Homeschool giveaway!

Heart and home curriculum giveaway if you have a chance check it out!

life is pretty full

Sorry it has been sometime since I blogged. Life has been rather full.
With homeschooling, a friend really sick, support raising for our ministry and just everyday life. Life has been full.
Hope that this finds those of you who read my blog well.
I will write more again soon.
Blessings!

Next School Year Continued...

Well as I thought about my previous post I came to realize that I left off some subjects and one of them being the most important in our family...Bible


Bible: We are currently listening to the Jesus Story Book Bible in the morning
Our oldest is doing Explore the Bible Devotional from the Good Book
For family devotions we are doing Long Story Short  which has been my favorite family devotional so far. It goes through the old testament and shows how the OT points to Christ. 


Reading: We are currently using Funnix Reading and Reading 2 This program has worked really well for our middle child to learn to read and our oldest to work on reading out loud and comprehension. We did Teach Your Child To Read for our oldest and started it with our middle child but it was not the right program for her.


Piano: We are enjoying the Little Mozarts Piano book series.

Next School year!

So I think that I have figured out roughly what I want to do for school next year...
How you may ask did I figure it out...?
Check out my blog post prior to this one to get an idea.
I am getting excited about it all, this time of year I get reenergized by the used curriculum sales and homeschool conventions!
This weekend my hubby and I are heading to Harrisburg for CHAP.


This is Jeff's first time and I think my fourth so I have all the sitters lined up, yeah God...and get to share this time with him...I can't wait...


Anyhow so I wanted to figure out what to do prior to going. So the last several weeks I have been reading, researching, surfing the web and compiling lists of things I want to get.

So here it is:


History will be by Beautiful Feet
we will be doing their Early American History which has been recently updated to include more!


Math: we will continue on with Math-U-See which I just love and find so easy to use and understand!


Language Arts: We will again use Queen's Homeschool  which I really like how it is all in one book, narration, grammar, copy work, picture study all put together in day to day easy to follow lessons.


Art and Music: I am still debating this one but I am leaning towards using Harmony Fine Arts 
I am looking at using their first year overview. Which is in between my two girls one who will be second grade and the other kindergarden next year.


nature study: for science we will do nature study using something from the Handbook of Nature Study Blog not quite sure which yet. But we have done some of their spring challenges and have really enjoyed them.


Literature/read alouds: probably a combination of our history books and others that spark our interest. I have gotten the list of read alouds from Sonlight and hope to either buy some of these or get them at the library. As well as read some of the great books we have at home or on our nooks.


Spelling: not sure on this one yet, one of the ones I want to research at conference.


Handwriting: We really like the Italic books.

So it's that time of year...looking for next years homeschool materials...
So I thought that I would share my ways of trying to find the best deals.
1. I figure out what I want to do. A big part of this is figuring out what kind of history I want to do since a lot of curriculums base their stuff on what History cycle they do. Also learning styles and types of curriculum.
2. look to the curriculum what books do I need?
How much do they cost from the company?
Does my library have them?
3. once that is exhausted I start the search...
  My fav used book sites
-paperbackswap.com
-dealoz.com ( search engine that searches for the book for you)
-Barnesandnoble.com
-abe books

4. list out the books that I still need if not found at the library or super cheap
-list prices from various sites
-take said list to used book sales and Homeschool convention

if after all of that I am not able to find it cheaper then I purchase it from the curriculum provider...

Hope that helps some of you newer homeschoolers out there....

Happy Book finding....

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