Our School Year 2006
We follow the Australian school year starting in January and ending in December of each year. Even while we travelled overseas we still stuck to this so that it would be easier to settle back when we came “home”. Here is a bit more detail of what we did in 2006:
Bible and Devotions
We all start the day with our own private devotions. Daniel and Elizabeth use The One Year Book of Devotions for Boys/Girls. I ask them to fill in this Quiet Time Sheet I made especially. They write down the Bible verse, then copy the Key. They can add their own thoughts too. Matthew uses his Bible story book and reads the passage, then copies down the thought for the day.
We also read the Bible together, pray, read Christian books, do worksheets, projects, read devotions, etc. We don’t stick to any particular format. (And we don’t do all this in one day! LOL!)
Maths
We have mostly used an Australian series called Signpost Maths. It is a great hands on Maths book. Again, in the older years and after buying the Robinson curriculum, I decided I’d better join the hoardes in using Saxon 
Oh how the children hated it! I watched my eldest son who was very good at Maths go from loving it, to hating it. I went back to using Signpost Maths and everything was fine again! I still believe that Saxon is one of the best Maths curriculums available. But it is very boring. Maybe one day we will use it for the higher grades, but for now….. they have been shelved!
I love to make Maths classical as well. At first I was at a loss to do this. But the Signpost books we were using were very hands on. I bought a set of Base 10 blocks. This helped the children to see Maths in action. Other manipulatives like tangrams, counters, and certain games help as well. We make Maths notebook pages. For example, the other day my daughter learned about congruent shapes. I told her she could do a notebook page on it, and this is what she came up with. (Photo to come when our stuf arrives!)
Language Arts
I started our journey in Language Arts with a workbook for spelling, grammar and comprehension. This worked for a while, but then we started running into problems of it being so boring and there was less retention. I found that it was just repetitive “busy work”. (By busy work I mean, meant to keep children in classrooms busy while the teacher deals with problems! While we like using worksheets, we don’t use ones that are just “busy work”.) At this time I found the children were always wanting to write stories, but that just didn’t fit into my curriculum!!! As usual it took me a while to realize what was going on and let go of the formal curriculum.
Around the same time I found that if I let Daniel loose on the computer, he would write whole books. If I asked him to write a story on paper, it would take him hours and it was like pulling teeth. I battled with the fact that he needed to be able to write, but computers were the way of the future. After all, other than my daily journal and shopping lists, all my writing is done on the computer.
This was where copywork came in. I think I have found the balance Every day the children do copywork and then they can let their creative juices flow on the computer. The only stipulation here was that they use the typing tutor to learn to type properly. I didn’t want any of the two finger typing nonsense! So they are slowly learning to touch type and often go to the computer in their free time to work on stories they started during “school time”.
I try to find as many books as possible for the children to read that are not twaddle
I use the Robinson curriculum to print books for the children. We use the Sonlight books as read alouds or as books that the children read on their own. With my eldest reading a book a day it is very hard to keep up! Whenever I go to a second hand shop I look at the books and I have found some gems there. Same with garage sales and library sales. If my children were doing nothing else but reading, they would still be getting a very good education.
Science
Up until now, science has basically been reading good books – for example, Usborne books and Magic Schoolbus (careful of the evolution in some!). We have also used workbooks on certain themes, like the Human Body, Space, Animals, Insects, etc. We have made lapbooks and murals, and done experiments. So it has been hands on and a lot of reading.
I have bought Apologia Science for my eldest for next year. I will let you know how it goes!
Here are some of the murals and lapbooks we have made for science:
Space mural
Animal lapbook - coming soon!
Human body lapbook - coming soon!
History
We use Susan Wise Bauer’s “Story of the World”. I cannot recommend this highly enough! It is so easy and fun to use. We read the chapters and do some of the mapwork, coloring pages or activities. Susan provides narration examples which I sometimes use as copywork for the children.
The children love this curriculum as well. Because it really does read like a story, they are always asking when we are going to go on to the next chapter! We are currently on book 2 – The Middle Ages.
Before we started with Story of the World we also did a unit study on the Middle Ages and made this mural:
Geography
Geography is learned in everyday life. We travel a lot. We live in another country, not our home country. To get here, we travel through many different countries and visit many airports! We have family all over the world and are sometimes blessed to be able to visit them.
We have a large world map on the wall, a globe and world maps on our dining table underneath a sheet of plastic. Whenever we read a book, or meet a new person from a different country, we look up the place on a map. First we find
I have a few daily workbooks that the children also go through to learn a bit more about the “mechanics” of geography, e.g. longitude and latitude, different hemispheres, etc. This series only takes the child a few minutes each day, and yet they enjoy doing it and learn from it.
We are also learning Geography songs during our music sessions. The kids just love them!
Music
We use an Australian curriculum for Music, written by a Homeschooling mum who is a talented musician herself. It is called The Elements of Music. We are working through this very sloooooowly!! I am also introducing classical music after having bought the Classical Music Start-up Kit from Sonlight. The children LOVE music! Two other homeschooled children joined us in our music lessons this year. We sing songs together, have fun and do some worksheets from Elements of Music. We also use this time to learn the Geography songs…
The children are all learning how to play the piano. I can play a little myself and can still teach them at this early stage. Later on we may need to send them to lessons. However, they are very enthusiastic about teaching themselves and going at their own pace. I am pleased with how they are coming along with this. We are using the Bastien piano series.
Art and Craft
We do a lot of art and craft in the normal course of the day with our notebooks, lapbooks and murals. The children love to draw and color. For many years I had a “useful box” that held all sorts of bits and pieces like toilet rolls, cereal boxes, ribbons, bottle tops. I would take this box out in the afternoon and it would keep the children occupied for hours. I was always amazed at the creations they came up with!
This year while I took Music, a close friend took the children for Art and Craft. In this way we both had an afternoon of peace and quiet and the children enjoyed having “lessons” together.
A Language Other Than English
My family is Dutch. My parents immigrated to
We are also tackling Arabic! Since we live in the
Read Alouds
These are the books we have completed so far this year:
Red Sails to
Ginger Pie
We are currently reading these:
The Aesop for Children
A Child’s
The Railway Children
Detectives in Togas
If there is time we will read these:
Gladys Aylward
Little Pear
The Cricket in
The Door in the Wall
White Stallion of Lipizza
The Apprentice
The Twenty-One Balloons
The Little Riders
And the Word came with Power