I thought I would share about what we are using for school this year, which is one of my favorite things to talk about : ) I started looking for a new curriculum around Christmas of last year because I knew that A Beka was not the curriculum for us. Don't get me wrong I think it is a great curriculum...if you are teaching in a school, have one child, or if all your kids are the same age (grin). We tweaked it to fit our needs last year but any hands on fun projects I had to come up with on my own, which meant lots of Google searches. So began my search for the perfect curriculum. As soon as I visited the MFW site I knew it was for us. I loved the way the bible was woven it to everything..not just a subject, you CAN NOT take God out of MFW. I loved the way you could teach multiple kids (2nd-8th grade) using the same bible, science, history, art, read alouds..etc and just teach math and language on their level(which is what I had been doing with A Beka anyway). I also loved that they do history chronologically and I loved the book basket lists,which I had also been doing myself when we use A Beka but I had to search for good books myself. Most of all I loved their Exploring Countries and Cultures curriculum which is a year of geography and learning about missionaries, you can read about it here. I did look at other curriculums like Heart of Dakota and Winterpromise but I just kept coming back to MFW and in January I even went ahead and bought their Kindergarten curriculum to start with my son. Even though I do add some stuff to the reading/phonics in MFW K, I love the character lessons....LOVE it and I love the way the bible and science go together, it really is amazing. I decided for sure after seeing for myself how awesome their kindergarten curriculum is that I would use their Exploring Countries and Cultures with my two oldest for the 2009-2010 school year. So from Jan. till I was able to purchase ECC in Aug. I drove my husband crazy talking about it, LOL really, I did. I talked and dreamed and visited the site just one more time. I realize that if you are reading this and you do not homeschool you probably think that sounds nuts but if you homeschool you totally get it. O.K. if you don't homeschool think about when you were pregnant and all you could think of is baby stuff and getting everything ready..do you remember? You wondered if you were driving your husband and friends crazy and then deciding it didn't matter you just had to show them the babies clothes just one more time. .well tone it down just a couple of notches and you have what it was like for my husband during that time.
Here is a picture of the ECC teacher's guide, music. art and read aloud books. One of the read alouds is Kingdom Tales, which is an awesome book that uses symbolism to teach biblical principle. Even if you don't use MFW I would recommend you get this book for your family(I will blog more about this book later).You can order the book from other places but MFW has added in discussion questions that really help the kids, well parent too, to take what was just read and apply it to their life. The other read alouds are WYAM books about Missionaries and we will read them as we study the countries they ministered to.
Here is the books that we will be using for our geography study, included pretend passports and flag sticker books(there are 4 because I got my youngest two a sticker book and passport so they could tag along on the "trip").
This is our science and bible...properties of ecosystems is by answers in Genesis and though I don't really like textbooks for this age, as they can be dry and boring compared to
living books, I do agree you need to make sure you teach what needs to be taught.
Here is some of what we are using for Nate's kindergaten. Most of it is MFW ecxept the abeka comunity helper book which my son thought was for babies and so it will probably not get done...in his words "Mama I already know what a fireman and doctor do." : )
I wanted to share about an awesome free website that I discovered to use this school year 
