:::Classical Conversations
:::ABeka
Beyond that, we started out every morning with a time that included Bible stories, singing hymns, Bible verse memory, and me reading aloud from a chapter book. During our school year we read: Little House on the Prairie, Little House in the Big Woods, Betsy-Tacy, Betsy-Tacy and Tib, and Farmer Boy. This was my favorite part of our homeschool day. I loved just sitting on the couch next to my girl and going through these things.
I will admit that we didn't "do" much with the Classical Conversations (CC) curriculum at home. I focused on phonics and math for most of our school time. We did the memory work for CC, most of the time. What I found best for implementing the memory work into our homeschool was to listen to the memory songs during lunch. The focus on memory work wasn't there (my daughter just didn't do well with the "Let's listen to our memory work and memorize everything" approach), but my daughter still picked it up quickly. Of course, we attended every week at CC, which gave us science experiments, fine arts projects, and class time.
I love ABeka, especially for their great phonics program! It is so good. I loved how my daughter progressed in her reading skills. I feel like it is such a good base for reading. It is a structured curriculum. I know that some of my fellow homeschoolers would rather pick their own curriculum and make choices based on each subject. I understand, but at the same time for me personally, it just took a lot of the guesswork and piecing together a curriculum away - I bought the curriculum set and worked through it day by day and voila! my daughter went through Kindergarten. ;-)
This was a year of simplicity in our curriculum. Nothing fancy. Nothing extra. Just straightforward letters, sounds, phonics, reading, writing, numbers, math. It went fairly smooth. My daughter complained some. I imagine if she were going to school anywhere she'd still complain, so I'm not changing my curriculum based on her whining!
4 comments:
I so loved the Betsy-Tacy books!
Me too! I found the teen ones when I was a teen and thoroughly enjoyed them! As an adult I went back and reread them all, and it is so fun to share them with my daughter!
These are very helpful posts. Did you start with A Beka K5 then? My daughter just turned five, and we went through A Beka K4 last year. She did great. This year, I am doing a bit of A Beka K5, first grade spelling from A Beka, first grade reading from Christian Light, and Bible from Rod and Staff. I, like you, like the convenience of ordering a whole grade set, I don't like the guesswork either! But this year I got brave and wanted to change it up a little, bc I knew the K5 reading wouldn't be challenging enough for her, and I wanted to start spelling already. So I decided to mix and match a little. ;) I also have a son who just turned four, and I can tell he will be completely different than teaching my daughter, but that's a whole 'nother story. :-P
Melissa, Thanks for your comment!
The previous year I had ABeka K4 and fully planned to go through it, but my daughter just wasn't ready, for several reasons. Mostly it was attitude and maturity, I did feel like she was fully capable of the work. ;-) Anyhow, we did about 60-70 lessons of K4, so my daughter wasn't as prepared as it sounds like your daughter is going into K5.
Sounds like you have a nice mix of curriculum. I wouldn't mind mixing things up a bit (and probably will as the years go by) but quite honestly I'm the most familiar with ABeka and don't really know what all is out there. I would drive myself batty researching options, and no one wants a batty mother for a teacher. Haha.
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