Our Curriculum

Curriculum is more than just the textbooks used. It includes textbooks to be sure, but it also includes "regular" books, DVDs and other multimedia, games, manipulatives and any other materials to be used. Mostly, though, it is the overall plan for the education.

Our curriculum is loosely based on the book "The Well-Trained Mind" which uses the "classical" method of education. It assumes that young children are great at learning facts that they'll later put to use, and so we try to fill the children's heads with lots of facts. We do take the ideas presented in the book and adapt them to our needs--but any good educator does that, in my opinion.

While the children are in second and third grades, officially, much of their curriculum is identical. They each work at their own individual level in math and spelling, but most of the rest of the lessons are the same as it doesn't make sense to teach two separate lessons all the time. This works quite well as it requires less time of me, the teaching parent, and it can be more fun to learn with someone else.

Some examples of what we've been working on this year:

Social Studies
After spending the last three years going through 2 different world histories, this year we've been focusing on a variety of more specific areas this year. We're reading through "The History of US" by Joy Hakim. The series is very long, but we're already on the third volume of this American history series. I read it to them and they listen. Sometimes we discuss it, but mostly the children view it as "story time" and enjoy the stories. Yet, I hear them using some of the history in their play-acting or in their drawings during their free time, so I know that the lessons are taking hold. Besides, they are clearly well-ahead of the children in our local public schools. Here all teaching in the public schools seems to be geared to what's tested on the FCAT (the state's standardized test); since there is not yet a social studies FCAT, most elementary schools skip social studies completely and students don't really get any history or geography until 6th grade. Not so in our homeschool where world history began in kindergarten or preschool.

We're also 2/3 of the way through a textbook called "Florida", learning the geography and history of this state we live in.
Also, we've been going through a book called "Yisrael Sheli" with snippets on Israel's history and geography, together with the book "A Child's History of the Hebrew People."
And we've done some units using the Highlights for Children's "Top Secret Adventures" series; each set includes a jigsaw puzzle for a particular country and an informational book on that country's geography and history. There is also a puzzle book and the kids have to use the information in the rest of the set to solve a mystery (and learn more about the country being studied).
All in all, we've got a lot of social studies going on this year. But the kids mostly see it as story times and fun stuff, so they don't realize all that they are learning. Besides, having been a world traveler before I could walk, I want to make sure that they know a lot about the world that they live in--their corner of it, but also the rest of the world, too. I don't want children who, as adults, don't understand where a lot of current political problems came from.


Mathematics
The children were ahead of their official grade levels in math last year. But I was disappointed to see that they didn't really have a firm grasp on their math facts, even though they were doing well on paper. As a former math tutor, I know that kids who can't recall their facts instantly generally don't do well in math. So, we backtracked--that's one of the great advantages of homeschooling, that we can move at the pace dictated by the children's needs, rather than by some arbitrary bureaucrat. Over the summer, we changed to a new math curriculum and did the grade level over again. Saxon math is one that many homeschoolers have strong feelings about. I love Saxon's elementary level program. It drills the facts well. It seems a bit tedious and repetitious at times, but I can see that has been a good thing--helping to build "automaticity" so that the children will do well as they move on to harder mathematics. They will both have moved on to the next grade level in math by January and hopefully will continue to do well.


Science
Per the plan in "The Well-Trained Mind," the children are studying chemistry this year. We're using a hodge podge of texts for this, including "Hands-On Chemistry Experiments (K-2)" and "The Periodic Table: Elements with Style" and an old third grade science textbook. They've made models of atoms and molecules and a lapbook on basic chemistry. Currently, they are working on memorizing the first 20 elements on the periodic table and we'll be testing for acids and bases soon.
We've also been going through a health textbook learning about nutrition and physical fitness.


Reading
This is probably really radical, but our main way of teaching reading is to have the children practice reading. They've learned the fundamentals of reading at this point and we go to the library often. How better to learn reading than by doing it?


English
We were using an old standard English textbook that the public schools discarded. That worked okay. But now we are mostly using a series called "First Language Lessons." At times, we've combined some of the lessons (or even skipped a few), but I find that the series is great for having the children memorize definitions of parts of speech and poems and such. It doesn't have a lot of written work for young children because it is intended for people who are teaching at home and don't need busy work for them. Some people don't like the emphasis on memorization but I think that memorization is a neglected skill these days; it builds the muscle in the brain and makes it stronger as well as a good academic foundation. We also use an out-dated public school spelling curriculum and "What Your Third Grader Needs to Know" by Hirsch to supplement the lessons.

Other
We also include a variety of other lessons. We are using "The New Hebrew Primer", the Artscroll Siddur, and the Bible for Hebrew and religion lessons. The kids are putting together their own journals of the weekly Bible portions. We're using 4-H curriculum for sewing and library books, along with hands-on projects to teach wood-working. We've done a unit on baseball that ended with watching some of the World Series games and we're doing one on football that has included watching some televised football games. And then there are Tae Kwon Do and piano classes, field trips, and more.


I know. It sounds like a lot. When I read it all, it sounds like a huge amount to cover. But we aren't slaving away endlessly. We cover a few subjects daily, but some are done only once or twice a week. As long as no one's bored and no one's stressed out, I think we're finding a good fit. And we do take vacations sometimes--such as this week when we're working on removing our old carpeting and putting down tile. Okay, maybe that's not a fun vacation, but it's a learning vacation as the kids learn some hands-on lessons about how to do things around the house.