I have always homeschooled my children. My oldest is 14. We used Abeka books and also Christian Liberty Press. I was very happy with that curriculum but I did try other through the years. I realized that for my older children we will stick with the Abeka curriculum. I really like their curriculum. I have always wanted to read The Well Trained Mind and I finally did a year and a half ago. I loved the book and how it broke down teaching the subjects. The authors are a mother and daughter and they also produce their own curriculum. The Story of the World is put out by the daughter as well as Writing With Ease. I also use First Language Lessons put out by the mother. I am very happy with these books. My friend just recently exposed me to the Noeo Science curriculum.
http://www.noeoscience.com/ She actually had it sent to my house since she lives out of the country and I got to look through the whole program. I loved it. There is a guide book and then it comes with whatever supplementary books you need and experiments ready in a box. They have Biology, Chemistry and Physics, I think. You can check their website. The lessons are short but they still use the classical style of teaching in that the children have to create notebook pages writing down words and definitions that they learned as well as draw a picture and write a few sentences about what they learned.
I really love this kind of schooling because the children have to think to come up with the narrations. A narrationis just a short retelling of what they read or learned. It is very simple in the early years and gets more in depth as they get older. They can't just answer a fill in the blank or multiple choice question. I think they master the material far better this way.
Let me make one more recommendation for Phonics workbooks. I love the Adventures in Phonics workbooks from Christian Liberty Press. They are so thorough. They have 3 levels beginning with Kindergarten and they teach the rules of phonics and really lay a great foundation. They also help children with spelling. The link to view them is here
http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product?item_no=29810. They are inexpensive and great in my opinion.
I did some Doman with my child years ago but she didn't read as a baby. I had her start the phonics workbook when she was 4 and told her some of the sounds and she was reading on her own in no time. I never sat and pointed at words and helped her sound them out. She literally went from being a non-reader to reading overnight. She wasn't just reading simple books either, being the youngest at the time she had to keep up with her sisters and was reading Nancy Drew and other chapter books at 5 years old. It is my opinion that you can't fail in trying to teach your baby to read. You are exposing them to language and that is definitely a benefit. If they don't appear to read you have still taught them a lot about the sounds of the letters and so forth.
Digg
