Curriculum Ordered, Owned, and ready to be Used!

We are officially starting school on January 5th. But when the boys come home for Christmas break we are going to go ahead and do a lapbook unit from "Hands of a Child" called "Symbols of Christmas". Just to get into the spirit of both homeschool and Christmas.

Here is the Rest of our curriculum for the first 12 weeks.

Bible- "Who is Jesus?" from Hands of a child, "Greenleaf Guide to Old Testament History", and "Genesis through Deuteronomy and Ancient Egypt" along with our Bible

Spelling- Spelling Wisdom from Simply Charlotte Mason

Math- Math Lessons for Elementary Grades by Dorothy Harrer is our spine.
Gnome Math
Complete Book of Math 1-2 (we used this with my older children and they loved it)
Shoebox learning centers
Marvelous Math: A book of poems
Sir Cumference books
There are such great choices of Math Literature out there so I am sure
we will be adding to this!

Science- I ended up finding a free science outline online and decided it was almost
perfect for what we needed. We will be studying animals using
Kingfisher Animal encyclopedia, What your first grader needs to know,
The everything book of nature, The everything kid's science experiment book,
The everything kids book of bugs, Stanley's great big book of everything,
Pets in a jar and nature study using The handbook of nature study.
(we had most of this already). We will be raising several species of creatures as well.

Geography- A child's Geography

Habit- Dude Thats Rude and Manners Made Easy, Laying the Rails

Language Arts- We won't be using anything formal this year for Phoenix just have him read aloud to me practicing narration and expressiveness along with his spelling and copywork.

For Gryphen we will be using Sonlights "I can read it" (already had this) and will teach
Handwriting with sheets I make online using the same copywork Phoenix does.

History, Literature and Poetry- Ambleside year 1. We are skipping American History and Paddle to the Sea and want to bring in more UK history in it's place but am still looking for the perfect match.


I feel a certain relief now that everything has been ordered. Once it is all here I plan to set up a notebook for the first 12 weeks with weekly lesson plans and a checklist of what I would like to accomplish that week. Also I will start adding in field trips and science experiments etc so I can make sure we are prepared for these and they don't sneak up on me. I have basically six weeks to get set up before the kids are home for Christmas break and I hope to be able to set up everything so they can start playing with the centers and games during break and maybe do a small Christmas unit to get us all motivated...