After much consideration I have decided that I will not be using My Father's World for Cainen this year. With My Father's World, Cainen would be going right into learning about other countries and cultures. Although I want Cainen to learn about the rest of the world, I felt that he needed to have a complete overview first of American History. Then when he is older he can of course go into more depth. Also, before he learns about other people's religion, I want him to have a full understanding of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. Cainen still has a lot of questions about God and I don't think throwing in Buddha at this point is such a wise decision. Although I do fully intend on teaching my boys about other religions so they can defend their own faith when they are older. I plan to pick back up with My Father's World later. We will be starting this fall where we left off in American History. He will be learning about the Civil War, the Conestoga wagons, the immigrants coming to Ellis Island and the Great Depression. He will also be learning about the Underground Railroad and World War II. Cainen is particularly excited about learning more about the Wright Brothers great invention and the hands-on fun he'll be able to do like gold panning, setting up war campaigns & spying out enemy secrets. I look forward to learning more about other countries with Cainen in the coming years. I can't wait till we learn about the brave missionaries and I want my boys be able to defend their faith. To know why they believe what they do. I want them to be fully equipped. As David Quine says, "Properly equipping our children to stand firm in Christ in the 21st Century is our responsibility as parents."
CAINEN - 3rd GRADE
BIBLE STUDY:
* Daily readings from the Bible
* The Old Testament & New Testament Activity-Paks from Homeschool In The Woods
* Leading Little Ones To God
* An Honorable Boy from Queen Homeschool
* The Armor of God: a Children's Bible Study in Ephesians 6:10-18
* Proverbs People
For next year, I would like to look more into Character Sketches. My friend recommended it to me and it looks really good.
CHARACTER:
We will be reading books from Lamplighter
* A Puzzling Pair
* Christie's Old Organ
* Teddy's Button
* The Basket Of Flowers
* Little King Davie
* Clean Your Boots, Sir?
We also will be reading books from Yesterday's Classics
* Tales and Customs of the Ancient Hebrews
* America First
* American History Stories, Volume I and II
* Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans
* The Dutch Twins
* Mother Stories
* The Burgess Bird Book for Children
* Among the Farmyard People
Beautiful Feet has a wonderful teaching Character Through Literature Study Guide that I plan on using with Cainen either this coming summer or next. I have the study guide and most of the books.
POETRY:
* A Child's Book Of Poems
* A Child's Garden Of Poems
* The Seasons
This is the best poetry book that I have come across for my boys. I found it at a homeschool resale shop. It truly is a gem! The poems were first compiled by Louis Lawrence between the years 1887 and 1890.
* A Book Of Americans
This is another wonderful poetry book. It was first published in 1933 and it has a poem for many great Americans.
* Lessons from Nature: Poems for Boys and Girls
John Bunyan the author of Pilgrim's Progress wrote this great poetry book.
READ-ALOUDS
While I know we wont have time to read all of these books, I plan on reading at least some this coming school year and carrying these great classics on over to the following school years. Cainen really loved Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island, so I am really looking forward to reading these with him.
* Pilgrims Progress
* Swiss Family Robinson
* 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
* Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes
* Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn
* Adventures Of Robin Hood
* The Call Of The Wild
* White Fang
* Oliver Twist
* The Red Badge Of Courage
* Tom Sawyer
* Knights Of The Round Table
Winter Promise also has their own readers that come with their Language Arts program that I will be getting.
COPYWORK:
We will be using Queen Homeschool for all of our copywork. They offer copy work for cursive, math facts for memorization, picture study, narration and poetry appreciation.
WRITING SKILLS:
* Story Starters
MATH:
* Teaching Textbooks
* MathTacular
HISTORY:
* American Story 2 from Winter Promise
* Time Travelers History Studies- The Civil War
NATURE STUDY:
* My Nature Journal
* Keeping a Nature Journal
* Handbook of Nature Study
* Fun With Nature
LANGUAGE ARTS:
* Language Arts 3 from Winter Promise
* First Language Lessons For The Well-Trained Mind
* Primary Language Lessons
SCIENCE:
I have some wonderful books from Answers In Genesis and Apoligia but I feel the books that I have are a bit advanced for my son. I plan on using them next year. So this year, I decided to use Winter Promises science program. Cainen wants to learn about animals so we are doing their Animal Habitats program.
* Animal Habitats
* ACSI Science Grade 3 Student Book
This science text book from ACSI and The Complete Book Of Animals looked really good to me and I thought that I could always use it along with Animal Habitats.
* Complete Book of Animals
ART:
* Artists Activity-Paks
* Come Look With Me
* I Can Do All Things
* Art Notebooking Pages
MUSIC:
* Composers Activity-Paks
* Beethoven and the Chiming Tower Bells
* Mozart, The Wonder Boy
* Handel at the Court of Kings
* I, Vivaldi
* Meet the Great Composers
* Famous Composer Pages
* The Story of the Orchestra Book
JONAH - K
Since Jonah will be done with My Father's World K by this summer and he technically doesn't start kindergarten till this fall, I felt he wasn't ready for MFW 1st grade. So I have decided we will be using Heart Of Dakota. I really love My Father's World and it is sad that I wont be using them this year but I look forward to trying Heart Of Dakota. They also use the Charlotte Mason method and I am pretty excited about using them!
* Little Hearts For His Glory
I am really excited about using all the books from Heart Of Dakota! The Singapore K math looks really good!
* Earlybird Kindergarten Math
The Reading Made Easy and the Hide 'Em in Your Heart CD looks really good too!
Jonah will be following along with Cainen in science as we learn about animals.
I bought him several books to correlate with Cainen's studies. Here are some of Jonah's books.
* Animal Habitats: Learning about North American Animals and Plants thru Art, Science & Creative Play
* My Big Book of 5-Minute Devotions: Celebrating God's World
* Eric Carle's Animals Animals
I wanted Jonah to do copywork as well so I bought him Language Lessons For Little Ones. I can't wait to get this in the mail! Queen Homeschools Website says this book has picture study, narration & poetry appreciation.
I am looking forward to a year school year!
6 comments:
Very interesting. I am currently using MFW K for my Kindergartener and MFW Adventures for my 3rd grader. The K seems really slow and Adv sometimes uses books that seem too advanced. I like the Biblical principles that are in the curriculum, but at times consider not staying with it... not sure what I will do for next year, but some of your choices are similar to my thinking. I especially would be interested in your "comparison" of why you are making some of the choices you are making. I have heard a lot about Heart of Dakota, but never seen it (in my hands). Maybe a future post?
For when you do start studying those missionaries in foreign countries, you absolutely MUST HAVE "Missionary Stories with the Millers"...true missionary stories from all over the world, told in short story format (3-6 pages each story) and written in an engaging style, with a bit of historical info at the end of each. My kids look forward to our reading from this book each week. There are other books in the "with the Millers" series as well that I hope to look into.
Shannon, I know what you mean about some of the books in Adventures being too advanced and K being slow. Although Jonah hasn't really started Kindergarten yet,so I liked how MFW seemed to take the gentle way of learning for this age. Over all I have been pretty happy with MFW especially when I compare it to A Beka or the more traditional textbooks. I do think at times they could have added more in Adventures for science but I hear MFW gets a lot more advanced in Countries & Cultures. In Heart Of Dakota they use the Charlotte Mason method and focus on "living books", poetry, music, art, nature, narration, copywork, dictation and memorization. One of the issues I was coming up with is that many Christian curriculum weren't really Christ centered (excluding MFW) and Heart Of Dakota seems to really be right on. Another problem I saw with multi-level curriculum's is that they would try to make it where ALL you kids could do it together but what happens is when its aimed for older kids it can easily leave out the younger ones. Carrie Austin from Heart Of Dakota said that when she tried to group a wide span of age levels, she often saw that someone's needs were unmet. So she decided to make her own curriculum writing programs with smaller age increments that still spanned age levels. I liked this idea because when Jonah gets older and if I have more children I want to be able to do that. Everything Carrie Austin brought up about problems she found with other curriculum's I thought of the exact same thing myself. Heart of Dakota also doesn't want a education that mainly focused on textbooks & workbooks.I hope this helps!
Heather,
Thank you so much for your recommendation! I do have their missionary book and I would love to get the rest of the series! I have not read it yet but I know if you like it, then it must be good!
If I really like Heart Of Dakota, I will probably continue using them for Jonah and use Countries & Cultures for Cainen for 2011-2012.
I know this is a old post, but I love the things you used for your 3rd grader. I have used boxed curriculum up til now, but need to change. I don't understand how you would fit this all in. Do you have some kind of schedule you could share with me?
Be blessed,
Ginger
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