The 2019-2020 school year for us was beautiful and we made memories doing “lifeschooling” rather than getting completing our curriculum. I’m super excited to share what we have done but also want to be transparent in telling you that we didn’t complete all that I set out and planned to do this year.
In October, we welcomed our fourth baby into
our family. It’s been a year filled with so much love and time spent cuddling little ones. When I look back at our plans and get frustrated that I can’t check a box, I’m reminded of grace. Grace upon grace. Without it I’m nothing. If you’re like me and you can’t check your box, it’s okay! When we start our new year, we’ll pick up where we left off and buckle down.
This stack of books are things we have gone through together as a family and for our oldest son, who is now six years old.
Handwriting Without Tears- This curriculum is the first of many in their collection. It was a wonderful starting point for our son, who already had some pre-k worksheets he had previously worked on. I like the progress he was able to make with this curriculum. It was one of the items we were able to stay consistent with while having a newborn. He was able to most of this work without any instruction from me.
The Ology- I cannot recommend this book enough! It was one of my absolute favorite books to read to our children during our slow mornings together. The conversation it sparked was such sweet time spent together. If you’re looking for a book that teaches children who God is and why we exist, this is the one!
My ABC Bible Verses from the Psalms- Another book that led to many conversations around Truth. Psalms teaches us to praise God and they talk about how great our God is. This book gives real life story examples that children can understand and recognize His love for us by related it to a verse found in Psalms.
The Biggest Story bible book was another really sweet book to place in our morning basket this year.
All About Spelling was our spelling curriculum that we were able to complete this year. The biggest thing that I enjoy about this method of teaching is the use of phonics and breaking words down into sounds and rules the child can understand and grasp the concept of.
Math-U-See- I get asked ALL the time what we use for our math curriculum. I wrote an entire blog post for math alone. We completed Math-U-See Alpha as well. This curriculum takes a hands-on approach to learning math. Despite having black and white pages, the blocks this curriculum keeps our little ones engaged and creates a joy around learning this subject. Alpha goes through place value, addition and subtraction problems, and introduces time.
All About Reading is one that we simply opened and didn’t do much with. We have this on our list for next year but the length of time it was going to take teaching this was not something I was able to do this year. I really like the program and it’s a wonderful addition to go along the side of our spelling curriculum but we decided to go through a few readers and spend a lot of time listening to audiobooks and reading through books as a family.
Lastly, I want to mention my absolute favorite curriculum purchases we’ve made thus far in our homeschool journey. Apologia is a faith-based science curriculum that points to creation in everything that is being taught. Our goal for this year was to get out into nature more (which is something we were able to check off our list). Having this goal and pairing it with our Apologia curriculum brought so much interest in the world around us. I truly enjoy everything about this curriculum. This year we chose Sea Creatures. We got through most of the book but this is another book that we will add to our stack next year so we can finish.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick review. If you have any questions about these, please feel free to reach out to me. I’m so happy to share my thoughts and suggestions with those who are looking for curriculum for next school year.