2013-2014 Curriculum

Oh, my goodness I can’t believe I just typed that title!  Eeek!  This is it.  Our first official year of homeschooling!  Although, we’ve been doing “school” for a while now, the fact that we are diving into full time studies is a bit overwhelming.  Is this the case for any of you other mama’s starting Kindergarten? 

With all the curriculum choices out there, I decided to go with one that was all inclusive.  However, choices were slim since my son is advance in reading.  A variety of programs didn’t give me the option to get the higher level readers. So, this year we decided to try Sonlight Core A.  We actually purchased it last year and did some of it last fall.  There are parts I like and parts I don’t, so we’ll see what happens.

Kindergarten

Bible: Sonlight & Awanas

History: Sonlight Core A Intro to the World: Cultures

Reading/Writing: Sonlight Language Arts 1 & All About Reading Level 1

Handwriting: Handwriting Without Tears

Math: Saxon 1

Science: Sonlight Science A: Biology, Botany, and Physics

Extra: We’ll be using How to Teach Art for some intro to art lessons.  Plus, he will be participating in soccer.

Other: Our family will be participating in a Co-op this year.  The boy is very excited about it, mainly because he’ll get to take karate.  Of course we will also be taking some time to venture out for some fun family field trips.

So that’s it in a nutshell.  I’ll definitely be taking it one day at time. 

Do you have any tips for this newbie?

Please be aware that affiliate links are present.  If you purchase anything through an affiliate link, you give back a percentage to our family…thanks!

Stealing the Preacher {Review}

Stealing the Preacher by Karen Witemeyer is a spin-off of from her novel, Short-Straw Bride. The novel is set in a rural ranching community of Texas in the late 1800s.  The storyline focuses on three main characters- Crockett Archer, a kidnapped preacher, Silas Robbins, thief turned rancher and his daughter Joanna.

Storyline
“On his way to interview for his first preaching post, Crockett Archer can scarcely believe it when he’s forced off the train by a band of middle-aged outlaws and delivered to the ringleader’s daughter as a birthday present.

Joanna Robbins can’t believe it either. For months, she’s prayed for a preacher—a man to bring life back into her community’s church and help her fulfill the promise she made to her dying mother. Despite the circumstances, is there any chance she can convince this stolen preacher he ended up right where he belongs?” ^{(Bethany House)}

Book Trailer

Overall Thoughts 
I was really excited to read this book because I absolutely LOVED Short-Straw Bride.  Although, this book was good it didn’t live up to its predecessor. I felt like the main characters transformed a little too quickly even though the book seems to cover a decent span of time.  Silas’ heart was changed after only a few events and Crocket and Joanna fell in love before they really knew each other.  There were a variety of storylines taking place in the book (God pursuing Silas, Crocket and Joanna relationship, Holly pursuing Crocket, the marshal pursuing Silas, etc.) so this may have been a reason the characters development was lacking. One of the things I love about Karen Witemeyer is the way she develops her characters, but this one fell a little short compared to her other books I’ve read.  Overall, the storylines were interesting, but I wish more time was put into the characters.  While this book wasn’t my favorite from Witemeyer, I still enjoyed it and look forward to her next title.

A Mommy Talks Reviews:  The featured product for this review was provided to me, at no cost, by Bethany House.  All opinions expressed are my own.  If you’d are interested in signing up to receive review copies from Bethany House, head to www.bethanyhouse.com/bookreviewers!

A Monstrous Way to Learn

This week my son has been jumping at the bit to do extra school activities.  It all started with this movie, which in turn led to non-stop chatter about writing a sequel to it.  From there it was pretty easy to determine I needed to create some fun monster activities.

This monstrous theme was a huge hit.  Here’s a few pics.

	Tracing Monster University Names Getting my son to do any writing activities usually requires “pulling teeth.”  However, he was begging for me to print this sheet off for him.  (From K Extension Pack)
	Monster Skip Counting Puzzles I printed this activity 4 pages to a sheet to save some paper.  I cut the puzzles apart and he glued them all to the same piece of construction paper. He used the skip counting mats (not shown here) to make sure he was gluing down the right strip. This activity worked on skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s. (K Extension Pack)
	Monster Graphing I think he did this activity at least 3 times in the same day.  We just put our sheet in the Crayola Dry-Erase Activity.  He rolled the die down the stairs for a little more exercise. *wink*  (K Extension Pack)
	Monster Pre-Writing As I mentioned before, my boy hates writing practice, but he was all over this activity.  He even added some kids behind the doors for the monsters to scare. (From Preschool Pack)
	Labeling Parts of a Monster This was another activity that we pulled out of the preschool pack.  He actually cut out all the words by himself!  He is getting so much better at cutting.  All our practice is paying off!

We have a few more we haven’t gotten to yet, including some from Disney’s Family Pack.  If you want to grab this fun kindergartner monster theme pack and/or a tot or preschooler pack head to 2 Teaching Mommies.


I’m linking up to Preschool Corner.

There are affiliate links, so if you purchase anything through an affiliate link, you give back a percentage to our family…thanks!