Math-Teaching Textbooks 5 & 6. It's a no brainer. This is the ONLY curriculum we did not change from last year. I LOVE this math program and I can't say enough good things about it. It can be done on the computer or in the book. My daughter's get tired of being on the computer some days so it's nice to have the option to use the workbook. We then just enter our answers in later so we have the automated grade book. I highly recommend this product!
Language Arts-Here is one of the surprising things that my dear friend and homeschool veteran shared with me. My older daughter breezed through her 5th grade grammar program. Most of it focused on the parts of speech with a few writing assignments. Honestly she got the parts of speech and sentence diagramming down and I was dreading having to teach it day after day for another year! Well to my surprise my friend said.."if she gets it, don't make her go through another big English curriculum for 6th grade." WHAT! No massive textbooks with hours of practice on verbs and prepositional phrases?? Whatever will we do with our time??? She told me that at the middle school level she was happy if her kids could write one really good paragraph. She also said if you teach them a foreign language they are still practicing the parts of speech. So this year for my middle schooler we are using Wordsmith Apprentice. Wordsmith is a cheap, fun workbook that has a variety of very fun activities to help her work on her writing skills and using those parts of speech in the process. Win Win! We are also doing Rosetta Stone Spanish Level One and we love that too. At this rate she will be in her fourth year of Spanish by the 9th grade. Great!
For our 5th grader we DO need to still work on the parts of speech so we are doing Easy Grammar Grade 5. The title says it all. EASY. We simply do 2 worksheets a day 5 days a week. It is quick and easy and she seems to be retaining the information. She is also doing Wordsmith as I felt I didn't do enough creative writing last year.
Science- We use the same curriculum for both girls in science and social studies. This year we are doing Apologia Zoology 3-Land Animals of the Sixth day. I love Apologia! They are spot on in keeping The Creator in every lesson and I love that! We have to fight the theory of evolution at every corner and I love that it is so easily explained in the Apologia Sciences. We have the text book of course which I simply read to them 2 days a week. We spend 2 weeks per lesson. I also purchased the Notebook Journal that they offer with all of their sciences. It is not a necessity but it gives them activities to do pertaining to the lesson while I am reading to them. My younger daughter has to keep busy! These notebooks are well worth the extra $15.
Social Studies- Here's where it gets fun! Last year history was a bust for us. We gave up very early in the year because they were bored. So over winter I really studied what interested my girls. They love American Girl Dolls. We have an entire wall devoted to a life size doll house-see...
So I decided we would use the american girl historical dolls as the foundation for our history program. The American Girl website has a section for parents and teachers where they have worksheets and lesson plans. I got my start there and beefed it up with people, wars and events that happened in the time period. I plan on devoting posts specifically to each doll and the studies we do so look out for that. We are on Kaya-the Nez Perce Indian girl now. We are about half way through our study of the Westward expansion, Lewis and Clark and the Nez Perce Indians and we have learned so much. This year we will also study Felicity(Colonial times and Revolutionary war), Caroline(war of 1812), Josefina (southwest) and Addy(Civil War/Slavery). History is now the highlight of their day. This also incorporates lots of reading and writing so it serves dual purpose. I also use the America the Beautiful book one by Charlene Notgrass. It has lessons that can be completed in a day and it flows with the history progression of the dolls.
And finally and most importantly, Bible. We are using the Discover 4 Yourself inductive studies published by Kay Arthur. There are many to choose from. We started with how to study your bible. We then will move to the Book of John since it is so Gospel centered. These books teach them HOW to study the bible. Breaking it down using the who, what, when, where, why and how and then applying it to their lives. I love it! I am learning so much right alongside them. It takes about 30-45 minutes per day to complete these books.
So that's it. I will begin posting our history studies soon!
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