Looking Back: Our Favorite Homeschool Curricula

We are by no means done with our homeschooling journey, but with my oldest we are getting to the end as he will be a junior in the fall.  Here is a look at some of the curricula that we have enjoyed and learned the most from...

Our homeschooling journey started with Five in a Row when the boys were in early elementary.  Of all the products that we have used this has been my favorite.  My fondest memories come from FIAR.  There were so many neat activities and precious learning experiences that we had. Basically, Five in a Row is a literature-based curriculum.  For one week you read the same picture book, like The Duchess Bakes a Cake
or How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World and pull a lesson from five different subjects based on the book.  Each week there are lessons in language arts, social studies, science, art, and applied math.  My boys gained so much knowledge about the world through these lessons.  The lessons are gentle, yet deep and are memories in the making!  Starting at 3rd or 4th grade we moved from FIAR to other programs for history (Biblioplan) and science (Apologia).  See below for information...

Another similar resource (that is FREE!) are the lessons and lapbooks at Homeschool Share. There are unit studies at Homeschool Share that are similar to Five in a Row.  There are also numerous lapbooks.  We used several units and lapbooks from here and loved all of them!

For math we used Math-U-See and Teaching Textbooks. We used Math-U-See in the younger years.  I loved the hands-on approach and the way of teaching place value.  This year my oldest will use their Stewardship program which deals with personal finance.  Honestly, though, for the high school years I prefer Teaching Textbooks.  This program can mainly be done on the computer. The beauty of it is that every single problem, yes, every single one is done step by step for the student.  So as your child is working through his or her lesson and misses a problem he/she can go back a review the problem. Teaching Textbooks also grades their work.  Since I am very weak in math I felt like this was the way to go when we got to higher levels.

Apologia has awesome programs for both elementary and high school levels. The elementary levels are engaging and fun.  There is also a notebook that you can buy to help review the concepts they have learned. The notebooks include crosswords and notebooking pages with mini-books. My youngest son did every single one of the elementary books and loved them!  The high school levels are rigorous and challenging.  I love that creationism is explored along with why evolution doesn't work based on what we know of the world.

Biblioplan is what we used at the elementary level for history. Biblioplan is a four year program which you can cycle through a couple of times if you homeschool all the way through. It incorporates "spines" (history texts) like Story of the World, Usborne history books, etc. and literature to read as you go through the centuries.  We didn't use the other aspects of the program except for doing maps. I love that we could use literature to cover history!

We used Notgrass for high school history (world and American).  I liked that there were review questions and quizzes and tests to keep my son focused on the material. Literature is also incorporated into the program (although we did literature separately). There is also a book with original documents and speeches that your student can read. Notgrass comes from a Christian perspective which I appreciated.

For writing we used Institute for Excellence in Writing. I loved this program because it teaches good outlining skills and how to dress up your writing.  This is basically the only writing program that we used.  The only problem?  After using it for several years with both boys we got kind of bored with the system.  However, even with that, this is the BEST program out there that I have seen for writing simply because it teaches how to make your writing interesting.

We used Progeny Press and Teaching the Classics from Center for Lit. for teaching literature.  Teaching the Classics is a manual for the parent that teaches how to discuss literature with your student.  Invaluable!!!  I love the list of questions that can be used for any book at the end of the manual.  We used Progeny Press for some of the books that we read.  These are literature guides that come from a Christian perspective. I loved using these when we came to books that have hard topics in them like To Kill a Mockingbird.

So what have you used in your homeschool?

A Week of Swimming and "Sisters"

This was such an awesome week!  The boys have been doing swim lessons every morning which is wearing them out.  We are only doing math and Shakespeare right now as far as school goes.

The biggest event of the week was meeting RJ (one of my FIAR "sisters") from the FIAR boards!  Since I live in Alaska, I don't get the opportunities that the ladies down in the lower 48 do to meet online friends in real life.  This is the first person I have met from the FIAR boards even though I have been on the board for AGES!  We had a lovely time with RJ and her family over dinner.  I felt like we all hit it off real well.  Even our boys really clicked with her boys!

This week I purchased The Bible in 90 Days...I am going to start this challenge in July.  The goal is to read the Bible in 90 days...now you don't actually need this Bible (you could use your own Bible and the schedule that is online), but I had some extra money earned through Swagbucks so I decided to go ahead and get it. I am looking forward to this challenge.  If you are interested in doing this with me, see Mom's Toolbox. The challenge starts July 5th and runs through October 2nd.

Declaration of Independence Ideas

We are currently rowing, The Hatmaker's Sign which is a Five in a Row unit. This is a story within a story. It is actually a story by Ben Franklin that he used to encourage Thomas Jefferson as he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Here are some fun online activities about the Declaration...

*Sign YOUR name to the Declaration!

*Read more about the signers and see their signatures up close. This is helpful to us because I was trying to show the boys the signature of William Williams who is a possible ancestor of ours.

*More detailed bios on the signers.

*Possible learning activities to do.

*The whole text of the Declaration.

Our Kimonos

We made these kimonos using the instructions on Art Projects for Kids. This week we are rowing Grass Sandals, so I thought kimonos would fit the theme since the book is set in Japan. In the instructions it said to use oil pastels...we did it a bit differently. We used oil pastels for the designs and then painted the whole kimono with watercolors. The watercolor won't stick to the oil pastels so we didn't have to be careful to go around the designs with the paints. You will notice that one of my sons did a rather unique design on his kimono...yes, that is a chicken kimono!

My KimonoThe Boys' Kimonos

Grass Sandals

Today we started rowing Grass Sandals which is a book in volume four of the Five in a Row curriculum. We did a little on Japan today and also on bananas. We are currently reading The Biography of Bananas, which is one in a series of books from Crabtree books. I recently order Study Starters, which are basically notebooking pages for different subjects. We did the plant page today in which Noah drew a banana plant and its flower and fruit and then wrote some description about the plant.

Our School Plans for March

For Noah this month we will be doing the Five in a Row units, Grass Sandals and Mailing May. With Grass Sandals we will be covering Japan, Japanese writing, Haiku, the Milky Way, bananas, frogs and the concept of centuries. Along with Grass Sandals, we will read The Biography of Bananas. While we row Mailing May, we will cover the following: Daniel Boone, alliteration, hyperbole, the concepts of domestic and wild, steam power and weights and measures.
For Biblioplan, we are in the 1950's. We will be studying the Civil Rights Movement with the following books.

We are also working on the 1960's because of the read aloud we are currently doing. The title is Bruchko by Bruce Olson. It is about a 19 year old boy (Bruce Olson) that heads into the Venezuelan/Colombian jungle to work with a Stone Age tribe of Indians (The Motilones or Barí). How Bruce reaches the Indians, interacts with them without destroying their culture, and then eventually leads them to Christ through their own traditional stories and legends is incredible. This is a book not to be missed!!!

The Hickory Chair

We have been working on rowing The Hickory Chair which is a Five in a Row Volume 4 unit. Noah just completed his lapbook for the book. Here are some pictures. Thanks to Ami from Homeschool Share for making the booklets. The booklet "Places the Grandchildren found notes" is a pop-up booklet. See next picture. Not the greatest of photos, but you get the idea.

We used a mini file folder (available at Tobin's Lab) for our information on Louis Braille. You can open up the file folder and see the Braille alphabet and information on its inventor.

Five in a Row Curriculum

We have used Five in a Row from the beginning of our homeschooling journey. I thought I would take a moment to review what we have done for these many, many years. If you are looking for a curriculum that will inspire your kids to love learning then check it out!

There are four different levels of Five in a Row: Before Five in a Row, Five in a Row, Beyond Five in a Row, and Above and Beyond Five in a Row. We have used Before, Five in a Row, and I just recently bought a volume of Beyond.

For Before FIAR (Five in a Row) there is a selection of great preschool picture books that the author of Before, Jane Claire Lambert, uses as a jumping off point for different activities. We enjoyed Goodnight Moon, Runaway Bunny, The Carrot Seed, If Jesus Came to my House, and many other great books during those early years.

For Five in a Row, you use one picture book for the week and read it for five days and do the activities for the book. Each day a different subject is covered. On Mondays, we do social studies. Tuesdays is Language Arts day. On Wednesdays, we do an art related activity to the book we are using. On Thursdays, it is science we delve into, and on Fridays we do applied math.

We haven't used Beyond yet as I am waiting for it to come in the mail. I bought Volume 2 and we will start with Helen Keller (the boys' choice). Can't wait to get started! Beyond and Above and Beyond are set up differently. They use chapter books and you don't do a certain subject each day. You pick the subjects or activities for each chapter that you are interested in.

Using FIAR has greatly expanded my boys' horizons. We have covered so many subjects that we wouldn't have normally covered in a regular curriculum. Just to give you an idea here are some of the topics we have covered over the years...

Social Studies Various states and countries, history (Civil War, WWII, Immigration, Native Americans)

Language Arts alliteration, foreshadowing, interjections, story within a story, vocabulary

Art color theory, foreshortening, media, vanishing point, music

Science food chains, ears, eyes, different animals, animal classification, water cycle, pollution

Applied Math Ordinal numbers, fortnight, time, geometric figures, skip counting, calendar

Here are some photos of activities we have done over the years in relation to FIAR.Reading one of our favorite FIAR books...Hanna's Cold Winter. It's about the people of Budapest, Hungary, saving the hippos at their zoo during WWII.

Making paper pizzas during the week we rowed Little Nino's Pizzeria.Discovering some of the concepts behind buoyancy with different sized pumpkins. This activity was for the book, The Pumpkin Runner.Building a model of an ear with everyday objects around the house. We did this activity when we rowed Babar, To Duet or Not To Duet.