Our Homeschool Curriculum

In my opinion, choosing curriculum is one of the most challenging and potentially frustrating parts of homeschooling. I was home-schooled and my mom would get out all of her catalogs and just POUR over them for EVER! She was extremely picky and very good at picking out the best stuff. However, sometimes the curriculum just did not fit. I switched Grammar curriculum 3 times and it was so confusing trying to get the right one that it wasn't until I went to college that I finally grasped the concepts. 

But that was BEFORE! Now us home-school moms are BLESSED! We have so many resources at our fingertips! There are curriculum swaps and homeschooling conferences and FACEBOOK! So that's what I did. I had a shout-out on Facebook and asked if anyone had used the curriculum I was interested in. I had 4 of my friends who had used it and HIGHLY recommended it and now I highly recommend it too! I use My Father's World.

I can only vouch for the Kindergarten curriculum but let me tell you - this is GREAT! It's set up for a six-day week but the sixth day is primarily a book day. Which my kids LOVE! Each week is assigned a letter and each day of the week has different emphasis -- Introducing the letter, Handwriting, Math, reading/phonics, Art. But while having different emphasis, every day works on identifying and understanding the sound the letter makes as well as blending the sound with other letters. 

Not only does each week have a letter but it has a topic for each week. For example O- Octopus. So each day has different lessons relating to the topic. Presenting information about sea creatures, Making a hand octopus, coloring a map of the world and showing the blue ocean, go on an ocean outing or start an aquarium, creating an ocean mural. Then on book day it recommends 3 different books and a guide for each book. 

This works perfectly for me because I struggle with IDEAS! I am not blessed with the gift of teaching but I can use other people's ideas with no problem! 

I painted the letters to further define them! 

The ONE thing I'm not really crazy about is it doesn't follow the alphabet - for example the first week is S. This all works out when it comes to blending letters to make words but kind of different. 

I only bought the curriculum, I did not buy any of their extra things - but you will want something for the textile letters. I had ABC bath toys and they work great! And they are fairly cheap at Wal-Mart. It gives a hands-on experience that I can tell is helpful. 

So there it is - my curriculum for my kiddos! I am using it for both my 4-year-old and my 2-almost-3-year-old. I don't know yet if I will use My Father's World curriculum every year - I'll have to see what people say!