Homeschool Curriculum for Our New School Year

Welcome to Day One of the 5 Days of Back to Homeschool Blog Hop!  Hosted by The Schoolhouse Review Crew you can find all the blogs participating HERE and rest assured there is going to be a vast array of topics!  I know I’m doing different topics each day but all related to going back to school for us!

For my day one I’m focusing on sharing the Homeschool Curriculum that we chose to use this year.

I have tried a few different homeschool curriculum in my time.  I was not homeschooled so I don’t have the tried and true of “oh I loved this as a kid” or “this one wasn’t for me” plus our kids are never totally like us anyway right?  In previous years I have used Sonlight as my base to work around.  But I’ve only used one year for ALL my kids instead of trying to do four different years.  This worked well when the oldest was only in 1st grade but last year when I had two in 2nd grade, two in 1st grade, two in Kindergarten, and two in preschool it just wasn’t working all that well for us.  I was using the grade the oldest were in and then trying to make it work for the younger too and it was just too much.  It was turning into more work than fun and I want our school to be fun!  Sonlight is a great program but just not for us in our season of life this year.

I turned online looking at other literature based programs.  I love to read, my kids love to read, and we love to frequent the library so I wanted to keep it literature based.  I stumbled across Konos.  I started researching them and thought hey this is something we could do!  It’s geared towards multiple age levels and seemed fairly simple to use.   But I didn’t have the money to purchase the volume one at that time and I knew that’s where I would want to start.  So I turned to Ebay to look and see if I could find a used copy. 

While I was scouring for a used copy of Volume 1 of Konos, I discovered a friend who was thinking of using it too(she finally decided Weaver was for her) and thought that would be awesome if we could use the same curriculum together!  She then told me of a mutual friend who had great success using Konos with her children and some of those were kids with learning disabilities.  That sealed it for me.  I have some that have learning delays and learning disabilities and I struggle to find just the right curriculum for them.

I did finally find a copy of the Volume 1 Konos off ebay for a fraction of the new price.  It is in perfect condition and I’ve been reading and studying it.  It seems too good to be true!  Seriously it’s easy to use, easy to read, easy to line up what I want to do and from the small bits and pieces we’ve done, it’s something my kids love!  And we all know that if your kids don’t like it, they are not going to do well with it.

Now to go with our main homeschool curriculum, we are using some workbooks.  I know workbooks aren’t for everyone, but we have found some that we love and so I’m not ditching them just yet.

We discovered Horizons probably by accident.  I had thought I’d use ABeka with my kids.  I had high hopes for it!  Then I saw the prices.  Whew.  I at the time had 6 children.  That was going to be an investment that I didn’t have the money for.  So I started to look around and was checking out Life Pacs.  I had heard good things about them and wondered what they were like.  When I was looking at them I saw Horizons and that they had an all-inclusive preschool program.  This is what I needed as I had 4 that I wanted to start in preschool.  So I purchased the preschool curriculum.  We fell in love.  I tried Horizons for Kindergarten but found while we loved their math we hated their reading.  So we still to this day use their Math!

Now for some extra reading/grammar help we use Explode the Code. My two in third will be finishing up the program this year and I’m still in the market for something to replace it with.

For copywork, I make my own or find them free online.

For spelling/vocabulary, I make up my own list.  I use words that are in our reading for that week that I think they will struggle with a bit to help familiarize them with them.

For handwriting we use Handwriting Without Tears.  It came highly recommend to us by an occupational therapist who worked with one of our girls and I have to say that all of my children love it and do really well with it. My four oldest are in the cursive sectors while the younger ones are still in print.  I love how easy it is to teach and how well the kids learn.  

I also have a copy of Mystery of History volume 1 to use.  I’m not sure yet if we will use it this year or just use it over the summer or on breaks.  I really like this book and want to find a way to use it.  I may just hang onto it and use it when we get to those topics in our Konos books!

Now that I’ve told you all about what we’re doing this year, tell me about you!  What homeschool curriculum are you using?  Don’t homeschool?  What is your favorite thing about the curriculum that your school uses?  What is your child’s favorite subject?  I’d love to get to know you better!

We were divided up into groups for sharing purposes so please let me introduce you to my group!  Drop by, read their posts, say hello, and don’t forget to come back for tomorrow’s edition!

Jennifer @ Chestnut Grove Academy
Crystal @ Tidbits of Experience
Rebecca @ Raventhreads
Jennifer @  Milk & Honey Mommy
Dawn @ Guiding Light Homeschool
Monique @ Living Life and Learning
Lisa @ A Rup Life
Beth @ Weavings