4th Grade!

Samuel is now in 4th grade!  Here is a list of what we are using for school this year:

Heart of Dakota Bigger Hearts For His Glory
Saxon Math Intermediate 4
Rosetta Stone Spanish

I also have a couple of critical thinking workbooks that I throw in a couple times a week, but Samuel thinks they are fun and not school :)

We are planning on starting our new school year July 14th and I hope to get back to posting weekly updates on my blog, so stay tuned!

I'm Back & Changes to Our Homeschool

After a long break from blogging I am back.  There have been a lot of changes in the last year and a half.  Samuel is now halfway through 3rd grade and we have moved to a new house.  Over Christmas break we made the decision to switch from Sonlight back to Heart of Dakota.  While we enjoyed the books in Sonlight, we felt that all we were doing was reading and Samuel needed more hands-on activities.  I was supplementing with various things but it was making our day super long and no fun for either one of us, so the best choice was just to switch to something that had all the extras I wanted already built in.

If we had stuck with Heart of Dakota, Samuel would be in Bigger Hearts for His Glory this year, but we are saving that for next year.  We decided to use Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory even though he is on the older side for it so that he could get used to some of the extra writing and things that Heart of Dakota requires.  We are going through it at double speed so we will be finished by the end of this school year and then will pick up with Bigger Hearts in the fall.  We started on January 7th and so far it's going great.  Now that we have art projects, science experiments, and more I will have plenty of fun things to post on my blog again.

So our curriculum we are using the rest of the year is:

• Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory
• Drawn into the Heart of Reading with Level 3 Books
• Saxon Math Intermediate 3 - just continuing on with this
• All About Spelling 2 - We are 3/4 of the way done with this book so want to finish it, but then we will begin following the spelling in the Heart of Dakota guides
• Apologia Astronomy - Samuel likes science so we are continuing with this in addition to Heart of Dakota's science.  When we finish Astronomy in 6 weeks we will be moving on to Apologia Zoology 1

I also have not been able to get to my scrapbooking as much as I would like so decided restarting my blog would be a good way to keep track of family fun as well.  Samuel is playing basketball for the first time this season so that should be interesting.

2012-2013 School Year

After much discussion and going back and forth on our decision, we have decided to continue using Sonlight.  We had thought about switching back to Heart of Dakota, but Samuel loves the Sonlight books and the science experiments so we are going to stick with it.  For 2nd grade, we will be covering World History.  We’ve already gotten our books and they all look like so much fun!  Samuel is excited!

So here is a list of what we will be using:

Sonlight Core B – Intro to World History, part 1

Sonlight Language Arts 3 – included with this will be MCP Phonics, A Reason for Handwriting, and Wordly Wise vocabulary

Sonlight Readers 3

Sonlight Science B – Samuel loves Sonlight science.  He really enjoyed all the hands on activities and projects last year and is excited to see what he will get to do this year.

Saxon Math 2

Teach Them Spanish 2 – I had planned on ordering La Clase Divertida for Spanish last year, but it never worked out.  I found this series at our local school supply store and we have really enjoyed it.  It’s not a complete language program, but it is at least introducing him to vocabulary.  In a couple of years, we will add in Rosetta Stone Spanish.

Samuel will also be taking 3 classes at our co-op – American History, Science, and World Geography.

I’ve been getting everything ready, and we should be kicking off 2nd grade on July 16th.  We are starting early so we will have plenty of time to take off as needed.