Well, so much for using ABeka…

God provided everything we need for school this year, but I don’t have everything ABeka like last year.  My son (going into 5th grade) will be using ABeka math, science and history.  I purchased the math workbook and speed drills, plus a teacher’s key because his work is getting harder so this will save me time.  We were graciously given a science and history book, but I don’t have teacher’s guides.  I simply went through the books and divided them into 170 lessons myself.  I decided I can give oral tests, based on the chapter review questions.  As usual, I will be supplementing the textbooks with read-aloud books after lunch each day.  These books will include historical fiction and some Usborne science books mostly.  We were also given some 5th grade readers, but I have some other books (from the Sonlight catalog) on my shelf to round out his reading program.  I arranged this into 170 lessons, too.

For his language arts, we’ll be going totally without curriculum, although I again made out 170 lessons to keep myself on track.  We’re using KISS grammar. Here is my weekly plan:
Monday – Copy 4 sentences (from his reading, or from history or science).
Tuesday – Compare his copy to the original.  Discuss word usage, vocabulary, spelling or punctuation, etc.  Make any changes needed.
Wednesday – Mark prepositional phrases, then underline subjects once, verbs twice, then mark sentence patterns (such as S V Predicate Noun, etc.)
Thursday – Mark modifiers (adjectives & adverbs, etc.), then diagram the sentences.
Friday – Have him write the sentences again, this time from dictation.

Twice a week I will assign creative writing, too, with ideas taken from the book Writers Inc.

For my son and daughter who are entering 1st and 2nd grade, I am using Abeka’s math and readers, and I have the curriculum for language arts but no workbooks.  So I figured we can do it all orally and on the white board, or occasionally on tablet or notebook paper.  It isn’t as pretty, but it’s cheaper and should be effective since I can tailor it to their specific needs.  For history, we’re going to read through A Child’s History of the World and learn about animals in science from old Sonlight books I already owned.  We’ll probably do history and science just once or twice a week since they’re so little.

We’ll also add in some music, piano lessons, art, chores, Bible, lions, tigers, and bears, oh, my….  as we have time!  🙂

We start school Monday, August 21.  I’ll have to report back as to how it goes.