Our 2011-12 Curriculum Plans

                                                                          


The new school year is almost here!! The kids and I are sooo excited. We are still soo new to homeschooling, and this year I will have 2 to teach. Diva Queen will now be a first grader (which she is extremely excited about) and Crazy Man will be Preschool. So far I am trying to do Free Homeschooling, where I do not purchase set curriculum, but use the internet, library, and life to teach my children. I would like to keep this up as much as possible, but it may get more complicated as they get older. I love researching and creating my own curriculum. The internet is a gold mine for free educational resources! There are so many free worksheet sites, free lesson plans, games, and my favorite, other homeschool mommy bloggers who create wonderful resources! I try to list everything I find here on my blog for others who would also like to try free homeschooling, or just to supplement the ones they purchase. So the plan for Diva Queen is this:

Bible-We will be doing people from the old testament this year. I am still working on this, but my main  
         resource is DLTK'S Bible 
Math- I found a free math curriculum at Freemathprogram.com. This is a full curriculum for   1st-5th,
         completely broken up in to 27 week, leaving room for review and time to go at your own pace.It
         It also comes with lots of worksheets.(daily)
Spelling-I found our spelling curriculum at K12reader, which provides 36 weeks of spelling lists for
            for grades 1st-5th. I am also using Spelling City for printables to practice spelling words
            through out the week (you can put in your child's spelling list) and KidsSpell for fun online
            games you can also program your spelling lists.(daily)
Phonics-While you can fine thousands of free worksheets with phonics programs, it is more affordable
             to purchase a workbook from a bookstore than spend the money of ink printing them off. You
             can purchase them at any major bookstore, Walmart, Kmart, and Target. (daily)
Sightwords-You can find list of sight words on K12reader with printable flash cards (I just write mine
                  on index cards) and activities. We will drill for memory. (2-3 times a week)
Grammer-I am trying out the Spectrum series Barnes and Noble carries. (2-3 times a week)
Science-I found a complete Life Science curriculum at The Lab of Mr. Q. This is a very fun looking
             e-textbook. It is broken down into lesson plans for three day's a week, and includes tests and
             worksheets. While I like the way the book is written, and it is meant for early elementary, the
             worksheets look to hard for Diva Queen so, I will be searching for others to use instead, and
             I will be adding my own experiments and crafts.
Geography-We will be using Expedition Earth made my mommy/homeschool blogger from Confessions
                 of a Homeschooler. She has put so much work into her curriculum, and I CANNOT wait
                 to start this this year!!!

And for Crazy Man:

We will be doing Preschool Packs from some of my favorite homeschool blogs 1+1+1=1, 2 Teaching Mommies, Musings of Me, Our Little Monkeys, and Lawteedah.

He will also be doing Bible, Geography and Science with Diva Queen. Of course catering to his level.

Oh and also Carrissa's from 1+1+1=1 sight word curriculum You Can Read  she made just for younger readers. Crazy man loves to pretend to read the books he has memorized (which are several because he has an excellent memory), know his alphabet by sight and most of the sounds. So this looks like a great next step that wont be to overwhelming. He has no writing skills yet, so most other workbooks or programs are too much for him. I was very excited when she came up with the You Can Read!!

All this and Baby J under foot!!!! It's gonna be a fun and crazy year!!!