Our First Full Year of Morning Time: What We Included

Here is the second part of my year in review.  This was the first year I was teaching all three of my kids.  Elijah was in 6th grade, Noah was in 3rd grade, and Zach was in Kindergarten.  This year was quite a bit different than our other years, I'm not sure if it's because I was teaching all three of them or if it was because we were doing a whole lot of new stuff.  I feel like as we are wrapping up this year I need to look back and see just how far all of my kids have come.  There were many days this year that we struggled to just get the minimum work done.  I know at this point all of us are ready for a great relaxing summer break!

I'll start my curriculum review by going over what we did together, next time I will go over their individual curriculum choices.


Morning Time:

This was our second year doing a morning time, but this was the first year we that we went full force!  Our morning time included our Bible time, hymn memorization, Bible passages, famous speeches, and documents.   For our hymns we learned How Great Thou Art, In Christ Alone, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, and Amazing Grace.  Next year I think we will learn quite a bit more than just four, I started out slow because I wasn't sure how my boys would react to them, but they really loved it!  We also learned some Bible passages, Galations 5:22-23 (The Fruit of the Spirit), Ephesians 6:11-18 (The Armor of God) and Matthew 5:3-12 (The Beatitudes).  We learned The Nicene Creed, The Gettysburg Address and we are working on the Declaration of Independence.  Also in our morning time we included history, read aloud, and our Classical Conversations memory work.  

History:

This year we continued using The Mystery of History and did Volume 2 The Early Church and the Middle Ages.  I absolutely love this history curriculum!  It is so thorough and exciting. I love how it ties in Biblical history to word history.  We didn't do any of the activities this year, we would read the lesson, Elijah would do a note booking page about that lesson while the other two had coloring pages they would use.  I also made timeline pages for each child to color and use instead of doing a big timeline on our wall.  I think they each enjoyed coloring their own timeline figures.  We also did most of the mapping activities.

Bible:

Our Bible curriculum consisted of a few different items this year.  We used the following books throughout the year The Ology, Church History A-Z, The Biggest Story and finally we worked through a Grapevine Study on Biblical Feasts and Holy Days.  I really enjoyed having different things to go through.  It kept it fresh and didn't get stale through the year.  Last year we did the Apologia Who Is God and really loved it, but it did get a little repetitive as the year went on.  So I think next year I will do something similar to what we did this year.

Read Aloud:

This year I had a great hope for our read aloud time, I had so many good books planned, but something amazing happened this year!  We went off of our plan because we found some amazing books that we just fell in love with!  We finished reading The Green Ember series, and we are working through The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series.  We did get through most of the ones I had planned and a few that we started we just didn't finish because we lost interest.  Some of the ones we didn't get through we will read either through the summer or save them for next year.  Here is the list of books that we did read this year from my list:

• D.L Moody
• Ronald Reagan
• Castle Diary
• Adam of the Road
• Rabbit Hill
• Twenty and Ten
• My Side of the Mountain
• The Door in the Wall
• The Bears on Hemlock Mountain

The ones that we started but didn't finish are The Samurai's Tale and The Trumpeter of Krakow.  I'm not sure what we didn't like about them but we just couldn't get excited about either one.  We got about eight chapters into each one before we stopped so I feel like we gave it a good try.  Oh well, not every book will be a hit and that ok!

Books that we didn't get to but will save for next year are John Wycliffe and The Wheel on the School.  I am looking forward to reading both of those.

Next time I will get into each child's curriculum and what we liked and didn't like about what we chose.  Here is a hint- we changed a lot through out the year!


**There are internet links in this post but I want to be clear that these are not affiliate links.  I just like to include links so it's really easy to find the items I mention.**

Our All Together Curriculum Choices

Its curriculum choice time!  This year we will be doing a few subjects all together.  We will also be branching out from our previous curriculum that we have used for the past few years.  I am excited about these new choices and have high hopes that it will be a great fit for our family.

Along with the changes this year we will also be doing a co-op that my kids are really excited about.  Our co-op classes will be Science, Art, Music, Spanish, and a Lego Club.  Zach will also get to participate in this co-op, and he will be doing Science, Art, and a general preschool readiness class.

For History this year we will be using The Mystery of History.  I had considered this for last year but decided to stick with My Fathers World.  But since we are doing a co-op this year that includes Science I really wanted to branch out.   I love the way The Mystery of History teaches history in a chronological order.  When I was a kid I did not make the connection that the history that I was learning in school was happening at the same time that the Bible was being written!  How amazing that I get to teach this to my kids!  My hope is that they can make that connection a lot sooner than I did!  I am also hoping that I will learn a bit this year as well. I purchased the textbook, the audio CD's, timeline figures, and the reproducible download for use along with Volume 1.

Science this year will be Apologia's Astronomy.  For co-op we were able to pick which one we wanted to do, and they will all three be working through this one.  Since we had studied animals the past few years we chose to do space this year.  We have never used Apologia before but it has been on my radar for a few years and I am so excited to actually get to use it this year.






We also chose to do Apologia's Worldview curriculum for our Bible studies this year.  We will be using Who is God?  I bought the textbook, note booking journal, the Jr. Journal and the coloring book to use this year.  The coloring book will be for Zach, not sure how he will like it but I thought that he would need something to work in along with the older boys.




I will also be sharing our 5th Grade, 2nd Grade and Pre-K 4 homeschooling choices, so stay tuned to see what we will be using for those.

UPDATE:

Sorry I forgot to add what our read aloud books would be!  Whoops!!

We will be doing a reading list to go along with our Mystery of History Volume 1 studies.  Those will include:

• The Golden Goblet
• The Cat of Bubastes
• Hittite Warrior
• The Children's Homer
• God King
• Aesop's Fables
• Victory on the Walls
• The Young Carthaginian
• The Bronze Bow

Most of these we own, some will be checked out from the library, and the others I have on my Kindle.

We also really enjoyed reading the Christian Hero's Then and Now books last year, so I picked some that I thought we would enjoy reading this year.  These are the ones that we will be reading this year:

• Jim Elliot
• C.S. Lewis
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Eric Liddell
• Francis Asbury
• Brother Andrew
• Hudson Taylor

I might be a bit ambitious that we can finish all of these, but with some planning I have the schedule all made out and hopefully we will accomplish it!

**This post does contain my Amazon affiliate link.**

A Peek into Our Curriculum for Next Year

I have been very busy the last few months planning what we will be using next year.  We are going to be taking a step away from what we have been using, which is My Fathers World.  For no other reason than we will be joining a Co Op that contains a lot of the some things that are in My Fathers World.  So rather than spend a bunch of money on that curriculum to just use one component of it, we decided to try something different!  I am so excited to see how this will work!

Here is a rundown of what we will be using for each subject and each child.

All Together Subjects:
History:
The Mystery of History Vol. 1

Science:
Apologia Astronomy (This is a Co-Op subject)
Elijah will use the Notebooking Journal
Noah will use the Jr. Notebooking Journal

Bible:
Apologia Who Is God?
Elijah will use the Notebooking Journal
Noah will use the Jr. Notebooking Journal
Zach will use the Coloring Book

Elijah:
English- Learning Language Arts Through Literature the Purple Book
               Contains: Reading,  Book Studies, Spelling, Grammar, and Writing, I am trying to simplify         this for him next year by using an all in one language arts curriculum.
Math- Teaching Textbooks 5 We are switching from Math U See to get him more independent in his work. 
Spanish- (Will be done at Co-Op not too sure what book he will be using yet)
Typing- Typing Instructor, unless I find something different.
Computer Programming using online sites
Possibly he will be learning to play an instrument,  we haven't decided quite yet though, this would be done at Co-Op as well.

Noah:
All About Reading Level 2
All About Spelling Level 1
Handwriting-  A Reason For Handwriting Book B
Math- Math U See Beta
Spanish- (Will be done at Co-Op not too sure what book will be used yet)
Typing- Typing Instructor
Computer Programming using online sites
Music Class- (Will be done at Co-Op, using the recorder)

Zach:
Literature Based Units
Alphabet Based Units
Handwriting Without Tears- My First School Book

At Co-Op they will have the opportunity to be in a Lego Club.  I am also looking into some sort of physical education program or something that I could use to get them moving more.  Stay tuned for more information about what our school year will look like next year!  I am working on improving our schedule and streamlining our day a bit.