What Does She Use?

Home school curriculum offers so many options, it's completely overwhelming. Parents who don't have a home school philosophy before going to the convention will find their heads spinning! How to narrow down the choices?





When I started, we were broke. Anything I bought had to be for more than one child and for more than one year. OR, I had to at least be able to reuse the teacher manual. Here's a rough sketch of my criteria:





1. Must be God honoring and Christ centered
2. Must increase a love of learning
3. Must be academically excellent
4. Must be reusable
5. May I teach it to more than one child at the same time?



It's hard to find, say, a math program that would be Christ centered, but I at least found a Christian company! Three years ago, I met Steve Demme of Math-U-See in person, and he's such a great guy. I embarrassed myself by gushing all over him about how he saved my LIFE, and he wanted to put me on their next promotional video. I see him at the convention every year now and he's always so gracious to talk to me.



Later in this journey, I realized almost all the things I use have been written and personally used by home school families. I stayed away from the mega-textbook companies who had non-home school men in suits selling the books. They obviously don't know what it's like to teach at home, and their textbooks reflected that.


Over the years, I have used the SAME math program - Math-U-See. It has saved my life. Literally. (And I don't mean that in a literary sense.)


When I had to teach phonics, I used Alphabet Island Phonics. It was so thorough and wondeful! I miss not having to teach it. :-(


Ok, so what am I using NOW?


For my 6th grader:
Discovering Our Amazing God (Deeper Roots Publications, for Bible, geography, social studies, history)
Math-U-See - Zeta level
Easy Grammar 6
Phonics Zoo Spelling (she's almost done, so for a few weeks only)
The Institute for Excellence in Writing (I teach this in my home to other home schoolers)
KONOS for science
Around the World in 180 Days (Plus various maps from Geography Matters)

I used to use KONOS, a unit study, exclusively for every subject but math and phonics. Now that I have one in high school and one in grade school, I can no longer teach them all together as I used to. I am teaming up with BA and she likes a little more structure, plus I want her to be able to do more on her own at this age. Glenna, that is. Not BA.

For my 10th Grader:
Bible (KONOS History of the World I)
English III Honors (KONOS History of the World I)
Biology Honors (Apologia Biology, a creation science)
Geometry (Math-U-See, of course!)
Art Appreciation/History/Criticriticism (KONOS History of the World I)
History of the World I (Guess what it is? :-D )
Individual and Dual Sports (she's going to sign up for softball. We're excited!)
Personal Fitness (Uh. . . running around the neighborhood, learning about nutrition, making and following a personal fitness program. Yeah.)

OOOOH! And most exciting of all! She's taking an art class with KR, Phyllis's Mom. I've shamelessly begged this woman for about 4 years to teach an art class and she's finally agreed. I have to look up the course codes to see what credit to give Kelly for high school.



Most of my 10th grader's books have been passed down from her brother. Any of the KONOS stuff I received the first year of our home school (John bartered some work for it from the Florida rep) and I've not needed to buy that again. In fact, this year was the LEAST expensive year of home schooling for me, and that's with buying most of the 6th grade stuff new!



And there you have it.

We have quite the home school network here, so I'm so blessed. I have been able to place my children in classes with other home school students, so they have the benefit of accountability to other teachers, working as a team with other students, and class presentations. It's nice to be able to hand-pick people to teach your child!

Kelly has taken an English class with KR for four years. She took a science class with another woman last year, and will take biology with her this year. She also had an EXCELLENT teacher come to our home (with other kids) for Spanish, and then I chained her to the table to get her to do algebra with her as well.

Glenna participated in my English composition class last year and will this year. Hopefully, she'll be able to participate in the science classes when she's in high school. We've also done co-ops with other families every year but one.

See? Us home schoolers DO get out of the house. ;-)