Friday's Homeschooling Post

Friday, August 10---CurriculumWhat curriculum do you use? Where do you buy it? Have you found a "gem" that you must share with others? Was something in particular a complete failure for you and your kids?

I think I've mentioned before, I really *love* Bob Jones Bible curriculum. About everything you need to teach that year is inside their kit. I had to order a couple paperback reading books for some extra activities, but these are good quality books and certainly tied in well with the subject matter.

The teachers' manual is very helpful and goes with the KJV Bible and the workbook very well. There are timelines that really help the students put things into perspective. As we study a character in the Bible (no, we don't study them ALL.. I think they concentrate on different ones each year) we'll add him or her to the timeline. We can tell, for example, that "today," we can't get to know Isaiah or go for a walk with Jonah. We can tell that Isaiah and Moses could NOT have been friends. I tend to do all kinds of exercises on the timeline that are not included like that.

I was so mightily impressed with the Bible curriculum that I ordered their Social Studies. Now, I *like* their Social Studies second grade book. It has a lot of colours and it is fun to read. I learned something new in almost every unit. BUT their notebook exercises are a little wimpy and not of the same high-quality depth that supplements the lesson in their Bible stuff. The teachers' manual doesn't really help teach the lesson to the same degree the Bible curriculum was helpful. These are all questions one could *naturally* think of while reading the book. For example, the crops of farmer Brown might show a chart of wheat, corn and tobacco. Look at the bar graph and tell me what farmer Brown grew in the greatest quantity on his farm. I didn't need to spend $50 on that!!

Do I really need an expensive teachers' manual like that? I'm stretching this Social Studies curriculum out... I don't know why... and adding books from the library on colonial times, or community helpers, or whatever that is on their reading level and "goes" with the lesson we are learning. At this rate, the curriculum will last two years instead of one and I'm hoping something cheaper or easier... or even free... comes up in the interim. I suppose I ought to look into devising my own third grade curriculum myself with library materials. The younger years are not *too* heavy on the dates, and I get the idea that small children are not quite expected to understand the continuity of history as we do, or the idea that while "this" was happening in Asia, "that" was happening in Africa or Europe. That may be too much.