It’s the most wonderful time of the year – back to school season! When I was young, back to school time was the best part of the year for me. (I am an unabashed nerd, by the way.) We’re trying to create a similar atmosphere in our home so that our kids grow to love school and learning in general.
I found this year to be one of the easiest planning years so far, since we’re using more pre-planned curriculum. Typically, we’ve been the grab-and-go type of homeschoolers, meaning that I would grab several resources and just use what I like to put together our lessons.
In 2013-14, we’ll have a 3rd grader, a kindergartner, and a preschooler, though, so time is at a premium this time around. And packaged curriculum has been a wonderful planning timesaver.
So, without further ado, our curriculum for 2013-14 is as follows: *drumroll*
Third Grade Homeschool Curriculum
We’re using West Brooke Curriculum as the core foundation of our school year with Tigger. It’s a very affordable program (around $100 for the lesson plans and books) that is based on the Core Knowledge series “What Your ____ Grader Needs to Know” and the publications from JW.org. As Christians, it’s our goal to keep the Bible before our children everyday and West Brooke Curriculum does that by including a daily lesson from the Bible.
For example, Week 1 features a lesson that includes use of the Bible Character card for Joseph and Potiphar, the Picture Activity “Joseph is Sold Into Slavery”, and Teach Your Children: “Are You Ever Jealous? Joseph’s Brothers Were”.
Here are the West Brooke Curriculum books for third grade, including the Usborne Encyclopedia of Science
With West Brooke, you can choose your own math program. I decided to go with A+ TutorSoft Math and use the 3rd grade computer program along with the downloadable curriculum and workbook I got from Currclick.
The workbooks make it easy to just print what you need as you go, but I’m the kind of person that will put that off until the last minute if I don’t do it all at once. So I printed the entire workbook and put it in a binder.
P.E. is a bit of concern for us this year as well. I’ve been resistant to structured physical education for a long time, because I felt that daily playing would be enough. But our kids, especially Tigger, need a lot of work on their balance, coordination, and stamina. We got a chance to try the program Family Time Fitness a while back and we absolutely loved it!
So that’s going to be our daily P.E. Our plan is to do it four days a week before breakfast and then go on with schoolwork. We’ll be posting about our progress and hopefully we’ll all get into better shape together!
Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum
I’m not the kind of person to worry too much about structured work in kindergarten beyond basic math, reading, and writing. We’ll be reading lots of history as a family and performing basic science experiments, but as far as daily work with Pooh goes, it’ll be the three Rs. We picked up a couple of kindergarten workbooks, including Practice, Assess, Diagnose: 180 Days of Reading for Kindergarten
Preschool Homeschool Curriculum
We’re even less structured with preschool, but we will try to focus on reading skills. Roo has gone over phonics and he has a basic understanding of them, but he’s not confident enough to read just yet. As a result, we’ll be trying out the program Reading the Alphabet with him to boost his confidence in his decoding skills. (Look for our review of the program in two weeks!)
*A quick note: This curriculum post does NOT include our reading list for all three grades. I’ll be sharing that in a couple of weeks.*
Have you finished planning your school year? Have you made any adjustments in our approach this year? Let us know in the comments! Keep on learning!
This post is part of the iHomeschool Network “Not Back to School” Blog Hop! Visit our fellow bloggers and link up your own posts by clicking the image below!
I get so excited reading over everyone’s curriculum choices. This looks good and glad you found a curriculum that makes your day to day lesson planning easier.
We love the Draw Write Now series. It looks like great plans ahead.
Blessings, Dawn
Im so thankful that I had a chance to read this. I been wanting to do a JW curriculum. I know of 2 that are expensive. One I really like is the Osbeck curriculum. West Brooke is similar. My kids are already on the textbook curriculum but we will be done by Dec or Jan. Then Im definitely switching to West Brooke. Im sharing this with several sisters that I know will appreciate this. Again thank you.
You’re welcome! I was thankful to find it too! It’s so hard to find inexpensive curriculum at all, but to find one that includes the publications is even better! 🙂
I’ve considered Family Time Fitness. Let me know how you like it! I have a 3rd grader too. 😉
You are using several resources I have not heard of before. It’s so fun to learn about new possiblities 🙂 Have a wonderful start to your a new school year!
I’ve never heard of West Brooke. I’m off to investigate this new find. Thanks so much for sharing!
I’m like Vee and while I’m very familiar with the “What Your _____ Needs to Know” series, I’ve never heard of their curriculum. Interesting!
Also, I have only 1 child school-age (kinder), so I AM still piecing together material, but I know in the next few years that just can’t happen with 2 others coming up behind. Thanks for sharing! Visiting from the blog hop!
Hi! The West Brooke Curriculum program is not affiliated with the “What Your ____ Needs to Know” company Core Knowledge. But the program uses those books as its foundation. Core Knowledge does offer teachers’ guides for each grade, though, that go into further detail than the “What Your ____ Needs to Know” books. Here’s a link to those: http://books.coreknowledge.org/home.php?cat=303.
Thanks for stopping by! 🙂
How did you like the choices you made now that you’ve used them? What would you do differently? I think I’ll be taking a look at West Brooke. I had never heard of it.
I loved West Brooke. It’s primarily designed for use with the publications of Jehovah’s Witnesses, which are free on jw.org. It was super affordable and easy to adapt. 🙂
I saw that when I went to the site. We aren’t JW, but I’ve studied a few of the books with a friend and my Uncle is. I can see getting side tracked by unrelated articles when reading the publications. 🙂
Hi, I I am just reading up on various curriculums centered around JW literature. How do you like West Brooke curriculum? Would you do anything different? How did your children enjoy it and was it effective in their learning education?
Thanks,
Jessica
Hi Selena,
I know this post is years old now, so wondering how it’s all gone for you? Have you continued with westbrooke?
Obviously she uses the pubs for Bible, but are they woven into the other subjects, specifically history and science?
And are the articles fully integrated into the curriculum or just ‘add ons’.
Sorry for all the questions, I’m just trying to work out if this would work for us. We use SOTW as a history spine then read related articles by using the WOL site and pub index, I’m wondering if Sister Jennifer does more than this…I would love it if she does.
Any feedback back would appreciated
Beks
Hi! Great to hear from you! I only used Westbrooke for that year. Our oldest is working with a more rigorous program now. But the articles are referenced in the curriculum and there are accompanying activities included to use with them. And, yes, the articles are also used for history and science, but if you want a full science or history program, Westbrooke doesn’t contain that level of information. It’s more of an introduction to historical and scientific concepts and events, with a heavier focus on ELA.
Hope this helps!