Curriculum Choices for 2014-2015

 So, the next school "year"is upon us. Time to put our noses back to the grindstone after a great 8 weekish break. We are going to a 3 week ramp up of "School lite" before our beach trip, and then fully dive in at the beginning of August. Hulk will be starting K at home this year, after 3 years at the church preschool. Taz is no longer with us on a daily basis as his mom's out for the summer, and he will be entering public pre-k this fall. Ying & Yang will starting 3rd grade. So, here is this years plan.....

The spine for everyone we will be Exploring Countries and Cultures (ECC) by My Father's World. This will provide our Bible, Geography, and partial Science, music, and art.
*denotes co-op classes starting in Aug

For Hulk  (k/1):
Bible: ECC and The Adventure Bible Devotions for Early Readers.
Math: Flash Kids Math K
Reading/Phonics/handwriting: First Start Reading by Memoria Press (got this at an amazing price @ our local used curriculum sale)
Dolch sight words pre-primer and primer list.
*Storybook cooking 1 & 2
Science: *Adventures in Space/ Wacky Weather, tag along with ECC science
Music: *Music for Young Mozarts 1&2
PE: Soccer 2 nights per week, Continue 1 mile training
Fine Motor/math/sci: *Lego Free Building/ Lego Early Simple Machines

For Ying "My Logic child" (3rd):
Bible:  ECC and The Adventure Bible Devotions for Early Readers
Math: Teaching textbooks. 2nd half of  Math 3, and moving on to Math 4 when ready.
Handwriting: Cursive Writing: around the World in 26 Letters
LA: A combo of Flash Kids  Reading Skills/Language Arts/Writing Skills 3, *Lego Story Starter 1 & 2
Reading: Assigned and self chosen novels/bookbasket
Science: ECC & *Earth Science 1 & 2
Music: ECC & * Beginning Cello
Art: Global art from ECC
PE: *Choi Kwang Do, Soccer 3 nights a week, continue 5K training
electives: *Lego stop animation movie making

For Yang " My artsy social butterfly" (3rd):
Bible:  ECC and The Adventure Bible Devotions for Early Readers
Math: Teaching textbooks. 2nd half of  Math 3, and moving on to Math 4 when ready.
Handwriting: Cursive Writing: around the World in 26 Letters
LA: A combo of Flash Kids  Reading Skills/Language Arts/Writing Skills 3,
Reading: Assigned and self chosen novels/bookbasket
Science: ECC & *Earth Science 1 & 2
Music: ECC & * Beginning Cello
Art: Global Art and *Art exploration through mixed media
PE: *Choi Kwang Do, Soccer 3 nights a week, continue 5K training
electives: * Loom knitting for beginners 

150th Anniversary of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain.

This weekend the kids participated in some activities commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. http://battleofkennesawmountain150.com/
We spent quite of bit of Adventures time this past school year on the Civil War because it is very much a part of the history of our area. We pass memorials and markers everyday as we run errands that remind us of the War between the States. We've had a lot of conversations about why in our area there are very few building much older then the 1870's, while a few hours south in my husband's hometown of Savannah there are building dating back to the 1600's. It was fun for them to  get to see some of the living history they pass everyday...

They had several exhibits set up about life in Cobb County in the 1860's. The area was very poor, made up mainly of small farms. Most of the confederate soldiers who fought at the battle did not own slaves and came from "dirt farms" where they barely scraped by day to day. For crafts the girls made corn husk dolls with scraps of fabric and yarn. After the crafts and camp area, came the part they kids really enjoyed. They joined in the children's reenactment of the charge of Big Kennesaw. The kids chose to be a part of the union charge instead of being "dug in" on the the Confederate side. Yang dramatically died seven times to the delight of one small boy on the other side..lol.. They had a great time. I think they  came away with a better understanding of how much war changes things in an area, and how both sides are human.

Yang "dying" in the corner, Ying in the black t-shirt holding the line.

Ying and Yang charge.....

Rocking though history... Girl Scout Camp style...

Hulk and the pixies

Craziness that ensues when teen girls give up being cool. Pals leading camp songs after skits on the last day.

This week all three kiddos and I went to Girl Scout Camp. It was a sweaty, dirty, crazy week that even Hulk enjoyed. I was the camp nurse for the week so I didn't get tons of pictures because I wasn't with the kids the whole time but when  I did catch a peek smiles were ear to ear. Our theme was Music through the Decades and we rocked it out.... My favorite part of camp is watching the older girls stop caring if they are cool just to make a younger girl smile.

Pal prank on the Admin staff.. Sara Wrapped golf cart

The boys eating doughnuts on a string.

Brownies at Flag.

Let's get Weird.....

 This week our church hosted 265 kids preschool to 5th grade for VBS. We did the Weird Animals theme by Group Publishing and it was a great success. We raised over $700 for home missions,  a lot of cans of food for the local pantry and we had 49 kids confess their belief in Christ for the first time.  The days were long for the volunteers, but it was so much fun! I am most proud of our special needs team. We successfully helped get two of our autistic boys through the entire week! Such a success especially since last year one of them couldn't even come into Sunday worship! God truly does work miracles!!!! All my pics are from our prep time as I was  busy during.

Memorial Day Weekend... Unplugged

So we tried something new for our family this weekend... We went mostly unplugged. I say mostly because we did make a few exceptions.... We had Family Movie Night Friday, but no phones, laptops, etc allowed. Hubby was allowed to check his work email 2 times a day, and phones were on for calls and texts but no surfing, facebooking etc. Kids were video game, computer, TV free when they were with us. They had one sleepover planned and we said the rules didn't apply there since we weren't the hosts. Also, we did keep our earlier plans to hit the $1 movie theater for The Lego Movie. Hubby was very leery at first...He could see an endless stretch of whining about boredom from all but esp Hulk. But we forged ahead..... and it went AWESOME!!!!! We spent  a lot of great quality time together doing things. We built Legos as a family, & kids helped me cook meals. The three of them went outside and played for a few hours without making me referee..lol... We even got Daddy to the lake to swim. That was a miracle...lol. We spent Monday afternoon and evening having fun with family after attending our local Memorial Day Parade.

On a serious note: Thank You to all who serve, past present & future. For those who paid the ultimate price, and for those living with the after effects today. Thank you to the families that have made endless sacrifice to protect me and those I hold dear.

May's Shenanigans .......

May has been super busy despite being on school lite.... We've done two artist studies based loosely on studies from Confessions of a Homeschooler. First we learned about Impressionism with Monet. Then we moved on to " Action Painting" with Jackson Pollock. With the Pollock study the kids really got into seeing what different splatter patterns by various size brushes, things found in the yard, and even just paint straight from bottles....

Action Painting was by far their favorite. We had to scale down in size..lol

Yang really got into it....... We shall have a really colorful driveway for a

Hulk really got into blobs and Ying liked to sling with different types of grasses from the yard.

The kids also wrapped up another session of Kilometer Kids. They each earned an Atlanta 1/2 Marathon medal for achieving the 13.1 mile training mark this session. They were really proud of the medals that were huge..lol... The girls also completed their 2nd 5K race in just about 40 min. Hulk ran in the 1 mile fun run and finished in 11:15. 

Most of the kids and coaches at our training 5K.....

The girls also helped build the sets for their spring musical called Back to BC.  We built the "Garden of Eden" and Noah's boat... The girls had very small roles in the musical but I think it was really good for them to learn you don't always get to be "the main event" and still have to do your best.....

Theses flowers were a great recycled art project we found on Pintrest. We simply cut and painted the tops of water bottles to make great color flowers to add to our Garden of Eden....

My Thoughts on Adventures in US History by MFW

So now that we've finished the year "What do I think?"......

I think it was pretty amazing. I loved having a flexible, Christ-centered outline to guide me through our first year of home schooling. Every program is going to have its pluses and minuses and this had more pluses, IMO. So, here is my pros and cons list for your perusals....

Pros

1. Christ centered and biblically focused without feeling like your having a daily sermon. Bible never felt forced or disconnected from the rest of the program
2. Flexible- nothing was locked stepped and very open to supplementation. We had a very fluid schedule this year and this program worked very well for us. Some weeks we did history all in one day because we had other stuff going on, some weeks we had gap days. We even skipped a week that felt like overkill. Any moving around we did, did not adversely affect other portions of the curriculum. When we felt areas were too light or the girls had more interest it was easy to pause, add extras and then pick back up
3. Literature based- I am lucky. I have great readers, who love to read. They loved the book basket, once Mom got over her need for them to finish a book. I will testify that if you fill up the basket with appealing material, you'll be amazed at what they learn when you're not hovering.
4. Easy to read and follow Teacher's Manual.
5. Great mix of book and hands-on
6. A whole lot of great family time.

Cons

1. While it's presented as a complete curriculum, I feel it required quite a bit of supplementation to add enough rigor. If one solely went with the check box approach, this would be a very "lite" 3rd grade.
2. The Science portion- the science portion was very light and chaotic. While I originally thought my kids would like the variety in the science curriculum, it turned out to be very annoying to them to never get in depth about anything. They did like the hand on experiments to an extent, but many took longer to set up then do. We ended up chucking it and going with a focused co-op class.
3. Primary Language lesson- Ummmm... we lasted 3 weeks... just was not for us. I can see the value of it, it just wasn't the right fit for me as the teacher, or them after 2 years of other instruction.

Things I had a Love/Hate relationship with-

1. The Book list- I know no list can be comprehensive and classics are just that classics, but the book list is very dated. Many titles were simply unappealing to my kids. And frankly due to age unavailable, even through a truly AWESOME library system like ours. It was a great jumping off point, but by no means would I want to just use the list.
2. The TM---- the grids are awesome. The notes? Great in the first half, but as the weeks go on there is very little
3. The state sheets--- after 50 I won't say hate but glad they are done. By the end the birds and flowers were colored well. The states were taking a beating. The facts are fun to read but honestly I feel very little was retained. I think I would have preferred less information, but then again on some states it was the ONLY information.
4. The cooking projects- Depending on where you are from these are great, or just not interesting. I found most of the cooking projects to be "country/southern" cooking..lol.. Well since we are both, they were nothing new to my kids. They liked doing them but saw nothing special..lol
5. The Read- Alouds- Stretched wayyyyyyyyyy out and some just plain dated and boring. We skipped some, read others at triple speed. My kids could handle this and we just supplemented a lot.
6. The bible lessons-- When there were lessons, they were good. But they weren't daily, and often bible only consisted of memory verse work. While this helped it not feel "preachy" it also left you feeling a little empty some days. We supplemented a lot.

Who this curriculum is NOT for.......

1. Those looking for their kids to be very independent. My kids are mature, very advance in reading, and could do a lot independently, but much of this is based on parent-child-literature interaction.
2. Those who want to just check boxes off...
3. Those who don't enjoy reading and learning through literature. If you are looking for just the facts and nothing but the facts (as in a strictly classical approach) this is not your curriculum. 
4. Those with small space and no great library. This curriculum thrives on lots and lots of books. I was lucky enough to be able to have 20+ books per subject with 2 kids doing Adventures. Most were needed for  1-2 weeks. I would not have been able to do this, nor do I think we would have enjoyed this curriculum if we had to buy these books and store them.

Books I would add to the Book list: Most of these are secular in nature. While not Christian-based, I found nothing objectionable or derogatory is the ones we read unless noted.... 

1. United Tweets of America : 50 State Birds, Their Stories, Their Glories by Hudson Talbott. Great illustrations that have catchy themes for each state.
2. Blood on the River: Jamestown 1607 by Elisa Carbone -READ ALOUD-( for mature kids)- 2 kinds of Christians and missionaries are depicted in the novel. One has a true desire to spread Christ's love to the "savages" and others who are very hypocritical. We used this as a great discussion starting point about how it's not what you call yourself or what church you go to, but real Christians are recognized by how they live in the small moments and treat other people.
3. No Man's Land by Susan Bartoletti- READ ALOUD- Because he had been unable to fight off the gator which injured his father, 14-year-old Thrasher joins the Confederate Army hoping to prove his manhood. Great depiction of what the  war looked like  from an uneducated southern view point. Gone with the wind its not...lol..*** Note- some depiction of the graphic events of war (injuries,amputations, minor swearing."
4. The Disgusting History Series:- Colonial America, American frontier,Civil War, Age of Pirates... Wanna know what the colonists did for toilet paper...lol
5. The Who Was... Biographies: we read Ben Franklin, and Harriet Tubman.
6. You Wouldn't want to be series- A Viking, An American Colonist,  at The Boston Tea Party... Similar to the Disgusting History Series, but more cartoony in look and feel.
7. The I Survived Series- Many of the events chronicles here are much more modern history but my kids still loved them. Gettysburg, San Fran earthquake, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, etc...
8. Magic Tree House Fact Trackers- American Revolution, Twisters, Pilgrims, & Abraham Lincoln
9. You Choose: History- These are "chose your adventure books" that look at different point is history from two or 3 points of view. Great for teaching that events in history have relativity based on what side your on. We have only read a few of these so far. My father, a Vietnam era vet, did not like one view point of the the Vietnam era book. One of the three lines follows protesters of the war. Honestly, I like that multiple viewpoint are shown because I want my kids to understand that history is not just 2 dimensional. That being said, You choose.
10. The Graphic History collection- too many to list.. great graphic novel presentations of history that are still full of great facts. These were actually the easiest books for my girls to research from for note-booking/ writing assignments because the facts were not buried in other words, and the pictures were great visual clues without looking babyish.