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As this school year comes closer and closer to an end, I find myself planning for next year. As a child I loved playing school and being the teacher was the best part. Now that I am the teacher my favorite part is the planning. Yes, I enjoy actually teaching my children, but the fun part is the planning.

For the last few weeks (okay, if we’re being honest, it’s more like months) I’ve been surfing the net in hopes of finding that PERFECT curriculum for my son. I’m not buying a full curriculum package this year, instead I am mixing and matching the different courses that seem like they would be a good fit. I’ve found the website Homeschool Reviews to be an awesome resource in helping to decide if a program would be a good fit for our family. They have so many reviews of nearly every program out there. Not only do I use that website to read the reviews of programs I am interested in, I also like to look at the list of programs out there. It’s nice to see a comprehensive list of homeschool curriculum all in one place.

I am still not sure about every subject, but I am definitely going to be buying The American Story 1 from Winterpromise for our American history program. I’m very excited to start American history next year. This year we’ve studied world history and it was interesting, but I think American history will be much more “real” to my son.

For science I plan to use Real Science 4 Kids, though I’m a bit worried about it. There are 3 different levels (Pre-Level 1, Level 1, and Level 2) and choosing which level to place my son in is proving to be difficult. Pre-Level 1 is for grades K-3 and Level 1 is for grades 4-6. That is quite a span for each level and choosing where to start Eeyore is scary. There are sample pages on their website, but that just confuses me more. Eeyore will be in third grade next year, but Pre-Level 1 looks too easy (and, to be honest, if kindergarteners can do it, then it SHOULD be too easy for a third grader), but Level 1 looks too difficult (again, if a sixth grader can do it, then I would think it would be difficult for a third grader). Obviously I am going to have to choose to either beef up the less intense program or dumb down the harder one. Deciding which to do is making me crazy.

I haven’t decided yet what programs to use for Language Arts or math yet. How about you? Do you start planning early? What kinds of programs are you looking at?

by Karly Campbell

[tags]kids, children, parents, parenting, home, homeschool, schedule, curriculum, curricula, books, learning, education, teaching, growing[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by It’s Greg, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved