This is one of those blogs that only real die-hard friends of mine will be interested in. What are we using for school? I know you have been lying awake at nights wondering that very thing. Well, rest well tonight: here is my list!
We are doing more Abeka than ever. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet. We are very eclectic and I truly enjoy coming up with my own curriculum and being more flexible than Abeka typically allows. Still, it is comforting to know that we have the core subjects covered, and covered well. Also, with 7 kids I'm finding my creative time is lessening (at least if I still want time to feed my family) so it is nice for this year at least to not have as much to prepare outside of school time.
Our oldest two are using Abeka 4 math, Language A, Read and Think, and an old Science book handed down to us. I forget if it is Understand God's World? I think that's the title. Anyhow, the best part about it is we are making a lapbook out of the State Birds. See, I can still be a bit creative!
For art, I am truly winging it since our Art Teacher and his wife decided to go and be missionaries...the nerve.
Geography and History are my favourite. We have been working on a notebook of Canada for a year now. I do imagine we will finish it before Christmas. I don't mind a bit that it has taken this long. Canada is the kind of thing we ought to be studying and reviewing constantly, in my opinion. I have designed provincial and national fact sheets for the girls to fill out complete with their sketch of the province, colouring its location on the map of Canada, drawing their coat of arms if they are so able, and learning various stats and symbols of each province. In the process we get to talk about famous Canadians from various provinces and some of the history of Canada (eg. How did Victoria, BC get its name? How about Nova Scotia?). When we are finished this notebook, I am thinking we will go on to either a notebook on the explorers or a lapbook of Canadian Prime Ministers. It would have been smart for me to be prepared with the lapbook on Elections I've been working on, but wouldn't you know the election was called earlier than I was ready! So we'll wait on that for a bit.
I'm wanting to order AVKO's Sequential Spelling, but haven't yet. Also I am coveting Tell Me More's French. That may be my Christmas present.
For the little ones (grade 1 and under) we are doing Arithmetic 1 from Abeka, Pathway Readers, Bob Books, Teach Your Child to read in 100 easy Lessons, and various workbooks around the house.
I've also recently become fascinated with all the activities for all my children that we can do with 100's boards. I think we'll "play" with those some in our free time. Funny enough, my kids ASK me if we can PLEASE DO SOME FLASHCARDS!!! Love it.
So that is it in a nutshell. My schedule that I nicely planned out to the minute is not really working out so well, but we are having fun getting stuff done in and around 'real life'. If you have used AVKO or Tell Me More I'd love for you to leave a comment telling me what you think of it before I go and drop a wad of cash on it. They both look fantastic, but I would like an opinion from someone whose used them if I can get one.
Thanks for reading! Happy school day!
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