Choosing Curriculum for the New Year

Researching curriculum, reviewing curriculum, and reading curriculum are three of my most favorite parts of homeschooling. Then comes the worst part, the most difficult challenge of all- actually choosing the curriculum. It feels like torture to let go of something I've spent so much time exploring! But late spring means that it's time to put in the curriculum order for the new year and time to begin breaking up with curriculum I've come to love.

We homeschool through a public charter school in California. There are many different deviations of this model, some of which give parents a fixed dollar amount to spend in selected vendors. Our model is a physical charter that holds classes and purchases curriculum for the families to check out each year. We have access to more than 70 classes, a typical school administration, a library and traditional school activities like Science Fair. There are definite pros and cons to this model. In our case, my son's expensive fencing lessons would be paid for by the school in a different model, because they count as PE. In our model, we pay out of pocket.

Our charter offers a huge variety of curriculum for the classical homeschooler but can be somewhat limited for Academic Homeschoolers. Because it is a K-8 charter school, the curriculum library does not contain anything beyond 8th grade. For most kids, this wouldn't be a problem. However, for us, we often find we have to purchase our own materials to cover the kid's academic needs. 

The kid is a sixth grader on paper this year, though his academic needs are pretty varied. So far, this is our plan for the 2013-2014 school year. It may change, depending on progress in the next few months! For those interested in purchasing curriculum, I have included links where available.

Literature/English

Wordly Wise Book 7

The Writer's Jungle

Free reading- with the school's 40 Book Challenge

Mathematics

Art of Problem Solving- Algebra 1 (We recommend buying from Horrible Ray)

Descartes Cove and Khan Academy as supplemental

Science

Intellego Units in Evolution and also Plate Techtonics/Geology

Our monthly hands-on science club will continue

Social Studies/History

Intellego Units in Ancient Civilizations (covering China and India)

Story of Science- Aristotle Leads the Way

Student Quest Guide (the accompanying workbook)

Electives-

We're still tossing this around. Perhaps blacksmithing with a local co-op, or some improv acting classes. We'll be adding in a musical instrument this year but which instrument is still a family debate!  The kid will also continue dabbling in coding with Code Academy and working on digital art using Anime Design Studio. 

Why I wrote the book

Since “Academic Homeschooling: How to Give Your Child an Amazing Education at Home” was published in November, I’ve answered this question countless times. Why did I write the book? My answer is the same but depending on the audience and situation, it is often abbreviated. The longer version is complex and not nearly as easy to explain in a day-to-day conversation.

As I note in the book, we did not come to homeschooling when my son was born, nor do we homeschool as a resistance movement to public school or “the man”. We are homeschooling out of necessity. I have an oddly shaped irregular pentagon child that doesn’t fit in the nice little square box of traditional public school. We certainly gave it our best, spending countless hours advocating, volunteering and training teachers to see a different way to teach that might reach a broader population. Some were eager to learn, but we finally couldn’t handle the brick wall of a principal who refused to help my son continue to grow academically.

As a credentialed teacher with classroom and administrative experience, the desire to make automatons who can fill in little bubbles on a test just didn’t resonate with me. I was lucky to work at a school that encouraged creativity both for students and teachers. I created my own curriculum, worked with a wide variety of students and encouraged parent volunteers in my classroom. How could I willingly give my son a poorer quality education than I was giving my own students every day? Didn’t he deserve the same fulfilling, enriching education?

And so homeschooling was the new path we tackled, two years ago now. We set out to spend just two years homeschooling him, until he was old enough to go to my previous school. We planned on homeschooling being a gap-fill that would inspire his love of learning, allow us to travel and academically open opportunities for him that had been closed previously. One year into homeschooling, it was obvious to me that our “brand” of homeschooling was lacking both information and acceptance in the homeschooling world. We are not religious homeschoolers, nor anti-government, nor classical, nor unschoolers. We are homeschooling because it is the best academic choice. This is how the book was born, out of a desire to get people talking and sharing what was happening in their own homeschooling environment. I wanted to “out” the Academic Homeschoolers and connect them with other families that were homeschooling the same way and feeling lonely in the often critical homeschooling world.

This blog is the natural development out of the book- a way to continue to share resources, ideas and projects with our readers. As we enter our third year of Academic Homeschooling, we look forward to inspiring even more families to make the leap!