My Homeschool Curriculum – The Family School through American Heritage

I can’t believe school is starting and SOON….like Wednesday!  Crazy, but I am very excited to get back on a good schedule with my kids and enjoy teaching and watching them learn and grow this year.  It is the most rewarding thing ever!  This year I am going to have all of my kids home. We are done putting our Kindergartners in Kindergarten.  It was fun for the oldest 2, but was more just play time and it made me more busy, so we are simplifying and moving on with our plan of being a family school!

As far as curriculum I am so excited to tell you about the changes I am making!  I have 4 kids as most of my readers know!  LaLa my 3rd grader, Cowboy my 1st grader, Jack Jack my preschooler, and Little Mister (15 months) that I get to hold, play with, feed and put down for naps!
This year we are doing something new.  We have done K12 Washington Online School for the last 2 years with LaLa, but we are switching gears this year and getting new curriculum. We liked WOSU but I am a firm believer in the idea of a “Family School”  where the Core subject is taught to all members of the family AT THE SAME TIME!  (core subject meaning History, Science, Geography, Literature, Art and Music.)  This is how I was taught as a kid and I think if you are homeschooling more than 2 kids it is the only way to do it without going insane (at least for me).  I also am a firm believer of having the gospel be taught in all subject that they learn.

So in the mornings we will do Family Devotional, Music Practice, Math and Language Arts.  As far as Math and Language Arts – we will do Right Start Math and K12 WOSU Language arts and Writing Road to Reading.  It will all be done individually according to their level.  Then we will have Lunch and in the afternoon we will do our core subject of Science, History or Geography (trading off weeks)  and then on Fridays we will always do Art, Music and Literature!

So more on “The Family School” – I am so excited to tell you about this.  Finding curriculum is one of the hardest things to do as a homeschooling parent.  There is so much out there, it’s expensive and you really don’t want your house FULL of a bunch of stuff you don’t use!  I also can’t imagine buying a science for my first grader and then another science for my 3rd grader.  How will we ever find time to teach it to all my kids once they are school age (kindergarten).

Let me explain….There is an amazing private school in American Fork, Utah called American Heritage.  They use the principle approach in their teaching and a couple of years ago wrote History curriculum for homeschoolers.  This year they got a big committee together (my mom and aunt on it) and decided that they wanted to help LDS homeschooling parents by providing them curriculum to support an LDS family homeschool.  Here is something from their site…

“The curriculum is designed for parents of children ages 4 to 12 – includes an entire year’s printed curriculum for a family to teach History, Literature, Science, Geography, Art, and Music. Family School courses are parent-guided and reminiscent of a one-room school house approach with children of various ages learning together, followed by several adaptable age-appropriate assignments and activities all in harmony with principles of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Doesn’t that sound awesome!?!  Well it is.  You can get sample lessons and read more about it HERE .

They even have an amazing schedule here that shows what days to teach what to get through the whole Year 1.  So I will have these for the 6 years and then rotate through them.  So if my 4 year old comes in next year he will learn about the 1st year stuff in 5 years.  It is awesome and I am so excited to get going on it.  The lessons are super cute and tell you exactly how to teach it and what do say, and what scriptures to use, and songs to sings, and books to read.  It is AMAZING!  Go check out Latterdaylearning.org. You are going to be amazing by their lessons!