The Curriculum Choice

This is one of the first books I purchased when we began homeschooling, and it remains an all-time favorite of mine. I’m typically not a text-book kind of homeschooling Mom – except when it comes to math. It was always my weakest subject, and I don’t have the confidence to stray from my dearly beloved math curriculum. However, I do like to spice math up a bit so that it will be an enjoyable subject for my children.

Contrary to my need for a math curriculum, Games for Math by Peggy Kaye was the only resource I used when my oldest was in Kindergarten, and it nurtured in him a real enjoyment of math. Now it makes a nice supplement to our curriculum.

It includes games for Kindergarten through Third Grade, covering a wide variety of topics including:

Counting
Logical Thinking
Size and Shape
Addition and Subtraction
Multiplication and Division
Estimation
Geometry
Measurement
Place Value
The Number System (Base-10)

I have also benefitted from the author’s teaching experience, as she offers valuable insights into a child’s development, how they think about math concepts, and how she has used games to successfully teach math to children for over twenty-five years. Her writing style is conversational and makes for an enjoyable read. She really makes me think about how I interact with my own children when teaching math.

You can download some of the games from the book at Peggy Kaye’s website. (Please note that the math games are interspersed with games from her other books on reading and writing, which I will review in the future.)

If sampling a game or two whets your appetite for more, you can find her book at certain local libraries or an online bookseller.

I hope that this resource will help you and your children to have some fun with math!

Written by Shannon, who blogs about her family’s homeschooling adventures at Song of My Heart.

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I’m so excited to be typing my very first review here at The Curriculum Choice! I truly love books of all kinds and I especially love when I can find great books for my homeschool that cover multiple subjects, which is why I chose Christian Liberty Nature readers for my first review.

I chose this series for my 2nd grader to practice reading because although Spring is around the corner, it has not yet reached my doorstep and we’re looking for it wherever we can get it! These books are plum full of scents of Spring! Especially for boys that love the outdoors, these readers are a must.

I love Christian Liberty Nature Readers for several reasons:

gentle readers, but with just enough challenge
they feel like nature study, even when it’s too cold to go outside
little siblings love to listen
the glossary in the back gives good practice for looking up words they’re not sure of
the sections are short, making it easy to just read a little at a time if need be

These books are great for not only reading practice and comprehension, but they paint a beautiful picture of God’s awesome creation. There are numerous subjects covered and each book is a little different. The book we’re reading right now for instance talks about all kinds of things in nature from the honeybee to quails to bison.

The series consists of six books ranging from PreK to 5th grade, each book getting a little more challenging. These are great living books that are available for great prices. If you feel like you need to enhance your nature study or just get some fresh, new books for some good Spring reading, I highly recommend Christian Liberty Nature Readers.

~posted by Alicia, homeschooling mama of 3. Find her blogging at La Famille.

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I like using notebooking as a form of narration in our Charlotte Mason styled homeschool. My preference is to use blank notebooking pages or to make our own, but I also enjoy History Scribe retail notebooking pages.

Why do I like History Scribe? My daughter is creative and loves to sketch. If I give her a notebooking page with graphics on it, she generally feels disappointed. After all, in her mind, the funnest part is already done. Blank pages are what she prefers because she has room to draw and to write. (And I’m in hearty agreement with blank pages. After all, the more she completes herself, the more learning she is demonstrating and reinforcing.)

History Scribe fits her perfectly.

This is the anatomy of a History Scribe notebooking page:

Heading — including a title and a short introductory blurb
Top half – space for drawing, affixing images
Another section for a second heading or caption to the image.
Bottom half, lined for writing 9 lines

Biography pages are a bit different. Each has the person’s name for a heading at the top. The bottom half is lined for writing. The top half has empty space for creative expression plus an oval area and a small box called Fact File with some basic data to fill in.

If you have a highschooler, be sure to consider the History Scholar pages which have smaller lines and more detailed areas to fill in. You can see samples here.

Each set comes with some blank pages without any text at all. These are great for topics that aren’t included in the set.

So what if your child doesn’t like drawing? Actually, you can still use the blank space for affixing maps or images printed from other sources.

You may be wondering why you would want to buy a basically blank notebooking set. Three good reasons:

If you plan your own unit studies, you may find the history scribe notebooking sets helpful for identifying key topics.
Independent work. The top blurb gives enough introductory information for a student to get started on his own research and complete the notebooking page.
If you use project based learning, you could give a student the table of contents and ask for a set number of pages to be completed as part of a unit of study. The student could choose his own preferred topics from the available pages.

Tips for using
Print the table of contents page for each set you buy. Keep that page with your planning notes so that you don’t forget what you have available.
Inject some variety. Print notebooking pages on colored paper or print 2 per page or 4 per page for making themed minibooks.

Examples of History Scribe pages in action:

photos at Jimmie’s Collage (my blog)
photo at Virtuous Foundations Home Education (a biography page)
Smooth Stones Academy has a list correlating SOTW1 with History Scribe pages.

Where can you buy History Scribe notebooking pages? I buy them from Currclick where I can immediately download the files and begin printing them out. (There are frequent 50% to 75% off sales.)

If you prefer a CD instead of a PDF instant download, visit the Westvon Publishing homepage or History Scribe.

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