It’s time to evaluate last year’s curriculum! What worked and what didn’t?

What Worked?

All About Reading Level 1 – I guess I can’t technically say that this worked for us this year since we got 14 lessons in and had to shelf it for the rest of the year. However, the 14 lessons we did complete went very well. Little Bug seemed to really enjoy the activities and when we got to Lesson 5 where she was suppose to read her first story, she did with no problems at all! My hope is that when we pick this back up next year Little Bug’s reading skills are going to soar.

Horizons Math K – I nailed it on an appropriate math curriculum for Little Bug. The lessons are short enough to keep Little Bug’s interest and yet, each lesson covers several concepts. I love the spiral approach to learning. One concept is taught and it is practiced that day on the worksheet. A few days and/or weeks down the road, the same concept will pop up again. This method works well for Little Bug. If we were working on a curriculum that had her mastering a concept before moving on, she would get bored. The variety of daily activities in Horizon’s Math K keeps her interested. Compared to other math curriculums I have seen, Horizon’s Math K is advanced in the concepts they are introducing and teaching to Kindergarteners. Even though we only got through a little more than half of the lessons in Horizon’s Math K, Little Bug was able to complete the last half of the BJU Math lessons at her school with ease!

Read Alouds – We enjoyed several Read Alouds this year. I need to update our Read Aloud list on this blog! Once Little Bug started her school in January, we didn’t have Read Alouds as much and we both missed it.

Ready-Made Preschool Level 1 – We enjoyed working through this curriculum. Sweet Pea enjoyed the books and fun activities and crafts.

Little Letter Books, Play-Doh Mats, ABC Sticker Book – All of these were the perfect addition to Ready-Made Preschool. Sweet Pea especially loved The Little Letter Books.

Bible – This was the second year I pieced together a Bible curriculum. We would focus on one story per week, reading the same story from three different children’s Bibles. We listened to the story and a song on CD, watched The Storybook Bible DVDs and read the stories from Arch Books that we had on hand. One thing I absolutely loved about Little Bug’s school is they had a monthly Bible verse to memorize. When the class would line up to go anywhere outside the classroom, they would recite the verse before they left. Little Bug memorized 4 verses and she had them down pat! Sweet Pea memorized several verses from My ABC of Bible Verses.

Calendar Time – We stayed consistent with this through the school year. Calendar Time is such a rich learning time when you have a preschooler and Kindergartener. I know this time helped Sweet Pea learn to count past 10! We would count by 1’s, 2’s, 5’s and 10’s to the day’s date. We sang the Days of the Week and Months of the Year song most days. When Little Bug started learning about place value, she would make the day’s date with linking cubes to show the groups of tens and the ones. We loved doing the Preschool Calendar Notebook.

Science – All of the resources I put together for science this year were a huge hit. We especially loved to read The Berenstain Bears’ Big Book of Science and Nature and watch The Magic School Bus:The Complete Series DVDs. The Let’s Read and Find Out Science Stage 1 series and The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library were perfect reads for the science topics we were learning about. We only covered three of the seven topics I had planned for us to study, but given our year, I consider that an accomplishment! We learned about The Human Body, Weather/Seasons and Seeds. We would spend a couple weeks reading books about the topic and then we would do several hands-on learning activities. Science and History learning will continue in this way while the children are all little. It’s fun to learn this way!

History – We read two of the If You Lived When books and several of the My First Little House Books for history. The Liberty Kids DVDs were watched but not as much as the Magic School Bus DVDs. Little Bug is fascinated with Indians so most of our study of history this year was learning more about Indians!

Sonlight P3/4 – I did not buy this Core but instead looked up the books at the library, checked them out and read what books I could find to the girls. There was some really good literature included in this Core and I am glad we got to enjoy those stories together.

Educational Games & Leap Frog DVDs – Sum Swamp was our favorite! I even wrote a post all about it! We played every game I listed except What’s Gnu? That will be a good one for Little Bug this coming year! Leap Frog DVDs are still a favorite with my girls and I love them too because they are extremely educational and perfect in length (usually around 30-45 minutes per DVD)

What Didn’t Work?

Handwriting Without Tears – Academically, handwriting got hit the hardest with our crazy start to this school year. I planned to do HWOT Kindergarten, but then decided doing the Preschool curriculum first would benefit her. When Little Bug started her school, they were doing the first grade Handwriting Without Tears! Little Bug jumped in to that having no real instruction on how to form her letters correctly. She just started writing the letters however she wrote them! I have chosen to not use Handwriting Without Tears for Little Bug next year. HWOT uses only two lines for children to form their letters and I think Little Bug needs the tradition 3 lines. It will provide her more guidance for forming her letters. I’m holding onto the HWOT Kindergarten curriculum because I have two more that need to learn to write!

What We Didn’t Use

Hands On Thinking Skills – Never touched this this year because of all the craziness. There was no time for extras. If we did school, it needed to be our core curriculum!

Apples – We read the first couple of pages and then once Sarge was born, we didn’t pick it up again.

Extras – We did not one activity with the Homeschool Group I joined the week before Sarge was born! The first half of the year we were in survival mode and doing anything extra just wasn’t going to happen. When Little Bug started the school, there wasn’t time to do anything with the Homeschool Group. We had planned for both girls to do AWANAs this year. They started going but then after we got home with Sarge in September we pulled them out because it was to hectic to try to go. Playdates didn’t happen until Spring. Little Bug wasn’t interested in taking Ballet and Story Time at the library didn’t happen once Sarge was born.

Our Year In Summary

Overall, our curriculum choices for this school year were perfect! I am looking forward to picking back up with curriculum we had to shelf and I am looking forward to finishing curriculum we are still currently working on! One of my favorite things to do as a homeschool mom is to choose curriculum for each of my children. Each year I want to take the time to write these posts so I can evaluate if the curriculum is working. If it is not, I have the freedom to be able to make a different choice!

- Elaine