Category Archives: Curriculum

Our official first day of school – 2008-2009!

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We officially started school today.  B is now a kindergartner.  We will be using KONOS  this year.  KONOS was the first homeschool curriculum I fell in love with about 3 years back (way to early to use for my now 4 and 5 year olds). We seem to be more of a unit study family.  

 

I thought of going with a curriculum that was more laid out for us with everything included but I’m sure we would get bored.  We love going to the library every week and picking up books on subjects we find interesting.  KONOS is one big unit study that just keeps going.  I also have a friend locally that i
s also doing KONOS.  This is her second year with volume 1.  We will start,  obedience, and co-op along with her family.  We live about 30 miles apart

 so we will only get together twice a month but that should be fine.  We can do some of the hands on stuff together and bounce ideas off each other to keep us motivated.  
For handwriting we are using Handwriting without Tears, K and Pre-K.  For phonics we are using Explode the Code 1, and A.   We’ll be doing a lot of nature walks and some journaling.  I hope to start each day with Bible and reading then moving into Math-U-See and phonics.  I think well do those 3 subjects daily along with KONOS.  We’ll see how it goes.  Should be fun!  

Books and Curriculum

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We will be using Konos this year for our main curriculum.  I’m really excited to get started!  I’ve been getting ready.  My favorite Konos information I’ve found is from Sprittibee.  She is SO organized and makes it seem possible to use Konos successfully. 🙂 If you do a google search for Konos organization you’ll find links to her blog.  We’ll officially start school this year just after Labor Day. Actually, we really haven’t stopped this summer we just do less and I try to make everything more fun.  B will start Kindergarten this year and J will be doing stuff along side us.  I love lapbooks and plan to do as many as we can of different subject.  Last year, Five in a Row was big for us.  We’ll continue rowing some books this year as well.  I love Five in a Row.  The booksare awesome and we never mind reading them over and over.  Some, like Lentil, we’ve read well over 5 times.  I started off just rowing the books I could find at our local library but then ended up buying quite a few used at Amazon.com.  You can also buy lots of Five in a Row books on e-bay.  Most of the books are so good you’ll want to have them in your home library.  
This summer we’ve been reading some good books.  B is almost 5 1/2 and is really close to reading on his own. I think he can read but lacks some confidence.  We’ve just discovered the Magic Tree House Series.  Here is a review from HomeschoolBuzz.com.  B and J have liked chapter books for a while now but these seem to really hold their attention.  They usually want me to read the whole book in one setting (this only takes 30 mins. or less).

A great book we checked out from the library, and love is The American Story which is  series of 100 short stories from American History.  They are short enough to hold everyone attention.  
Another book I love is Discovering Great Artists.  Each page has an artist and their story along with a project kids can do in the style of that artist.  We plan do get into some of these projects this year.  I might co-op some. It’s always neat to do projects with other families.  Makes it more fun and exciting.

Accountable Kids

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In January we started using a program called Accountable Kids and we LOVE it. The program helps us gently remind the kids of what’s expected of them daily. There are 3 sets of reminder cards; morning, afternoon, and evening.


Each set of cards completed earns the child a ticket that allows them to do a privilege like watch a TV show or do something on the computer (anything that works for your family).We only have them do simple daily chores that they should do anyway; make they beds, clean their rooms, clothes into hampers, get dress, brush teeth (with our help). The tickets can also be taken away for discipline for not listen, name calling etc. It’s really worked out well.   We don’t expect perfectly made beds but sometimes they do extra well and over time, we hope, it will stick with them and realize that it’s nice to have a tidy area to play and live. Over time we can start to pay them for extra chores completed like taking the trash out. a reward for 10 days without loosing a ticket your child can get a date with whoever they choose. Here, J went for ice cream with Mama