Subjects and Curriculum

Here is some info about the subjects we do, how we do them, and what curriculum I use for them.
For each child, we work on their toughest subject first. This way they're done with their hardest subject first which helps keep the frustration down in the latter part of the day.

Math
Each kid has their own Math workbook. I have used Oak Meadow for the last 11 years and will continue to do so. I've looked into other Math curriculum, but I've never liked any of them enough to switch. I like the order & sequence of Oak Meadow. I like how they use tangibles, every day activities (like cooking & measuring), physical activities (jump roping), and even some crafts. By 5th grade the child can read through the instructions himself and only receive minimal help from me.
Oak Meadow doesn't continue into the higher level maths. So once in Algebra, we switch to Larson (our math tutor helped us choose our new math book).
We also supplement with other materials (see below).

Curriculum we use:

• Larson Algebra
• Oak Meadow Math Workbooks
• Beast Academy - my math brain child uses this as a supplement. I don't understand some of it, but it's great for him to see math from different angles. 
• Pattern Press - I'm using this for my kindergartener in addition to Oak Meadow. They do a great job explaining math, numbers, patterns, etc. And they make it fun with lots of games and tangibles. Even my older kids have learned some new things by listening in.

Curriculum we've tried:

• Khan Academy - computer program. We enjoy this as a supplement, especially my boys. But I no longer require it in their school day.  I think my boys will still do it when I let them have computer time. 
• Life of Fred - stories of Fred and his adventures using math in the real world. My oldest read them all. I was reading them to my youngest, but when cutting things out to make our school day shorter, this is one of the things that had to go. 

Memorization

This is better for younger kids. They can memorize so easily. I pick one or two things a week for them to work on.

Curriculum we use:

• Scriptures, Proclamation quotes, Articles of Faith, Inspirational Quotes, Poetry, Tongue Twisters, Times Tables, Religious Songs, Nursery Rhymes, Church Themes. 

Religion
Everyone is reading their scriptures alone as well as a Friend or Conference talk. And every day one person shares with the rest of us something they learned from their reading.

Curriculum we use:

• LDS standard works (Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants)
• Come Follow Me
• Church magazines
• Scripture Stories (for my younger kids)
• Bible videos (lds.org)

Curriculum we've tried:

• My Book of Mormon Study Guide by the Red Headed Hostess - this has potential but it's too advanced for most of my kids.

Reading & Literature
For Reading, my younger kids must read one chapter a day out of an approved book (not a graphic novel). My older kids must do more than that (and they can listen to the audio version).

For Literature, I read aloud (or we listen to) a classic I've chosen that goes along with the history time period we're studying. We have a packet to follow along with which includes background info on the author and time period, socratic questions (and answers), literary devices, plot diagrams, etc. I love these packets! I recently found them on CenterForLit.com. I was searching for something to make our literature lessons more quality and discussion based, and which would decrease my prep work. These are so perfect that I joined a monthly subscription so I could have access to them all.

Another resource I recently found which I love and wish I had sooner is the Timeline of Classics from Institute for Excellence in Writing. In the past, every year we'd start a new history phase, I'd spend hours and hours searching through The Well Trained Mind to find the literature books to buy that go along with that history period. The book is not organized with this in mind. Page flipping. Page losing. Different lit categories in different sections of the book. And then different ages in different sections. This was a huge and very time consuming project. Enter the Timeline of Classics. It is organized chronologically by history with only the best literature included. And every title has E, M, or H next to it (elementary, middle, high). It's perfect! I still have to buy our ancient books, and it will be so much easier to do so with this resource!

Curriculum we use: 

• Misc classics from the Medieval (or Modern, or Renaissance...) time period. (Shakespeare, Beowulf, Robin Hood, Knights of the Round Table...) I've gotten most of my ideas from The Well-Trained Mind (and now the Timeline of Classics, and Center for Lit). 
• Other classics for my younger kids. (Frog & Toad, Little Bear, Oak Meadow Fairy Tales). My younger kids are in the same room as us while we're reading, but some of the books we've read are too advanced for them and they lose interest in them. So if that's happening I try to read some other fun classic to them.
• Literature Packets from Center for Lit (also called Ready Readers or Teacher Guides)
• Audio books. Jim Weiss is THE BEST. 

Curriculum we've tried:

• Oak Meadow syllabus - this is what I used to teach my oldest three to read.  It's very fun and age appropriate with crafts and stories and art projects. 
• Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Engelmann - this is how I taught my youngest to read. It worked great.  
• Oak Meadow uses classics for literature as well. So we've always been doing classics. The only difference is Story of the World uses classics from the same time period as history whereas Oak Meadow chooses classics that they believe fit in with a child's personal development (Fairy Tales for young kids, books about rebellion and discovering oneself in high school). We've enjoyed both ways, but I prefer the Story of the World way because the literature books reinforce our history lessons. And because it's easier to read the same book to all of my kids instead of a separate book for each one.

Writing
Institute for Excellence in Writing has history based writing books. They work. They reinforce what we're learning in history and literature. They're organized. It's an orderly, systematic, understandable way to teach writing. And by the time they've gone through one book, they know how to write essays as well as creative writing. We've done the Medieval book, the Fun & Fascinating book, and are currently using the US History (for my older kids) and the Bible Stories (for my younger). We love how the Bible Stories book reinforces what we learn in our religious studies. It's a great writing method. They have a teacher course (dvds) which I took and recommend. I might have been lost in their curriculum if I hadn't first taken the teacher course.

Curriculum we use:

• Institute for Excellence in Writing (look for the Theme-Based Writing books) 
• The Center for Lit - instructions for plot diagrams, Socratic questions, literary devices, etc. (We still use but now for Literature and not for Writing).

Curriculum we've tried:

• Oak Meadow 4th & 5th Grade Syllabus - instructions for story boards, book reports, creative stories, research papers, poetry.
• Writing Strands - instructions for listing, reporting, paragraphing, dialogue, letters, etc.

Handwriting & Typing
Even though typing is taking over the world, I still believe handwriting is an important skill. Especially because my oldest's handwriting was pretty terrible a couple of years ago. As soon as we started using a real handwriting curriculum, it improved dramatically.

Curriculum we use:

• Italic workbooks
• Misc cursive workbooks
• Mavis Beacon Typing - this computer program is how I learned to type! Fun games and typing lessons.

History
For history, we listen to Story of the World and watch short YouTube videos that go along with it (we love Crash Course, Ted Ed, and a few others). My older kids have to take detailed notes, my younger kids do coloring pages, etc.
Story of the World doesn't include much US History. So last year I felt we should take a break from SOTW and focus on US History. I read two chapters a day from A History of US while they take notes.

Along with this, my kids write one sentence in their personal journals every day. And once a week they have to write a current event (which I find beforehand).

In the perfect world, I'd also be reading to them from a biography of whoever we're learning about. But this is one of the first things to go if we're in a rush or tired of school.

Curriculum we use:

• Story of the World - It is so wonderful, we all love it. It brings history to life and makes it interesting and memorable.
• Story of the World Tests - my workbook-loving son enjoys these.
• Story of the World Activity Book - has coloring pages, map pages and other enrichment activity ideas to go along with each section of Story of the World.
• A History of US
• YouTube videos - we love these. Some of us aren't great listeners, so seeing a video really helps 
• Misc biographies
• News for current events

Curriculum we've tried:

• Oak Meadow syllabus grades K-4 - these are all inclusive lesson plans that have fun history activities to go along with what you're studying. You start by progressively learning about yourself, your house, your community, your state, your world. They fit well with a child's development and understanding of his surroundings. We thoroughly enjoyed it, however, I wanted to teach all my kids the same history subject, not each individually. So we stopped using it and switched to Story of the World.

Art
We used to do art at home, but my kids now go to a private art class (paid for with our charter school money). I love it so much. It's such a high quality class. And I love not having to do art myself.

Curriculum we've tried:

• Discovering Great Artists by Kohl & Solga (this includes all the biographical and project instructions)
• Various Art History books (I studied Art History in college and have many on hand). It's usually easier to just look the artwork up online and show them lots of different images of it.

Music
I have printed off a chronological list of the greatest hundred composers of all time (I don't have a website for this, but I just googled it). Sometimes we read a biography excerpt about the composer. I have the music playing during (parts of) school. They have to write the name and date of the composer in their history book. We've found some great music we didn't know about doing this.

I am teaching my kids to play the piano, my son and daughter are taking guitar lessons, and my younger daughter is in a singing group. We also have other instruments with instructional books that my kids and I play around with occasionally.

Curriculum we use:

• Misc list of great composers
• Faber Piano Adventures (an organized, simple, easy-to-teach and easy-to-learn method of learning and teaching the piano. I had piano lessons for twelve years, so I have a solid understanding of piano and music, but if you wanted to teach yourself or your kids the piano without having this background, you could do so using these books).
• Misc piano pop songs (found online)
• Misc easy church songs (churchofjesuschrist.org has simplified hymnals for beginning pianists. They also have a list of all the easy piano songs that have ever been printed in The Friend). 

Science

Science is not my forte. For the last month I've been wondering how to do a better job with it. We used to do science kits, which were fun, but in no organized order.  Then we slowly transitioned to just watching YouTube videos, which are interesting and less effort on my part. I researched different science curriculums looking for one that is fun and interesting and which has experiments that require minimal prep and effort on my part. And I found one (that I had heard about at the homeschool conference years ago!). It's called Berean Builders. And not only is it in story format, with simple questions, fill-in-the-blank notebooks, and simple experiments, but it is organized chronologically through history (so it will correlate perfectly with our other subjects), it incorporates math (so my kids will understand that math and science go together/the importance of math), and it talks about famous scientists and their discoveries in an easy/biographical/story-telling way. I actually can't wait to start it! We'll still be watching YouTube videos, but now I'll find them to go along with whatever we're learning in this curriculum.

Curriculum we use:

• Berean Builders - Science in the Beginning (younger kids), Exploring Creation with General Science (older kids)
• YouTube  

Curriculum we've tried:

• Science in a Box kits - these are fun. One box or kit has everything you need to study the topic with hands-on experiments. 
• Oak Meadow Syllabus - fun, hands-on, stories, outdoor explorations. We no longer use this because I'd rather teach all my kids the same science lesson versus each child doing their own.

Spelling & Vocab

My oldest child is a great speller, but my middle two need spelling help. My daughter uses Spelling Workout (a boring workbook).  My son uses All About Spelling. It is PERFECT for him. It explains all the rules, has flash cards and lots of review. He is slowly transitioning from the worst speller I have ever beheld, to a competent one.

Curriculum we use: 

• Spelling Workout - just a boring workbook.
• All About Spelling (plus their app that goes along with it)

Curriculum we've tried:

• Oak Meadow 3rd Grade Syllabus - list of 500 most commonly used words
• Our Scripture for the week
• Our current Literature book

Spanish
We've tried this off and on for years. I don't focus on it as much as I should to help them really progress. But they'll be taking Spanish in high school so I want them to have a taste of it beforehand.

Curriculum we use:

• Spanish Rosetta Stone

Computer

My kids have taken various computer classes at the charter school. They've taken coding, graphic design, and a basic computer class that taught word & excel. At home they used to spend 20 minutes a day on the computer doing either typing, math or language arts. But I've found that they weren't learning much and were progressing very slowly. So I've cut everything unnecessary out and have only kept typing. They'll learn to use the computer whenever life directs us that way (if they need to type something up, I'll teach them how). They're more tech-savvy than I am now, so I'm sure this will be easy. Plus they can take computer classes at the community college.

Curriculum we use:

• Mavis Beacon (typing)

Curriculum we've tried:

• Khan (math)
• Lexia (language arts)
• Rosetta Stone (Spanish, switching to Latin)
• Misc educational & non-educational games & websites

THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF SUBJECTS WE'VE DONE IN THE PAST THAT WE NO LONGER DO.  In the past I would hear about friends doing all these subjects, and it would make me feel that I wasn't doing enough for my kids and that they would have holes in their education. So we tried doing it all. But I found that it made our school day too long, they were just doing the bare minimum (and so was I), and that a lot of this really wasn't necessary for my kids because we spend so much time on reading and writing. Because we had so much to "get through" we would spend less time and attention on those things that we are passionate about. So as a result, everything was suffering.

Grammar
We chose a scripture for the week (which by now had been written on the white board) and take it apart grammatically.  We used different colors for each part of speech and write the abbreviation on the scripture that's on the board. For instance, my son would find all the nouns and writes a blue "n" above them, my daughter would find all the verbs and write a yellow "v" above them, etc.

Curriculum we've tried:

• Oak Meadow Syllabus (where we got the idea for the colorful grammar exercise we do. I used these to teach my kids how to read).
• Fix-it Nose Grammar- this is fun and quick and the kids enjoyed it, but it was one of the excess workbook items I found unnecessary.
• GUM workbooks- these are dry and my daughter hated them (my son didn't mind them). I don't like the layout order and that it's a workbook with no real interactive lesson going on.
• Lexia - computer program. Good reinforcement and they can actually do it without my help.

Latin
We've tried doing Spanish. We've tried doing Latin. In both cases, we do the bare minimum, don't spend enough time on it, don't make it a high priority, and really don't learn much at all. So we will no longer be doing either. I still own Rosetta Stone for both languages. So if my kids every show an interest in learning either, they'll be able to do it on their own. Latin really was interesting and beneficial in understanding English better, plus there are so many Latin references all over English in general and English literature. My oldest son particularly enjoyed it. However, we just don't do it as we should so I think it's best to spend more time making our other work higher quality.

Curriculum we've tried:

• Latin Rosetta Stone
• Prima Latina
• Home-made flash cards of the Prima Latina vocab

Logic
Logic is introduced in the "Logic Stage" of a Classical education (about 5th grade). So only my oldest has done this. He enjoys it, but we now only do it as a supplement occasionally. His deductive reasoning is already very good, so it's unnecessary for him. Maybe I'll use it more regularly for my other kids (or maybe not).

Curriculum we've tried:

• Mind Benders - written fun puzzles to solve by deductive reasoning
• Red Herring mysteries - fun read-aloud riddles that help you think differently