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    #23595 08/22/08 08:28 AM
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    I would be interested to see what curriculum you are using this year. There are so many choices, but some are more suited for gifted kids than others. What are you using with your kids?

    I'll go first.
    Dearie, my 8yo dd (3rd grade) will be using:

    Math -- Singpore Math - finish up 3B, do 4A and probably 4B
    She will also finish up the last Miquion book. I have found that these book have been a really good fit for her.

    English -- Life Packs grade 4 -- I am trying to get her to be more independent. I'm not thrilled with these books, but she can do them mostly on her own, and she should get the basics of grammar from them.

    History -- Sonlight Core 3 -- Intro to American History. I love Sonlight. We have read so many great books. Dd is a non-stop reader, so this is a good fit for her.

    Science -- Apologia General Science (written for 7th graders)-- This is one that I really agonized over. She is ready for it academically, but I am not ready for her to be doing middle school work!

    Honey, my 7yo dd (1st grade) will be using:

    Math -- Horizon's 1 -- She has struggled with math, and my younger dd was catching up to her, so I have moved her to a different program. I'm hoping that it won't be obvious who is where if they are using different books. I have really liked this book for this dd. It has just the right amount of review for her.

    English -- A computer program call Click and Read -- We are mostly focusing on learning to read this year. This dd has had some vision problems that have held her back. I think that she would have been much further along if she had not been seeing double part of the time.

    History -- She will be doing Sonlight with Kiddo. Some people think that doing two Sonlight cores is too much for mom, but it has not been a problem here.

    Science -- Sonlight science with Kiddo. Honey is getting more out of it than Kiddo is, but it is good for both of them.


    Kiddo, my 5yo dd (Pre-K) will be doing:

    Math -- Miquion Orange (first grade book) and Singapore 1A. When she finishes these she will just go on to the next book.

    English -- Explode the Code Book 2 -- When she finishes this book she will go on to the next one. She is reading pretty well right now.

    History -- Sonlight with Honey -- We are re-using a core that Dearie did several years ago. A perfect fit for both girls.

    Science -- Sonlight with Honey -- There are worksheets that are rather difficult for Kiddo, but I think that she is getting something out of it.


    There is a lot of extra stuff that they will be doing, but this is the core subjects.

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    DS7 and I don't really use a curriculum for much of anything, though we're definitely not unschoolers. We just raid the library and the Internet a lot. We sort of do eclectic, child-led unit studies (in the loosest sense of the word!), I guess. the curricula I've seen are generally too limiting for DS7. We need more flexibility than they offer. Plus I am constitutionally opposed to curriculum anyway, and always have been, even when I was teaching. How should I know what we'll be doing in March? Let's see how it goes!

    And raiding the library is cheaper than most curricula, too, and added benefit! smile

    We're starting the year with a study of origins: the Big Bang, the origins of numbers/math and the origins of language. I bought a couple of things from the Learning Company to help us, but most of our material will come from library books that we read together. He also wants to study robots and the human nervous system, and those seem to be a nice pairing, so we'll do that either at the same time or after we're through with the origins unit. We'll see how it looks.

    For fiction reading, I think we're going to start the year with Alice in Wonderland, since he requested adventure stories with people taking exciting journeys.

    For math, we're going way off-road. We used Singapore last year and may come back to it, but DS7 wasn't ready to memorize his times tables (though he has a firm conceptual grasp of multiplication and was bored with it). That became a problem last year when we got to the level 3 books. We switched to doing geometry--high on concept, low on math facts--and he loved math again. Yay! So this year, my engineer DH is going to teach a unit on physics that will use concepts from calculus, algebra, geometry and I don't know what all. Hopefully, DS7 will learn his math facts along the way just out of convenience. If not, we'll get to them when it's time.

    So no boxed curriculum at all. But lots of cool stuff, I hope!


    Kriston
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    Wow Kristen,
    That sounds really cool! With 3 dds I tend to rely on boxed stuff more and more. We do a lot of library books too! The librarians know us well. I guess that is why I like Sonlight so well, they pick the books and all I have to do is read them. (But they are not right for everybody, I am not trying to imply that.)

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    Well, I have a second child (DS4), but we're not currently HSing him, not anymore than any other parent HSs a 4yo, anyway.

    Most HSers love their curricula. I always feel like the odd woman out in these discussions because I just can't do it! Really, I just get itchy when I think about buying a box set.

    It's definitely a weird thing about me!


    Kriston
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    Wow Kriston! That sounds awesome!

    We do like Singapore too right now, my girls are like Kriston's sons, though, we have to switch up formats pretty often.

    We are partial homeschooling, but have decided to leave DD6 in school this year as her teacher seems to be a bit of a rock star!

    DD8 will leave school to rotate between Destination Math, Singapore text and workbook, and maybe still a little more of Aleks. She took a break and seems a bit more interested in Aleks again. I am going to buy Descartes Cove through the co-op that Kriston generously posted for us!

    She and I are reading Everlasting Tuck together. I found several free junior high level study guides online, she answers the questions orally. Also while reading, she'll shout out words she doesn't know. Then we look them up and she re-reads the sentence, imagining the scene. For this book we have been critically examining the author's writing style. So image provoking! We've been having a ball!

    DD6 will do Destination Math and Singapore, probably 1/2 hour per day. She will pick her own reading material, she likes reading aloud to me. She'll write stories with 1 sentence promts and learn spelling and grammar as she goes....after school, not too much time though.



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    I'm glad the year looks so promising for DD6. Yay!

    It sounds like a good year for DD8, too. The variety should be good for her. smile


    Kriston
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    I LOVE Tuck Everlasting! I cried the first time I read it. The film is almost as good as the book, if you haven't seen it yet.

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    We're homeschoolers too; eclectic and somewhat unstructured.

    "Penelope" age 3, will be continuing in kindergarten math and we're starting a new science program just for her which I am very excited about! She's just starting to really take off with writing and she has a handwriting without tears workbook for when she feels like practicing. She reads well, at a high grade 2/low grade 3 level, but I suspect that she may have some vision issues related to tracking.

    "Hector" 11, will be taking a lot of online courses this year, which will be new for him. He's taken 1-2 at a time previously. We've opened a conversation with the community college and are trying to get him into a class for Spring 2009, when he will be 12. I'm trying to be optimistic, but so far they have not permitted any student younger than 15.

    I haven't figured things out for "Artemis" yet. She's eight, and does amazing things, but seems to like structure the least. I have to impose a little on her, or she'll never do math, but I want to encourage her to really go with her strengths too.

    We have a family trip to Orlando coming up, so we'll be starting school late this year.

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    What science are you using for DD3, Lorel? is it a local program, or something else?


    Kriston
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    I've heard a lot of good things about sonlight, but is that a Christian curriculum? We are actually Unitarian, so I'm not looking for anything that has Christianity woven throughout (no offense to anyone - our entire extended family is Christian!). Although I'd love to do world religions/origins with DS at some point.

    Maybe I'm in denial, but I've bought very little for homeschooling. We have Singapore math. DS7 (would have gone to 2nd grade) just got done doing a month of Aleks. We'll see how that plays out. If we do Singapore, I expect us to move through a couple of years quickly. He is just finishing 2B. We're really just filling holes and introducing notation yet. DS did get his multiplication tables somewhat learned this summer thanks to Timex Attack which is very helpful! And his teacher in first grade did do a good job getting him fast at addition and subtraction facts. We're flexible. If he starts getting burned out on arithmetic, we'll move to something else for a while.

    This summer we raised catapillars and did some research on that. Right now we're researching and building models of volcanos. After Labor day, we're going to try to kick in to having some sort of order and schedule to our days and try to do some journaling, learning to type, vocab (just idenifying unfamiliar words, maybe build our own little dictionary this way - he's often comes and asks about words that are new to him.) I'm looking at the core curriculum book to fill in holes. And I'm thinking maybe we'll start reading some books a loud or doing audio books so DS gets some exposure to books I'd like to see him read. If he agreeable anyway. I won't shove Little Women down his throat or anything. It usually takes him a while to get into a book though.

    He will continue to do piano, swimming, unicycle and we're looking at play/homeschool social groups. In sept, a local history center is doing a homeschool based program every Friday. We will do that, and pick up some books about those eras (Civil War, etc).

    So I guess we're kind of following Kriston's lead and taking things one day at a time! I feel like we need to be able to turn on a dime too, at least initially here until I find out how DS learns at home and what is going to work best for us. Time will tell! I'm excited though!

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