The Run Down

On several of my friends' blogs, they are listing what they are using for the upcoming school year. In all my ramblings about planning and extras and co-ops and time, I'm not sure that I've done that. If I have, you get to see it again!

• Bible: God, What's Your Name? This is a Kay Arthur study that lets the kids find out what the different names for God are and what they mean. I love this idea and have wanted to do this as a bible study for a couple of years now. It's the only subject this year that we will do all together. I'm a little sad about that.
• Science: Apologia's Exploring Creation with Physical Science. This is what the big girl and the boy will be using for co-op. There will also be experiments with every module. Yea for experiments! I'm actually excited for that part. Their notebooks are set up and ready to go. God's Design for Life: Animal Life is what the elementary kids will be using. I'm actually looking forward to that as well. It was the science we did 3 years ago and the kids really enjoyed it. We will supplement that with The Complete Book of Animals and a lap book.
• History and Geography: The big girl will be using World Geography with Political and Cultural Profiles by A Beka. I was given this curriculum and I used to despise A Beka. It was dry and uninteresting. I really like this one. It's not dry and it has more information than one can possibly learn in one short school year. It will definitely be a challenge for the big girl to get everything done. Good thing she doesn't have to. The boy and the baby will be using Story of the World, Volume 3. The boy is specially excited. This has been his favorite history curriculum and he is glad to be getting back to it. This may be the last year we use this curriculum. Or I may start all over with the baby since she was 3 when we started. That's weird to think about. 
• Math: The big girl will be using A Beka Algebra. We were disappointed with her algebra curriculum last year and finally went back to pre-algebra for her. Her original pre-algebra just did not prepare her well enough for algebra. I hated to do it, but sometimes you have to. The boy will be using Bob Jones Math 6. It's just a straight forward sixth grade math. It has some colorful pages, but we're moving away from "I must be entertained by my curriculum". No, you need to learn. Might as well start now. The baby will be using LIFE Pacs. They worked well for the boy and I think they'll work well for the baby. I just couldn't find anything else that I thought would work for her. 
• Language Arts: The big girl will be using Themes in Literature by A Beka. She started this at the end of last year. It gave her an idea of how it would work for this year. There will be a lot of reading, that's for sure. I get to read with her so I know what the heck I'm teaching. The boy will be using book studies this year from Total Language Plus (The Whipping Boy) and Progeny Press (Mr. Popper's Penguins and Carry On, Mr. Bowditch). This is the first time we've used TLP, so we'll see how it goes. It seems very thorough. I have used PP before with the big girl and she enjoyed them. It didn't over power the story with lots of activities just to have activities. He may or may not finish all three. That's ok, too. I'm hoping he gets at least 2 of them done. The baby girl will be using Spelling and Poetry 3 by A Beka. At least for now. I would like more spelling, but there are only 5 lessons for each group of words, and most, if not all, look like they can be completed in the first day. It doesn't use all the words. Or if it does, it only uses each one once. I may switch her to Wordly Wise, but I really want to see how this works with our schedule. And, of course, I have tons of grammar and reading comprehension workbooks. We'll see what happens. 
• Latin: We will be using Memoria Press's First Form Latin Series. There are four books in this series and we could use them all. We'll see how the first year goes, but we're pretty excited about it. 

That's the rundown of our curriculum for the year. There's so much in my lesson plan book. I've scheduled the first two weeks and we start next Monday. The baby asked why we start in August since it was part of summer. I told her because we take off May, June, and July. We may start before schools and a lot of our friends start, but we get done sooner, too. Here's to a great school year. I hope yours is amazing!

Have a great day.