Our Homeschool Curriculum

Let me just say, me doing one week of homeschool in no way shape or form makes me an expert. To be honest I have a lot to learn and am taking it week by week. However, I have been asked by a few people what curriculum we follow and how it works for us. In our state our kids must learn all of their basic subjects, obviously, and we have to keep record of all of the things we do and present them at the end of the year to our coordinator. We do not have a specific curriculum we have to follow however and it allows us to be a little more creative with what we do. My first graders and kindergartners use the same brand of books by DK books these are our main workbooks as well as our reference books for what I base most of our work off of. I have noticed however, if your child knows how to read and write before kindergarten these books are sometimes a little too easy and you have to find other sources to keep them busy during the day. Brooke has known how to read for over a year now and she normally finishes her language arts class very fast, I have found several websites that have worksheets and other ideas to help. My favorites for worksheets are Educents.com and Education.com we have been able to find tons of fun things for them to do on both of those sites. The other awesome thing about having a say in our curriculum is my kids get to learn about stuff that truly interests them, Zayden for example really likes dinosaurs and expressed interest in learning more about them to the point of asking if he can do a project on them. It sounded like an awesome idea to me so I'm working it into our lesson plans and were going to have an unit on dinosaurs. Don't get me wrong, they do have to learn things they don't like as well, but I remember as a kid sitting in school wishing I had some kind of a say in what was going on and now that I do I want my student to enjoy it. I'm truly hoping that by the time my oldest graduate I can be a pro homeschooler, but for now you guys get to learn with us!