Curriculum Choices...

NOW THAT THE SCHOOL year is coming to a close, I'm hitting the web and talking with other mom's about curriculum. What worked? What didn't and why? Since I have one student that is getting close to end of his homeschooling career and students just beginning, I'm spending time focusing on what worked and what's a good match for my current students learning styles. What I want to do again and what I want to ditch.

Over the years I've used lots of Sonlight curriculum and have been satisfied with the history and literature portion of their curriculum. I have not however, been as pleased with the Language Arts portion. I LOVE Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW). I've spoke about them before in a previous post. They have such a wonderful concrete approach to the mechanics of an essay and later papers.

I will probably stay with some IEW for all my kids at some point. I just can't say enough about how great their program works. As for history however, a dear friend of mine and fellow blogger just reviewed Heritage History and it sounds absolutely wonderful!! You can read her review at Circling Through This Life. I for one will be checking this out at the Washington Homeschool Conference coming up Father's Day weekend (June 15-16).

For my little guys, we are just focusing on the 3R's at the moment. I find it challenging to much with out reading and writing. At this stage of the game we do lots of "read-a-louds" and mom taking dictation, so at least they can learn the process. But a wonderful FREE resource I've found (I LOVE FREE, don't you?) are the activity boxes at the library. As homeschoolers we all value the abundance of material the library offers, but the activity boxes are kind of a fun "unit study" if you will. Since I've got this younger age group to cater to these are perfect and quite frankly, I tend to forget about them.

They come with different themes and everything is in this tidy little box. All the activities are included and everything is one box! Genius!
So what curriculum are you in love with? Give a shout out for your favorite subject, curriculum, or resource. I'd love to hear about your successes!!

Just as an FYI to those Washington State readers, Did you know that our Governor, Christine Gregoire has proclaimed June 10-16 Washington Homeschool Week? I thought it was kinda cool! Go Washington!!