The B-I-B-L-EThis is the place to start if you are thinking of homeschooling your children, it really has lots to say about children and parents. We start every day with reading the Bible and prayer. On days that we don’t, things always seem to go amuck. God wants to be part of our everyday lives, it is so fulfilling to teach our children about Him and see them understand God and know Him more, and teaching them draws me closer to Him too as I don’t want to lead them astray in any way. We have just come across a new version of the Bible called the English Standard Version which we are enjoying as a true ‘word for word’ translation and have just bought the children their own ESV Bibles and pray they will grow in Gods word as they grow up in our family.
This is our main curriculum and definitely a good place to start out. It is a Christian Homeschool curriculum with the option to buy single items or one box with all your resources for a year. When we started off we did that, but I found that we wanted to tailor our school year more to our style and life so this year ordered just the Language Arts and History for J. I really like that SL is easy to use and that they have done a lot of the preparation for me.
We buy this through Sonlight. It was not included in ‘the Year in a box’ but is on the schedule they provide so was easy to use alongside the regular Sonlight stuff. The kids really enjoy these workbooks and they have really encouraged the kids with their reading.
We decided to use R&S for M & D this year. I didn’t think they were ready for Sonlights Grade one work but had surpassed Kindergarten. I have found the R&S Grade 1 curriculum easy to teach and fun for the kids. I think I would like to get geography and science from them too as I have heard great reviews about how they stay true to the bible which is something I appreciate about their reading/writing programs.
A really fun South African curriculum that we bought to help us teach about our homeland. We use it when we’re tired of world history and just want to read some good South African stories/history and learn about where mommy and daddy are from.
My kids think these are video games, a great little program encouraging children to read along with a story/game.
Lots of worksheets and things to do on days when we need something easy-going. I use this a lot at the end of a term or during holiday’s and weekends, when believe it or not the kids ask to do school.
Our Maths curriculum is so cool, we are loving it and has really made Maths fun to learn and teach.
A Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling, something I’m very interested in and have adopted a few of the ideas especially lots of time out doors (when possible) and free time each day for the kids to think and learn about the things they are interested in personally. Even if you are not homeschooling I would highly recommend reading some of Charlotte Mason’s work that explains her philosophy and gives very good insight into children.
We recently became members of this group that gives support and help to other Home Educating families here in the UK. I believe they also have a homeschool camp once a year.
