Our Curriculum

This year we are using Sonlight Core 100, American History in Depth and we are really enjoying it so far.  I love that we are reading so much!  I love the books we are reading!  I love U.S. history and I am realizing how much I never knew about our countries history.  We did skip the first literature book they suggested called Peace Child.  My sister,who has let us borrow Core 100 (thanks Tina!), suggested I preview it because it is about missionaries that go into a cannibalistic tribe to teach them about Jesus.  I read a few chapters and although the message of what the missionaries were able to accomplish in the end is wonderful, I didn't feel we needed to read the very gruesome story.  I can't get the gory parts I read out of my head so I decided we would skip that one.

We are using Apologia's General Science and Student Journal.  Although we are really liking it, we will not be purchasing any more books from Apologia directly.  We belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we are Mormons.  Apologia has come out and said that Mormons are not Christian and have written some disrespectful things about us.  We have decided that we will not buy any more books from Apologia's Publishing Company unless we can buy them from an individual or a consignment store.  I really enjoy Dr. Wile's writing and hope to be able to continue reading and studying his work, as long as it doesn't profit Apologia.

We are using Saxon Algebra this year and I love how easily it is laid out.  I am not a math person and have been really worried about teaching Jake the subject.  Luckily the books are straight forward and my husband was a math major, so between the two we are covered.

We did Classical Conversations last year and LOVED it!  But when you enter middle school it gets really expensive and we wanted to be reading more.  We are going to keep a little of C.C. going by continuing some of the memorization they do in their Foundations program.  Their Cycle 3 is American History and we are going to memorize the history sentences and refresh our memories by re-memorizing the 164 point time line and also read up a little more on each of those points. (We did their Essential's grammar program also and although it was hard it was amazing!  Look into if you have any children in 4th-6th grades.)

For writing, we are in our second year of IEW-Institute For Excellence In Writing.  We did Ancient History last year and it tied in well with our studies.  This year we are doing  Rockers, Radars, and Robotics.  It is a little tougher which is what we need to step up to the next level.  It also goes along well with the elective Jake is taking at our co-op: Lego Robotic Engineering.  He goes from Lego to writing at co-op so it isn't so bad for my math and science kiddo.  He doesn't love writing but he gotten more comfortable and so much better at it using IEW.