This Is How We Roll

As I mentioned in my About Me section, we are homeschoolers. One of the first questions people always ask when they find out we homeschool is how we do it. Let me start by saying this is our first year. We are still finding our way and doing a lot of experimenting.

I decided early on with this being our first year that I wanted to purchase a pre-packaged curriculum. We used this curriculum for about two weeks before striking out on our own. We had fun working on our own, but it led to a lot of late nights for me, searching the Internet for projects and ideas. Since Christmas we have settled into a bit of a routine. Here's what we're using right now and what's working for us. Sport is in 2nd grade.

Science - Noeo Physics - This is a wonderful science curriculum, particularly if you want a literature based program. We just started using this after Christmas. I wanted to purchase it at the beginning of our school year, but cheaped out and stuck with what came in the packaged curriculum which turned out to be too easy and slow moving for us. My son loves science. Noeo is a complete package. Experiments and everything else is included. When we struck out on our own this was the subject that was causing me the most grief and keeping me up late. Now I truly can just open up the book in the morning and go.

Social Studies - We have mainly stuck with our original curriculum here, spending time studying each of the 7 continents.

Math - We use Modern Curriculum Press. It's very basic and a bit boring. We'll switch to something else next year to spice things up a bit. (Any input?)

Language Arts - We use a Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling so we do a lot of reading. We just make this up as we go along...library books based on the continent we are focusing on at the moment, weekly spelling tests using words I think Sport needs to work on, copywork usually based on our social studies or science topics.

Sport also has a homeschool Spanish class on Tuesdays, a religion class at church on Monday nights, plays basketball, and is a Cub Scout. We also use the I Can Do All Things art book. We need help with music. We started out strong here with the recorder, but haven't touched it since before Christmas. Sport got a guitar for Christmas and we inherited a keyboard so we need to get something going in this area again. As far as music appreciation, we are using the Opal Wheeler books by Zeezok to study famous composers. These are wonderful books that come with study guides and companion CDs.