In Defense of "Too Much Curricula"

I see it all the time - people asking "here's my plan, is it too much?" And, inevitable, many of the answers are a resounding yes. I often disagree, as I think it's the attitude toward schoolwork and education that needs evaluated, not the pile of curricula.

Anyone who has read my yearly resource posts will know that we have a lot of educational materials around here. They fill shelves. Several of them. And they aren't all on the school shelves - they're on my daughter's own bookshelves, they're on the game shelves, they're on the toy shelves...

And that's great for us! We love variety. When I say that I am going to do two language arts programs plus a pile of supplements, a science program plus multiple science units plus xyz else in science, I don't mean that we're using each one of those things every day! Or every week. Or even every month. As a general rule, I don't care when (or, sometimes, if) we finish whatever our "curriculum" is. Sometimes a resource will stay on the shelf for a year or two and then it suddenly fits perfectly with what we want to accomplish. Sometimes we're bored and burnt out (hello, winter!) and want to do something different. Sometimes I see others complaining about how they're dragging through lessons in order to get to the next break, and I'm reaching for something we haven't used in a while and pulling it off the shelf to rejuvenate us.

I love having these options!

This isn't even all the math we're using this year!

7 Year Old Resources (Second Grade, Take Two!)

It's halfway through the year and I never did post this year's annual school resources post. As I posted earlier, I have no idea what grade to call her, but officially this will be second grade with an independent public charter school. This is the grand list of everything I plan to pull off the shelf at some time this year.

Language Arts

• Michael Clay Thompson Town level - we completed much of this level last year, but not the writing assignments or the poetry book. We'll go back through this year, filling in what we left out previously.
• Brave Writer - we always use bits and pieces of the lifestyle (especially poetry teas!). I also have Partnership Writing and a few Arrows in waiting.
• NaNoWriMo - The Kid is already excited and planning to write a sequel to a book she wrote two years ago. We'll spend most of October on the workbook before she does the writing in November.
• Editor in Chief grades 3-4 - The Kid is working through this workbook to clean up a few odds and ends that we may have missed along the way.
• Homemade copywork plus calligraphy/creative lettering books - her handwriting has really been catching up this year. By the end of the year, we may be able to start transitioning to less copywork and into some dictation.
• Vocabulary Cartoons - these are fun! I had the spine cut off so that I can hang up one word per day, and they really do seem to stick in her head. This is a great option between levels of Caesar's English.
• Burning Cargo - this is a game-ified typing program that has really worked to improve her fluency.

Math

• Beast Academy - our core. Just starting 4th grade, but will also do the 2nd grade books as they come out.
• Zaccaro's Primary Grade Challenge Math - The Kid has done bits and pieces of this book, which I expect to complete this year.
• Math Kangaroo - DD has decided she would like to compete in Math Kangaroo next spring. To that end, we'll practice using some old tests and a prep book from Borac.
• Hands on Equations
• Math Projects - I found this nifty book on Amazon and it should work to add some more hands-on ideas into our math time
• Kumon 4th grade math workbooks - these have been useful for practicing algorithms after The Kid learns the theory from Beast Academy.
• Math-y books - I Hate Mathematics!, Math for Smarty Pants, Murderous Maths, Sir Cumference

Science will be fully interest-based.

• Athens's Academy Marine Mammals class - eight week class in fall
• Athena's Academy Cryptozoology class - eight week class in spring

Social Studies

• Homemade Cultural Geography course

Foreign Language

• Hoemschool Spanish Academy once per week to keep up skills
• Galore Park's So You Really Want to Learn French, book 1 - The Husband is using this as a spine for the first year of introductory French. He's a fluent French speaker, so he gets to teach this in the evenings and weekends, whenever it fits.

Extracurriculars
The Kid has had her usual mishmash of extras, including Hoffman Piano Academy, tennis, swimming, ceramics, circus arts, gymnastics, and indoor skydiving. She's changing things up more often than usual, preferring to do just a session at a time then switching off. She's taking art, music, Lego, and a math games class at the charter school.