Our Curriculum

Choosing a home school curriculum seems to be a puzzle with a myriad of choices. I knew teaching multi-level home school would not be an easy task to undertake and with the kids attending public school for years I knew a complete lack of structure in their learning would throw them for a loop. With such a huge task before me and making this switch mid school year, I did not feel ready for a "from scratch" curriculum.

I really wish I could remember the blog I was reading, so as to give this person credit but while reading a blog I was directed to Christian Light Publications website. One of the awesome features was that  you can buy curriculum in small increments at CLP. This allowed me to buy one 3 week lesson book for each child to test if this was the path for us. At first I bought a lesson book for Math, Language Arts and Science for each school aged child. At around $3.00 a piece this did not break the bank. We have now included the subjects: Bible, Social Studies and Reading.

                                                                     www.clp.org
Christian Light Publications fits our family for many reasons:

                 1. Everything about the work is God centered. Every subject including math has the Word in it. Just yesterday my third grader was working in his lesson book for reading. He was learning about figures of speech. The examples they used were "God as shepherd" "believers as sheep" "God as rock".

                 2.  The continuous review of previously learned material. In each lesson of math, language arts and Bible the student is building on past concepts. The language arts lessons each have a part titled "we remember" to review material learned in past lessons. The math is taught using the "spiral" technique where a concept is introduced and then the child deepens that concept each time. It even states where the concept was introduced in the previous year's lesson books. This building of concepts is easy for me to see because of my three older children are close in school years (3, 5, and 6). For example in geometry concepts I can see the building from knowing basics of polygons and what an angle is (3rd), to using a protractor and learning how to find the angles measurements in 6th.

              3.  The structure and testing of the lessons. Each lesson book (called a light unit) is broken up into 2 quizzes and one over all test. I store each of these in each child's notebook that I made for them. This allows for easy tracking of school grades. I can get a sense of how each child is doing in a subject. In science there are two "self checks" and then an overall test for each unit. The self checks are open book. I also allow my children to take the quizzes open book for Bible. I know not everyone is into tests for home school but this works for our family. I do try to make the quizzes and test less of a pressure situation and let the children know that they are really tools to help me know what concepts they know well and where we need to review.

             4.  The Price!  As many homeschoolers we live on one paycheck in this household. One of my husbands issues of homeschool was that he was worried about us giving the children a quality education for what we can afford. I knew from all you wonderful ladies in blog land that it is being done! He desired a structured curriculum (I think that is the military sergeant in him,) but I was worried about affording an already put together curriculum. The prices at Christian Light Publication meets both these needs. Adding up a year of curriculum for all 4 children we are spending around 800.00 for the year. This includes quality texts books as well for certain subjects. Not only is it affordable but that 800.00 can be broken up into much smaller amounts. All materials can be bought individually. Personally my smallest order has been for 30.00 and my largest has been 250.00. This allows us to spend what we can when our budget allows.

            I know that a pre-made, structured curriculum is not for all homeschool families but I have found that working this way is good for my family. I was worried that we would not get the creativity out of this material but I am finding lots of quality conversation abounding with my children. When we sit together at the table during Bible, heads will pop up asking questions which allows us to explore these questions together. I love snuggling up with my 3rd grader with his reader to read a moral story that teaches him a lesson and develops his reading skills at the same time. My 6th grader gets the independence she desires in her learning yet I am near by for help or guidance.  There are fun and easy experiments in science to break up the book work. My third grader is checking pulses and my 5th grader is charting and naming the clouds he sees this week.

           Even if you are not interested in the curriculum Christian Light Publications also sells quality Christian books for enjoyment.

*I have not been asked by CLP to give a review nor have I been given any compensation or free materials. This is just a homeschool mom sharing what she is doing in her home.



Linking to: Teach Me Tuesday at Growing Home blog