Current Curriculums

We've finally settled into a groove, after six months of everything being up in the air. A few weeks ago, Ethan finished his Kindergarten Math, so I decided it was time to graduate him to the first grade. I began to look up first grade programs and asking my veteran friends what they liked. This is what we came up with for the first grade year:

Math: Elementary Algebra Workbook
This is a workbook I found at our local teacher's store written for Grade 1-2. I picked something a bit above his level because I was tired of skipping around half of a book while they wanted him to learn to count to 10. So now he does about one page a day. Most of them are a good challenge for him, but some of them we have to stop and take a couple of days to learn a new concept before he can finish the worksheet. I really like that he's learning a lot, I just hope it's not pushing him to hard.

Reading: "Teaching Children to Read" by Grant Von Harrison
I got this tutor manual at the BYU Bookstore for the Independent Study class I took last year. I really love this book, it's huge and it will take Ethan through all the concepts he needs to learn. I like the format because he tells me how far he wants to go each day and we do it. It stresses sight words, phonics and comprehension. We tried 100 Easy Lessons before this one and he's responding much better. (Consequently, I have Sean on 100 Easy Lessons and he's LOVING it.)


History: Story of the World Volume 1 "Ancient Times" and Activity Book
I've decided to alternate History and Science by week, so last week we focused on the first lesson in this book: What is History and Archeology. It's a read aloud history and tells the story in a very engaging way. The activity book suggests very good and meaningful activities, and also give supplemental book suggestions for all ages. After reading some of the lesson and book suggestions, Ethan wanted to rush out into our backyard and start digging right away. A lot of my friends have used this series for years. I love that it's adaptable to all elementary school ages so we can go through the series of four books, then start over again and include all the kids learning the same thing.

Science: Apologia Young Explorer's Series "Exploring Creation with Botany"
This curriculum is also a read aloud and adaptable to 1st through 6th grade. There are several books in the series and each are meant to be studied in depth for a whole year, rather than skimming all the sciences each year every year. I had a few friends who highly recommended it to me, and I really liked that it is based on the philosophy of Charlotte Mason (it stresses narration, keeping a journal, active learning etc.). We've only been working on the first lesson this week, but I've been pretty happy with it. I'm not covering everything, as some of it is too complicated to dwell on, but I can read the parts I think are helpful and there are good activities that teach the concepts as well. If we choose to stick with this series, we'll cover the same book again in 4-5 years and then go more in depth for Ethan, while staying basic for Aaron. As you can tell, I LOVE flexibility and re-usability.