So we took a stab at Tapestry of Grace and I love it. I love the information, the heart, the resources they suggest for me to gather. I look forward to using it with all of our kids when we've got upper grammar and lower grammar students together.
But for now, while our oldest two are in 2nd and 1st grade, I'm adjusting a bit again! So far for ToG I had skipped about 85-90% of the info they present and I just don't need to have that much stuff before me yet! Mostly I'm just finding ways to simply what I've already been doing for my sake.... I think you will tell from our Unit 1 Celebration post (coming soon) that the kids have loved their first trimester (we did ToG Year one + the first three weeks of Unit 2 and called it our first trimester.)
For Bible: The BEST help here: the Fighter Verse app on ipad. We may work on Luke 2 for the Christmas season and we can enter it there and the kids can do typing games to remember the verses....
History/Geography, for our "Maternity Trimester" we will be going through Simply Charlotte Masons' Stories of America and reading some great read alouds and making a timeline of American history as well as studying some geography of North America. I imagine that in the last trimester we will go back to the ancient world, using Story of the World... and all the supplemental reads I already bought from the Tapestry recommended list. We try to tie lots of Reading Aloud usually to our history topic.... but occasionally our read aloud is pure fiction. Regardless, I aim for at least 2 hours a day of reading aloud/ reading together.
For Language Arts, again: keep it simple. Copywork from Emma Serl's Primary Language Lessons and from Guesthollow.com and walkingbytheway.com and R L Stevenson's poems and the Bible, of course! Here's the golden (free and fantastic!) find.... Scott Foresman's Language Arts workbooks for our grammar slot. (just replace the number in the link at the top with your grade K- 6). I love how these workbooks very clearly aim to help kids write well. Yes, please! We will also do one day a week of writing a letter, and one day of a journal prompt.
For Math: Math Mammoth.... so good for us, downloadable and excellent and inexpensive. May supplement with Khan Academy if I find he's got lower level stuff?
For Science: We've been having a good time doing our own overview of our world.... I wrote up a list of topics (Our Creator God, Creation, Land and Water, then... our Bodies- overview of organs and systems... next we're onto the classifications of living animals and then solar system). The internet worksheets and a few readers we've been graciously given are abundant enough.... but I also just purchased 106 Days of Creation Studies from Simply Charlotte Mason as another help.
~Honor~ All of us need a time for this! Time to focus and discuss Honor, Character, Manners, Habits... How loving Christ transforms our lives.... Having time for this with my kids is one of the greatest reasons I want to homeschool.
Extra! I'm scheduling it in this time.... Friday mornings before lunch might be knitting, potholder weaving, baking, hopefully wood whittling, or even just ipad app time.... we have some great apps but we often go a week or so without playing at all! Once a week is completely appropriate... especially considering how excellent, helpful these are!
Our kids will hopefully get Chinese story time with some neighbors at least once or twice a week while their teacher is gone. And they attend a local art class Thurs pm which is a major highlight of their weeks. Tuesday afternoons is also "sports class" with several friends.... and Daddy is a helper. Super Stud Dad! They also have a fantastic teacher for piano who comes to our home once a week (and practice daily too). May all of their learning and all of our lives together be sweet and full for your purposes and your glory, God!
