Updated Curriculum and Books

I spent a little time this afternoon updating our curriculum and books list on the sidebar. It now shows the books we are currently using. I'm using Living Books Curriculum Grade 5 but am not going in the order of the lesson plans so if you are using that curriculum you may wonder why I'm on term 1 books in April. We are using what books we can from the library and due to the availability of them, we are using that curriculum in a very different order than is suggested. For the younger kids, I'm mostly using Ambleside Online Year One with my own eclectic additions. I'm trying to mostly focus on utilizing the Ten Things to Do list from Teaching the Trivium by the Bluedorns.

I'll be changing things up next year as I'll have a new baby arrive in August. I'm thinking of ordering a packaged curriculum for multiage to simplify lesson planning. Currently, I spend about an hour writing out lesson plans, making copies, and making other preparations each week and several hours once a month organizing the month's activities into a chart format that is easy for me to keep track of things. I plan to school on throughout the summer in order to be a little ahead of the game when the baby comes in August.

Here is one curriculum that looks like it might be a good fit for me. My Father's World is a Charlotte Mason type study that has 2-8th grade go through a 5 years history cycle. We will be ready for Year 3: Exploration to 1850 of that curriculum this fall. I'm still researching, but this one looks like it would cover most of my kids leaving me with Miss J who will likely do Abeka 1st grade since I already own all the first grade stuff and would only need to purchase a student kit. I've not used MFW before so comment if you have used this curriculum. I did LOVE Winter Promise, but it would cost almost twice as much to cover the same history period with their curriculum because they don't have any units that cover this broad of an age group. Even so, I still have it on the list of things to consider due to such a pleasant experience with it in the past. It really was very user friendly. Another consideration is Sonlight, although I've not used it before either. If you have other suggestions, please post them in the comments section. I'd love to know if there are other packaged curriculums that cover a multiage group.