Homeschool curriculum help?

Question

I have a child that will be in first grade, due to differences between my husband and I I conceded and enrolled him in public school kindergarten he is miserable and next year I will begin homeschooling. Has anyone put together there own curriculum. HOw do I start? I am interested in the classical method but I am totally overwhelmed any help would be great

Answer 1

Do you have any teacher friends inside the school?  if so, use the curriculum the school uses....Depending on what state you are from...you can look up the standards taught in each grade and find an unlimited amount of activities online to go with each standard.

Answer 2

So...basicly your son WON'T socially adjust so your solution is to bring him home????  WOW....reason #9989 why some people shouldn't have kids....the whole point of sending them to school is so they can be socially adjusted while learning...afterall no kid want's to leave mommy and daddy...but they sure need to!!!

Answer 3

There are alot of homeschooling resources on the internet to look into. What I have found the most helpful are homeschooling catalogs that contain many different publishers of all the necessary courses. A good catalog to check out is Rainbow Resources. As far as homeschooling course-book publishers go, there are many including Abeka, Bob Jones, and Saxon.

Answer 4

There are books and charts and other things available cheaply at Wal Mart and Sam's club to help.

First grade is basically letters and printing and small words.  Reading stories is also a good idea.  A simple book.  Dr. Seuse or something, with pictures and have them sit with you and look so they can see the words, even if they don't know what they mean.  It helps gives them a goal to do what you do.

Music.  Something that's easy to work with.  I had these tuned bells that were lettered, numbered and color coded so you could play songs by color.

Art.  Just crayons and paper.  Let the kid express themself.

By the start of 2nd grade you should be working on both words and numbers.  Small words, up to 5 letters or so and progress from there.

Small sentences.

We used to have cut out words on a board you can stick them to.  Stickies.

You then start to show words and attach meanings to them

Nouns, pronouncs, verbs, connecting words.

The dog runs.

The dog runs fast.

Adding and subtracting is firmed up in 2nd.

Hey, if you can go faster, do it.

If you can get them into algebra by 2nd grade (which means they know add, subtract, multiply, divide, fractions and decimals) do it!

I'm outling the slow go public school ciriculum.

Homeschool is whatever gives.

I'd start teaching keyboarding as part of spelling and words.

Keyboarding with all fingers, my mother taught me when I was 6 and I was doing 45 WPM by age 8.

Answer 5

Here are some websites to get you started on classical homeschooling:

http://www.triviumpursuit.com/index.php

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/

Some good classical curriculum supply companies are:

http://www.memoriapress.com/

http://www.veritaspress.com/

Here's a great classical homeschooling magazine:

http://www.classicalhomeschooling.com/

Answer 6

This website offers lots of reviews of different curricula.  It is a companion to a book that is available in most public libraries.

http://www.cathyduffyreviews.com/index.h...

Good luck!!

Answer 7

Sonlight offers a great classical education! It even comes with the lesson plans. The kids read historical novels all the time and all you need to add to it is Math and science. A lot of people use Saxon or Horizons for math. We use Math u see. For science we use Apologia. It's a fun program with a ton of experiments for the kids to do.

Answer 8

You must try k12.com because its great me and my brother are in it and its in almost all 50 states, its so good!

Answer 9

If you're interested in a classical curriculum you put together yourself, read Susan Wise Bauer's book, _The Well-Trained Mind_ and other resources from her.

http://www.susanwisebauer.com/

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/

Also, if you don't want to do curriculum planning yourself, consider a packaged curriculum that is based on the classical model.  An example is K12.  I've used it for 5 yrs now and LOVE it.  Susan Wise Bauer wrote K12's 1st & 2nd grade history courses before quitting to spend more time on her own history book series, _Story of the World_.  K12 does a four-year world history sequence, then two years of American History, then a three-year cycle of World History again.  In addition to a classical model for influence, they also use a scope and sequence similar to the Core Knowlege sequence:

http://coreknowledge.org/CK/index.htm

http://www.k12.com

(you can purchase K12 independent of a virtual academy/school - that's what we do)

http://peacehillpress.com/ (has info on Story of the World)

Answer 10

For first grade we used Math U See and Five in a Row.  

Five in a Row is a wonderful program of reading and learning.