At the FPEA conference I walked through the vendor hall many, many times. I perused all of the merchandise multiple times. I decided that an all-in-one boxed curriculum was not the best choice for us, so then began the task of choosing curriculum for individual subjects. It was a bit overwhelming looking at all the options, and not every choice is even available at the conference!
In the end, here is what I decided to do:
Reading:
- Explode the Code workbooks - I purchased books 1-4 at the convention. I'm not sure how many books we will actually use this year, but they were discounted at the convention, so I grabbed them.
- Bob Books - I bought set 1 and 2 at the convention to use for reading practice. I already have the Abeka K5 readers from last year that we will be using this year. (Gigi is a little behind in her reading).
- Happy Phonics - Games that reinforce phonics lessons.
- I did not purchase any formal curriculum this year for handwriting. Instead I bought a composition notebook where I will have Gigi do some copywork from various sources.
- RightStart Mathematics Level B - This was my biggest purchase so far this year. I bought the complete kit while at the convention.
- Again, no formal curriculum. The plan is to create lapbooks on various topics. I have quite a few topics in mind that I would like to cover, but of course that is all subject to change based on Gigi's interests.
- If the subject matter allows, I plan to use the Let's read and Find Out book series to research information for the lapbooks. I really like these books, plus they often suggest experiments that correlate with the subject.
- I plan to have Gigi create lapbooks for this subject as well. We will make one lapbook for each state we learn about.
- In addition, I want to start letterboxing with her when the weather cools down a bit.
- I will be using the Character portion from Hubbard's Cupboard as a guide.
- I will have Gigi do some notebooking pages based on the character traits we learn about
- We will also be referencing the God and Me! Devotions for Girls book that we already own.
- I will teach some basic piano to Gigi myself. I took some lessons as a child and still have a book from that time that I can reference.
- For art, I will allow some free creativity time, providing a different material frequently