Monday, August 6, 2012

Not Back-to-School Blog Hop ~ Curriculum Week


It’s that time of year. All the stores are shouting: BACK TO SCHOOL. But for many of us, it’s “school as usual.” Not anymore! Time for some fanfare!

Join us for the Original Back to School Blog Hop. This is the 4th annual “Not” Back-to-School Blog Hop. Originally hosted by Darcy at Life with My 3 Boybarians, the blog hop has now moved to iHomeschool Network.


Learn what others are using. Share your plans. See what works, or what doesn’t, for others. Share your photos. It’s a Not-Back-to-School blog hop for homeschoolers, afterschoolers, preschoolers, carschoolers, anyone – anyone at all – who teaches at home and wants to share or needs a little encouragement. Meet new bloggers, get to know homeschoolers near you and nowhere near you.
  • First week in August: It’s a curriculum hop. Share your well-researched plans on your post. Show us what you love. If you want to join us click the calendar above and it will take you to the linky page or click HERE.
The following items are our resources for the coming year. I am only teaching one student this year, my son Christopher. The other three of our children have graduated from our homeschool in 2004, 2007 and 2012. This is my 22nd year of homeschooling. Most of the items I have had for a while and used more than once. A few things are new to us. I will mark the new items so you know. I am looking forward to this year of study.

If you have any questions about any of the items just leave me a comment.

Bible:
Dallas Bible Study Course - Old Testament
We like this study because the main book is the Bible. You read the Bible and there are questions to discuss,  places to locate/plot on a map as well as things to memorize. It even has review worked in and a test at the end of the year. It was a public school study from Dallas, Texas from the late 1940's. We have done the New Testament Study a few times, this is our first time doing the Old Testament Study Course.

History:
I purchased this guide because our favorite, Mystery of History, currently stops with vol. 3. Vol. 4 is not expected to be ready for a year or two more. I like these guides. I especially like the Christian worldview that is evident throughout. She gives you a lot of choices of books to read for each topic. It is a good guide for High School History. One regret is that it doesn't cover Asia or Africa, another that it is not exactly chronological time wise and I had to switch a few things around to suit me better. Other than that I like it fine, I just wouldn't put it on par with Mystery of History and I can't wait for volume 4 to come out.


Light and the Glory, The: 1492-1793 (God's Plan for America) hardback
or  The Light and the Glory paperback 
and  The Light and the Glory for Children 
I love this series. I am sorry to say I have never read the series to my kids before now though I have had a copy of the Light and the Glory for years. I did read them the children's version a long while ago but never the version for older kids to adults. I am really enjoying it. I love the Christian worldview the book has. It is nice knowing you are getting the truth about history and not the politically correct washed out stuff that is in text books today. I purchased the second and third books in the series for later as well. I can't wait to read them all and I have already encouraged the kids who already graduated from our school to read them on their own when we are done using them for school.

Story of the Great Republic
This is the last book of this series. We have read and enjoyed them all.



The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers
This series is new for us. I love it so far. I am learning a lot, I hope my son is. I highly recommend this series. I will be looking into more of their books. Again it is nice to have real, true history... the whole story.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
This series is new for us.

Politically Incorrect Guide To The Constitution
This series is new for us. 

History of US 11-Volume Set 3rd Edition Revised with Sourcebook
these are especially useful to me in the years after the Civil War as I don't have as many other books covering that time period. We will be using them here and there this year though.

I have the old set of this and have used these for years. I love Diana Waring. I have all the tapes and everything. I would love to try out the new set but I already had to much History stuff I wanted for this year and could not fit it in my budget. I wish someone would give me a set or Diana Waring would ask me to do a review for her.

We use this book through a lot of time periods. It is really great for following events that impacted Christianity through the ages.

Invitation to the Classics: A Guide to Books You've Always Wanted to Read (Masterworks Series)
- an introduction to classic literature and its authors

Again it is good to see the history that has been taken out of most textbooks today.


Great quotes/advice from the founders of America.


I love this old book from 1955. The writing is good and the illustrations are wonderful. It is also great because I only paid 10 cents for it from a surplus store.

History Through the Ages - Record of Time
 this is a timeline where the kids add figures as you go through your history study
this is ongoing for us

I highly recommend the History Through the Ages Collection of Historical Timeline Figures on CD that goes with the timeline. They even keep the figures up to date and add new ones in to match the chapters of Mystery of History which we use as our spine for our History studies.
For our geography part of History we will be using


WonderMaps which we received as part of the TOS Crew
I love the versatility of this product, see my review of it HERE

and I may supplement with


Lapbooks we will use for History:
Nathan does not like lapbooks so he will be doing Notebooking pages on the same topics as the lapbooks I have. Some of the HOAC lapbooks now have Notebook packs to go with them. I don't have any of these to match these lapbooks... though I may buy some this week while HOAC is having their big sale.



The above books are the main books we use for History. We use other biographies and non-fiction books also. I will not be listing all of them here, it would make this page way longer and it is too long already. Check my Week In Review posts to see what we are doing each week with more specifics and check our School Shelfari on my sidebar, too.

Historical Fiction:  
This changes often and I try and keep it updated on our School Shelfari widget in my left sidebar


Biology, Grades 9 - 12 (The 100+ Series)
This book will be new for us, as soon as it arrives. A dear friend bought it for us and it is still on it's way. I am waiting for it's arrival with excitement.

We will be using 3 sets of Lyrical Life Science. I will only be showing one picture but each link goes to a different set at Rainbow Resource.
Lyrical Life Science Volume 1 Set with CD
Lyrical Life Science Volume 2 Set with CD
Lyrical Life Science Volume 3 Set with CD (Human Body)

These are our main books. I will be adding some unit studies and many books we own as well as library books to our study. After we read the first three book listed above we will cover animals, then human body, then plants. In the spring I hope to also put in a garden as part of our study and to aid our eating of good healthy fresh vegetables.

When we do the human body study we will also read...
Body by Design
This book is new for us

Math:


We are using version one of this Teaching Textbooks Algebra 2. Christopher is a year ahead in Math. They are currently redoing this level and will be selling the updated versions starting this month from Teaching Textbooks and other providers.


Language Arts: 
I purchased the already printed booklet since I was trying to save on ink.
After we do this study guide Christopher will be doing the Lord of the Rings series from the same publisher.
This series is not new to us but none of my other kids have done the guides for these books.

Easy Grammar Plus Workbook
Christopher started this grammar book last year. 
Art Appreciation: 
Knights of Art - we are reading from a pdf copy that I got here at this link at Archive.org

I have a few other resource we use.
Most of them free online books from Archive.org and free notebooking pages from various places on the Internet.

Music Appreciation:
Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers

The Gift of Music (Expanded and Revised, 3rd Edition): Great Composers and Their Influence


We, of course, use a variety of music to listen to.
I got a number of sets of cassettes from Goodwill, for $2.00 each, called
Great Men of Music
here is a link to one of them

We love the cd's The Story of... in Words and Music.
There are a bunch of these for a number of different composers. Here is one as an example.
The Story of Bach

I also have and use free notebooking pages that I have gotten from the Internet.


Well that is our main curriculum for this year. Christopher also has some electives he is working on including Home and Life Management, Educational Foundations, Building Life Relationships, Computer, and Phys. Ed.


Note: I have done only one link for most of these books. Most times I have done a link to the primary publisher. Some are affiliate links to Amazon. You can also check your favorite homeschool curriculum provider, discount homeschool websites, used book sellers (Amazon is my favorite), and other places for used books as well as other pricing for new books.

all content on my blog is ©

2 comments:

Marsha said...

I love all your US History resources! I'll be using Teaching Textbooks for the first time this year, so I'm looking forward to it. Hope you have a great year!

Sheri said...

Hey ya-looks like some awesome choices this year. I have been contemplating that HSintheW composers and artist studies for some time but the boy isn't ready for all that just yet...so I will continue to ponder em! LOL Guess we'll both be like "whoa-this is what it is like educating just one?" this year-LOL big changes for us both! :)

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