Let the learning begin

We officially began our first year of homeschooling last week and it went very smoothly for the most part (aside from a few protests about re-doing work!). The girls are both enjoying our new style of learning and especially Kailyn, is eating up all the reading she gets to do!! Louisa enjoys (so far) being home with everyone all day and they both get a huge kick out of J who does her best to distract us every waking moment.

We are following Ambleside Online's curriculum with Louisa doing Year 2 and Kailyn in Year 4. The only things I am changing from their curriculum are the composer/artist rotation, folk song suggestions, hymn selections, Bible readings, and Year 4 natural history selection.

For composers/artists, I chose composers that I am more familiar with (since this is our first year!) and artists that I could buy picture study resources from Simply Charlotte Mason's website. I didn't want to have to think too much about this and theirs seemed like a well-thought out portfolio, with easy downloads to my iPad.

For the folk songs, I bought an American Song Treasury book because I would rather my girls learn the old American songs & tunes that they might hear more often.

As far as hymn study goes, I selected hymns that I want my girls to know and learn and that are meaningful to our family. They are as follows (for anyone who's interested): I Sing the Mighty Power of God, To God be the Glory, Crown Him with Many Crowns, Once in Royal David's City, Holy, Holy, Holy, Fairest Lord Jesus, Be Thou My Vision, and My Jesus, I Love Thee.

Instead of reading through the Bible (both girls are already reading the Bible on their own and we have family reading time at dinners) I chose to purchase this great program called Picture Smart Bible that is basically drawing, coloring and surveying each book of the Bible. It was a little labor intensive with printing out all the teaching pages and collating the teacher's guide but I feel it was worth it. I didn't want to stare at a computer screen and read every day from it.

Instead of Year 4 Natural History assignment, Madam How and Lady Why, I last minute changed my mind about it. I just did... instead I replaced it with Ann Voskamp's Explore His Earth. I'm sure we will give MHLW a shot next year but this year I just decided not to pursue it.

And for my records, we are planning to study J.S. Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Chopin for our composers and Giotto, VanGogh and Millet for our artists this year. So far, the girls are really enjoying Giotto and Bach. They did wonderful narrations about Giotto's Lamentation: The Mourning of Christ and are really enjoying listening to Bach and reading his story in Wheeler's book.

Anyways, these are our curriculum picks for the year!!