July was probably our busiest month this year…or so it felt. We finished the month traveling home from a trip across Indiana to Chicago and back.

Once back at home, I started tackling a homeschool schedule and a meal plan schedule for our family. I had some people asking about my meal plan so I’ll share that in a future post.

For today, however, I wanted to join in the “Not” Back-to-School blog hop so I’m sharing my curriculum plans along with other bloggers, the following week we share our school-rooms, week three is sharing a picture of our homeschoolers (kids) and then the final week is about “a day in the life of” our homeschooling.

Our Curriculum (Week 1)

But first, my Homeschooling Approach…

My boys will be in Kindergarten and Second grade. They will have age appropriate math, reading, phonics- that kind of stuff…but the history, geography, social studies, science, art, etc will be stream-lined to include both. Since my method of teaching is mainly eclectic, I am very flexible, however I am also purposefully using some of the following other methods as well (which goes to show why I’m ‘eclectic’):  classical, interest-led or unschooling. I also have big plans for Notebooking this year!

Math

I used Math Mammoth for our first year of homeschooling which was last year when my oldest was in First Grade. I like the program, I like the challenges and I like that its downloadable and I can print off my sheets as I need them. Because I have the downloadable version I can print off pages for my youngest when he is in First Grade. I bought the cd version for Second Grade and will do the same…print off the pages I need for both boys when they are ready for them.

Reading, Phonics, (& online educational games)

We read our own books or books from the library. I did buy a couple Rod & Staff Readers because of the bible stories.

Last year my oldest (First Grade at the time) also did ClicknKids Phonics & Spelling online. I like the program but he doesn’t. I think its a really good program though and I recommend it if you’re looking for something online. We’ll also use Mightybookjr.com – I got a free year’s membership awhile back. We haven’t used it a lot, but I want to use it more this fall.  I like online programs because it mean they can work on their own to some degree.  I also recommend Zoodles.com (see my review) (free) or pay for the parental perks membership and then there’s PBSkids.org (free).

I did buy Explode the Code 1 and Explode the Code Book 2 books to use on my Kindergartner this year. I’ve not used this brand before so I don’t have a review for you.

Spelling

I bought Natural Speller to use to guide me in making my own spelling lists, etc for the boys. I read reviews on it first. The book isn’t very thick but covers up to 8th grade I believe. I’m looking forward to using it.

History, Geography, Social Studies

I’m using Story of the World, Volume 1: Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor 7 cd audio series and
I also bought  Story of the World:  Tests and Answer Key (Vol. 1) , I got an awesome deal on Veritas Press History Cards Set of 5,borrowing lots of dvds from the library, our Leap Frog talking globe and other maps. This is where I’m planning to use Notebooking in a big way. My plan is to make a divider for each continent and then add our work to it as we go. I’m thinking we may start a timeline too.

Science, Art

We’ll us some books like Usbourne and videos from the library for Science topics. There is so much to use at our local libraries. There are also some art dvds. I also bought  the first 3 volumes of the Ken Ham books on Questions Kid’s Ask (they are very small and cover 22 questions each I think).

Bible and Character

As Christians, the bible applies to all areas of our life so bible will come into play other than just where I plan to study the bible specifically.  Last year I received the Plants Grown Up book by Doorposts for raising godly sons into godly young men to review and I want to try to include that this year in our homeschooling.

Note: I actually get great deals on my homeschool curriculum choices by using Swagbucks to earn points for seaching online and then redeeming them for Amazon egift cards.[You should really consider signing up here for that. Its free and they pay you for using their search engine and doing other activities].

I kind of hurried through this post so I could catch up with the blog hop. Next week we share our school-rooms! I love seeing how other mom’s are doing putting their rooms together. I’ve been working on getting mine sorted through and reorganized this week, myself. If you’d like to follow my posts you can subscribe here or follow me on Facebook.

*Also sharing at A Wise Woman’s link up.