Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Time for a change

After months and months of searching for the "perfect" curriculum, I decided on Singapore math, Alpha Omega Lifepac for history, Christian Light Education for reading, Spectrum workbooks for Language Arts and Vocabulary and I organized my own curriculum using the unit studies for Bible and science.


We quickly found that if we had to continue on with our curriculum the way it was, we were bound to have a less than interesting, more than frustrating school year. Singapore for math is awesome. I love the way it teaches math and reinforces the concept of "mental math". We also love the Spectrum workbooks and our unit studies, our problem was the Lifepac history and the CLE reading. 

We found the Lifepacs to be too fact driven and uninteresting. The readings were difficult for the girls to get through so we decided to rid ourselves of it and implement unit studies focusing on geography instead. We'll be exploring one continent per month. So far, we're on South America and enjoying it!


The CLE reading was, (please excuse this if you use and enjoy CLE) in our opinion, bland. We liked the godly messages in the reading but the stories were a bit of a bore. The girls would just read to complete the activities, when really, I want them to read with a love for reading. I think us reading a book together and discussing it, will achieve the result that we want.


We recently signed Mandi up for ABCMouse.com and so far, she is enjoying it. It keeps her busy and she's learning the basics. She still sits in with us and we continue to work on her "____" of the week curriculum, but ABCMouse is a nice supplement for when she's antsy with us. 

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