Homeschool Memoirs: Something New

The topic this week for Homeschool Memoirs is what's new in the way of curriculum in our house. We gone to a little bit of a less "structured" curriculum and are doing more of a unit study approach this year.

Last year we used almost A Beka exclusively, and while A Beka has some great choices, the endless worksheets were just getting a bit to much for us, so we kept a few subjects the same (math and language and some science) and made a move to focus more on Galloping the Globe (click on the book cover to take you to their website) - a unit study on world geography. This book is the main focus of our day, even though we do spend time

This curriculum is geared for K-3/4th graders and while it involves a little more planning on my part (chosing which day to do things, etc.), it offers great ideas and resources for each country that is studied. This is not an exhaustive study of every country of the world, but includes the major countries. For our current school year, we will be studying the countries of China, Korea, Japan, India, Israel, Antarctica, the Arctic, Russia, Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Holland, and Spain. Along with some of those countries we are working in lapbooks (i.e. China: pandas; Great Britain: sheep; India: tigers) which we are getting from Homeschool Share.

Currently we are studying the countries of North and South Korea. We just wrapped up a 3 week study of China as well as a study on pandas, which I've posted about previously. The girls are loving what we've been doing, and I can say that I've been learning a lot myself! And when Mommy is having fun...well, the whole house is too!