What we’re using for school this next semester:

First, Christopher – this should be his first grade year. He’s in Saxon 2 (which is second grade level) and First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind book 3 (which is 3rd grade level.) He’s reading whatever books strike his fancy and we’re reading aloud to him still. He’s also using his composition book for his handwriting practice and dictation but typing his book reports (and using a new typing program.) He writes letters and is writing in his journal for more writing practice.

Moira is in her kindergarden year. She’s in Saxon 1 (first grade) and First Language Lessons grade 1. She’s also using a workbook for some extra reading practice, Bob books for reading aloud, and her composition book for handwriting practice. For therapy we’re using a phonics book (for speech), Ready Bodies, Learning Minds for motor and sensory work and The Out of Sync Child has fun for sensory issues, speech & motor. Plus the Webber Phonology cards.

For math manipulatives we have geoboards/peg boards, math cubes, tangram pieces and some plastic shapes. And a ton more, but these are the ones they use most. We have toy clocks, calendars, counting bears, flashcards, etc.

For art we’re mostly using the Complete Book of Arts & Crafts right now, but we also have the science arts book, Annotated Mona Lisa, Discovering Great Artists, and some art history books (serious ones) from my family (they all did AP art history & one minored in it in college.) And we have sketch pads for the kids for their nature journals, among other things. And an obscene amount of art supplies. We try to do art on Mondays.

Music – we have a basic beginner piano book C is almost done with and Mo will start with, along with the Primary children’s song book and a simplified hymn book. We have lots of toy instruments like triangles and shakers, the guitar, piano, and drums. We let the kids play on Garage Band, Kit and I play for them (guitar and piano) and we use Pandora to expose them to various composers. We’ll be doing artist & composer studies later this year, picking one of each to focus on per semester. (It will be a good education for me. We do music study on Tuesdays.

Wednesdays we do an Out of Sync activity and focus on some extra motor work/sensory stuff for Moira, though all the kids participate. We do speech on Monday & Friday with Mo.

For history we’re in book two of Story of the World. We also have some geography encyclopedias, Circling the Globe, various atlases, blackline maps to go along with our history curriculum, and the biography books for the kids to read about some famous figures. We’ll be supplementing a LOT more with “living books” and biographies as we get more in depth later on – the Story of the World is a four book series we’re doing twice through so next go round we’ll have a lot more enrichment activities and additional readings. (Ask me if that made no sense at all and I’ll explain later.) Thursdays we do history and every other week we meet with a co-op for an enrichment activity.

Science this year is earth & space, we have a variety of books and posters & the NASA cards. Right now we’re just doing some readings but we hope to add in science experiments again soon. The science readings go along with the history timeline. Life science, earth & space, chemistry, physics on a four year rotation.

We also have some science experiment books and encyclopedias. There are more books for life, chemistry, and physics that I’ll photograph when we get around to those. And the Magic School Bus books. Plus we have the magnifying glasses and other hands on things for the kids. We do science on Fridays.

We do language & math daily, we do the “specials” each once a week. Art, music, sensory (therapy, history, science.

The language & math with Christopher takes about 30 to 45 minutes total. The language & math with Moira takes about 30 minutes total. If they dawdle it takes about an hour. 🙂 They both need one-on-one attention to cover the new math concept of the day and do the language, Mo needing more help than C, of course. The extra subject takes 30 minutes to an hour, depending on what we’re doing. We also doing reading aloud with the kids for at least an hour a day but often two or more hours with them reading to us, each other and us reading to them.

Oh, and cost – we bought the Magic School Bus books from Scholastic for cheap. The Well Trained Mind book 3 and workbook I got off Amazon (it was cheaper that way) and the workbook for Saxon 2 we bought new. Those are the only books we bought new and we didn’t pay full price for any of them. Everything else we got as a gift or free from another homeschool family, bought used from a library sale, or found on Half.com or Amazon.com for used. We’ve not spent a ton on these, though if we find a book we fell would be good we find a way to get it. We did buy the manipulatives new, of course, but we purchased most of them during Mardel’s 20% off educators sale. Homeschooling does not have to be expensive.

Okay, I hope that answers most of the questions re: what we use!

And here are links in the post I wrote up, if you want to find out more about the books we use.

I lied – the Ready Bodies, Learning Mind program we purchased new as well. The therapy things are often harder to find used, but we checked that out so we knew it was something we felt good about.