We have been homeschooling officially for 3 years about, and I feel like we are finally getting into a homeschool groove, who knew that it would take this long to feel confident! We have decided to go with Ambleside Online for a few reasons but mostly because its free, my kids love reading and its great literature.

We almost started this last August, but I got cold feet; with just reading books. How would that be enough? How would they actually learn from just reading living books? Why don’t we need 10,000 parts to make a curriculum whole. I was feeling like I was going to make the kids miss something because we weren’t going to buy all the new fancy curriculums that I see plastered all over the internet. We had actually bought almost all the books for year 5 and 6 and then I sold them on Facebook. Now I am kicking myself in the behind.

On one hand it is good that I actually second guessed myself, because I have learned to just trust myself and go with it. It has taken me much longer to de-school then it has taken my boys.

Now that we decided we are going to go this route, I was looking over all the years 0-7 to see what books have been missed, and to see which kid is suppose to be reading what. As I was looking I discovered that boys would be missing a lot good books that they will enjoy and learn from. So, to go with our crazy plans of changing mid year and actually focus on what we want from the rest of the year I have picked a few books from years 1 to 6 that they will read.

We have decided to finish this year with the books that we have in the house, and finish all the interesting books that I want them to cover and any that they choose next school year. Then they will do 7/8 year lite and then high school in the three plan or little quicker, depending if they decide to enroll in junior college  while still in high school.

To finish out 2017-2018 school year this is what we plan to use.

For A – year 0 ( she will be the only one on schedule) she will be reading and using:

Beatrix Potter Series

The Little House by Virginia Burton

The Story of Ping by Marjorie Flack

The Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper

Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey

Make Way for the Ducklings by Robert McCloskey

One Morning in Maine by Robert McCloskey

Ferdinand by Munro Leaf

Ox- Cart Man by Barbara Cooney

Stone Soup by Marcia Brown

Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney

The Story of Little Babaji by Helen Bannerman

Mother Goose Collection

Lots of Poetry

A is also using All About Reading Level 1,Reading Literature Primer and McGuffey Eclectic Primer,  a whole bunch of science readers and Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans and in math she is using Mathematical Reasoning A

For E and M  (suppose to be years 6/5, but we decided to do a mash up to finish out the year): some selections are just based on what we had in the house, we will buy recommend book for next year

Christian Liberty Reader Nature Reader #5

Paddle to the Sea H.C. Holling

Trail in the Tree by H.C. Holling

Child’s First Book of American History by Earl Schenck Miers

The Burgess Animal Book for Children by Thornton W. Burgess

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity  by Robert Cwiklik

Pocahontas by Ingri & Edgar D’Aulair

Abraham Lincoln by Ingri & Edgar D’Aulair

George Washington’s World by Genevieve Foster

Augustus Caesar’s World by Genevieve Foster

Greek Myths by Olivia Coolidge

Tales of Greek Heroes by Roger Lancelyn Green

Story of Inventions by Anna Claybourne 7 Adam Larkum

Math: Teaching Textbook Year 5 and 6

Each child is able to pick any self interest book at the library weekly and each child has projects they work on by themselves.

We also follow a Bravewriter literature style, which does cross over into other areas of study.

This is what is planned to finish out this year, we are excited and ready for Monday morning to start.