Oh wait, those are the questions for adverbs…but they apply to how to know what to teach to your kids.
In the years before we began to home school, I talked with parents who had high school students in my writing classes, specifically those parents whose students impressed me with their skills, knowledge, and attitude toward God, others, and academics. Overwhelmingly, most of those parents had used either Sonlight or Tapestry of Grace for their primary curriculum. Based on their recommendations, we chose Sonlight for history and literature. The other subjects--math, science, and language arts--I chose based on recommendations from The Well Trained Mind and my personal experience with Saxon and Apologia. I allowed, to some extent, the curricula to determine what I would teach and when. I’ve also tried to take into consideration each child’s personality, interests, and capabilities when directing their studies.
My son adores battles, war, weaponry, and all the bloody aspects of history. We’ve made it a priority, in addition to our regular chronological history studies, to provide him with resources that provide a Biblical view of history, including a providential view of wars and battles from Vision Forum. He knows more about these various battles than I do after completing a history minor in college. My daughter, however, would be perfectly happy not to study history at all, unless I could teach world history from an American Girls' perspective. Because we desire her to see God’s hand in history, we study history, but I look for materials that focus as much on the everyday lives of people rather than the big events. I choose to study history chronologically because that allows me to point to cause and effect, or God’s hand and people’s responses. I feel that also makes history as concrete as possible for my young ones.
Our Biblical studies have focused primarily on Scripture memorization and catechism instruction, since our church does an excellent job teaching the stories of the Bible. Our favorite resources have included all the books by Susan Hunt, The Big Picture Story Bible, and the CDs from Sing the Word. We’ve also used Grapevine Bible studies when we need a break from catechism. Another aspect of this is building into our children a daily habit of Bible reading and prayer. We have begun to require that those who can read, do their Bible reading before picking up another book. Finally, my oldest uses the children’s Bible study books from Kay Arthur to learn inductive Bible study methods. Sometimes the questions challenge even me! For most of these, we move through these at the pace suggested. Bible is a year round subject for us, so I’m never pressured to finish something by the end of our school year.
For math, we continue to use Saxon and follow their scope and sequence, simply because their teaching method fits my personality. But we have yet to finish a level in one year. As my son moves on in math, we will probably consider one of the programs that provides more instruction via video or software, freeing me up to teach the little ones and continuing to build time management and responsibility in him. My daughters don’t take to math as quickly, so we are taking more time and using a variety of resources to reinforce concepts that they struggle with.
For language arts, one they have learned to read, I teach two years of introductory grammar in 1st and 2nd grade in addition to slowly introducing composition through IEW’s Teaching Writing with Structure and Style. By third grade we take a year off formal grammar instruction and focus on really strengthening their composition skills. We pick up grammar again in 4th grade and will continue that through middle school. Spelling has been a variety of programs as I see areas that need work. So far both of my students have been good spellers, so I haven’t spent a lot of time on this.
For science, we are using Apologia’s Young Explorer series, which gives us a deep immersion into zoology, botany, and astronomy, all with a strong focus on God’s creative hand. Our goals for science are that they will see God’s fingerprints all over creation and see that Christians can study science. It is my desire to lay a foundation that science is interesting and fun so that they will cheerfully complete whatever science requirements we may have in our state at a high school level.
In recent years we’ve begun to work as much on skills as academics, preparing my children to be life-long learners, with the skills of reading, computation, research, writing, and speaking, applied in all subject areas. The greatest gift I was given was listening to Andrew Pudewa’s “What are we really doing here?” When I follow these ideas, I free myself up from finishing a text book, cramming more chapters of history or science than my kids can handle, or forcing them to read a novel just because it is on the schedule.
I’m sorry for such a long post, but for me, homeschooling doesn’t boil down easily to a scope and sequence. I hope some of this is an encouragement to others.
