Our curriculum?

What do we do all day?  What exactly are we studying?
How did I decide what books and educational materials to use for each subject?

I am grateful to my sister who has been home schooling for years and has allowed me to borrow materials.  A good friend Sarah has also been home schooling for years.  From their experiences I have learned much.  The books "The Well-Trained Mind" and "Easy Homeschooling Techniques" are on my shelf, the former has wonderful lists of suggested curriculum.

Wanting to remain loosely within the 6th grade curriculum guidelines provided by our school district, one of the first things I did was to print those details from the district website.  From there, I decided to follow Singapore's Math and Susan Bauer's "The Story of the World (Ancient Times) for history.  For English, French, Science, Health, Gym and Art, I have pieced together a variety of resources.  In Science, I am checking out books from our library that cover the subjects outlined by the district's 6th grade science program; Jonah reads them, takes notes, and narrates to me what he has read.

We go to a "co-op" organized by TEACH (http://www.teachct.org/) each Tuesday morning from 9-12.  Here Jonah studies Science (the Human Body), Writing (Institute for Excellence in Writing www.excellenceinwriting.com/), Art, and Gym.

Perhaps in future blogs I'll go into more detail for each subject area, and share some specific examples of what we've done.

So, here is our Overall curriculum:  
 

Math – “Singapore Primary” 5B, 6A, 6B

History – “The Story of the World”, library books, Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, Kingfisher Atlas of World History

Science – TEACH Co-op (http://www.teachct.org/), “Handbook of Nature Study”, library books (follow roughly the subjects that are covered in 6th grade in our district)  and Science Museum

English – Journal Writing, “Spelling Power”, “Core Skills Language Arts” 5&6, “Analogies & Idioms” 5&6, Poetry of Choice, Fiction of Choice, TEACH co-op writing.

French – « Grammaire Progressive du francais », «Geographie » & « Histoire » Nathan Collection Guilliver Cycle 3, fiction of choice

Health – Kingfisher Encyclopedia, library books

Phy-Ed – TEACH Co-op, Lifetime Fitness, soccer and basketball

Art – TEACH co-op