Our Curriculum

One of the pushes that helped me decide to homeschool was that I learned our state requires public schools to provide homeschooling parents with public school books free of charge. I knew that I could use the internet and library as resources (the cost of complete curriculums had me worried) but I felt I needed to at least see what other 6th graders were learning. So, last year, I requested the 6th grade textbooks when I sent my notice of intent to homeschool.

We didn't use the literature or history book at all. I knew, from the history books J.T. brought home from K-5 that the public school textbooks are full of errors and omissions. Last year, we did ancient Rome all year long. I did purchase one workbook from Ebay and the rest was filled in with library books, movies, and television shows. I noticed a gap in U.S. Geography. As of 5th grade, J.T. hadn't had any. My mom purchased a set of magazines from Highlights. There is one for each state. So, we are learning each state one by one and then will move on to mapping. We also used a state geography card game I found at a dollar store. And for literature, I thought it most encouraging to let J.T. pick out what he was most interested in. For spelling, I picked each week's words from the book J.T. was reading from.

For science, we started off the year with lots and lots of Bill Nye the Science Guy DVDs from the library. The Bill Nye series rocks! We then moved to the public school textbook and used it traditionally...chapter by chapter with the review at the end. We also did some at-home experiments, made use of J.T.'s holiday-gift microscope, and supplemented with interesting Discovery, National Geographic, etc. shows.

For english, we skipped around the PS textbook, cutting out a lot of the redundancy and using it for ideas for creative writing. I let J.T. do a whole lot of his work orally. He detests writing and, while I think it's important for him to learn to write properly, I don't feel a need to try to force a love of writing on him. We also did cursive writing practice. When I was in school, from 3rd grade until High School, we were required to write in cursive. While J.T. learned cursive in 3rd grade, they were never required to use it...so he needed to be reminded of the letters. We also utilized an online typing program.

We also used the PS textbook for math. I should say we tried to use it. The textbook is completely confusing....especially without a teacher's edition to go along with it. We actually mostly felt out what J.T. hadn't completely understood in previous years and practiced that.

There was also a Health book from the school. I picked out the most interesting and least childish chapters to go over now and then throughout the year. We covered a lot of "health" with science programs.

Art was just the every day stuff J.T. would do anyhow. Drawing, painting, using clay, building with legos, decorating gifts, etc. For music we learned and listened to different genres taking turns focusing on each one and taking random songs and deciding what genre we would stick it in.

Our state requirements for end of the year assessment (we choose a portfolio option) only call for proof of Literature, English, Science, History/Geography, and Math. Portfolio reviewers don't even want to see anything outside of those subjects...so those are done on a more casual basis and less detailed records are kept.

So, our first year of homeschooling was mostly learning how J.T. learned best and what types of materials to use. While I felt the need, getting started, to see the public school text book...I was completely over that by the end of the year ;-)

Up next...our curriculum for this year!