I attended my very first Homeschool Expo today, Southeast Homeschool Expo, and all I have to say is WOW! So many homeschool families, so many vendors, so many different curriculum's to look at! AHHH!!! I got there about 9:45 and I stayed until they kicked out us at 7. I do have to say that from about 4 on I was toast and it was hard to have a conversation with me :)
I really liked My Father's World curriculum even though I try to stick to secular curriculum's but honestly, that's really hard to do. Even still, if I had not already purchased a good portion of what I was going to use this year, I may have ended up buying the whole package. I didn't though.
I also really liked Dr. Nancy Larson's Science Program but my budget was spent by the time I got to this. I'm still not 100% satisfied with what I choose for science so if some extra money comes our way in the next couple weeks, I will probably end up buying this. I love all the hands on experiments and Dr. Nancy does an amazing job with her teacher manuals giving you step by step instructions on what to do and say. It is on my list for 2nd grade for sure!
My final curriculum for 1st Grade is as follows:
Language Arts - Go Phonics
Math - Right Start Level B
History - Story of the World the Ancient Times
Geography - Galloping the Globe
Science - We are attending a co-op this year where DS1 will be studying the solar system
Science - We are also going to study a different animal each week from the country we are studying in Geography. I still am tweaking this.
Science - We will be doing a 10 week study of My Human Body and learning about the 5 senses. Lots of fun experiments are planned for this.
Science - We will be doing a 10 week study on plants. Still tweaking.
Art - Also doing in co-op.
Music - Also doing in co-op.
Music - Weekly piano lessons.
Besides the curriculum to look at and buy, I also attended a couple of the workshops they had. Some were good, some I had to leave before falling asleep. All in all it was a very good day. Long but good!
Bring on the school year!
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Glad to see you blogging again, Stacy.
ReplyDeleteI read lots of blogs about lots of subjects, and one thing is certain: Most people's blogs are an "on-again, off-again" enterprise. So, don't feel bad.
One thing to keep in mind when teaching science; the "how" is infinitely more important than the "what".
"How" science reaches certain conclusions is what needs to be taught - the steps leading from curiosity to empirical reasoning. How the scientific method formulates hypotheses and tests conclusions.
Less important is "what" science concludes about things, since those conclusions are constantly being tweaked by new empirical evidence and further testing.
Teach children how to question, research, and test for logical fallacies. Teach them that it's okay if the answer to a question creates more questions.
It's never too early to teach children the art of detecting Logical Fallacies. Don't steer children away from their natural instinct to ask "why", "why", "why". Here's a short article illustrating what I'm talking about: THE BALONEY DETECTION KIT
http://www.kent-hovind.com/baloney.htm