own level of handwriting using Handwriting Without Tears...their own Math using Horizons 1 and 3. I also have them do 10 minutes of FLASHMASTER every day to work on math facts.

Praise is continuing to work through ANSWERS FOR PRESCHOOLERS that is by far my favorite preschool curriculum yet! She is about 1/2 way done having started it when she turned 3 and doing it slowly at her pace.

For Language Arts, my 2nd grader is using English for the Thoughful Child along with Abeka Language 2. I also have him email a few times a week to friends and family as that really helps them to learn punctuation, capitalization and spelling in a non threatening way.

My 1st grader will be doing Abeka workbook Language 1 with Critical Thinking Press' Language Smarts B (Language arts that incorporates some critical thinking skills)
She also has phonics books that she reads out loud to one of us a story a day that gradually gets harder and harder. She is a good reader already though.

I think that covers our early elementary/preschool plan.
Stay tuned next time when I share what we're using for 5,7,9th grades.