Putting it all together, once piece at a time

I finally settled on the curriculum for the "year."  I decided to do a mixed kinder/first grade level with him for now.  He needs a lot of reinforcement on reading whereas his math is more on par with the second semester of first grade or maybe higher.  He isn't mature enough to do too much work so I am pacing him as slow as I can since he is still only five (born in December) and typically five year old children are just starting with kindergarten with basic skills or for some children, no skills (shame on those parents!) He is still a young fella so we are giving him time still to grow.

What my husband and I have decided on is for the bulk of curriculum a new secular Charlotte Mason/unit study/ literature based curriculum called Build Your Library.  I was very impressed with this program and very excited to use it.  It is actually part of the reason I am calling this year a hybrid kindergarten/first grade year because I was so impressed by the choice in literature for kindergarten we didn't want to miss out on it and on top of that the first grade curriculum uses a lot of the things I was already planning on using for him for what would be traditionally his first grade year so we are going to hold off on that until he completes this kindergarten program.  It includes basically all subjects, including history and science though I do intend to expand upon the science a lot since my son is very interested in science especially nature.

Since he needs a lot of work in reading we are going to be doing All About Reading, which I am thrilled about and have heard nothing but fantastic things especially since it is recommended for dyslexic children.  My son hasn't been diagnosed with dyslexia, but he shows some possible signs of it or possibly a visual problem so we are preparing him in case he does end up needing more help because of that.  We are using Draw, Write, Now and various copy work for him for his writing. I feel he writes better than a lot of older kids so we aren't too concerned with his writing  at the moment so we are going very light on this for now.  We are also going to be trying Spelling You See this year since we won it in a giveaway.  We haven't done any spelling yet for curriculum so it should be very interesting.  

For math we are continuing with the second semester of Singapore Math Essentials.  I think he will probably finish this pretty quickly as he tends to excel in math and he knows half of the book already but it goes into money and time at the end which he is not at all familiar with so we intend to hit that so he is comfortable with it before doing the first grade level math.  We are using Lollipop Logic for Logic since he seems to really enjoy that sort of thing and we like to keep him interested.  I am trying an introductory art course for him this year called Pineapple Paintbrush Art so hopefully it will give him a good foundation on art.  Since he enjoys instruments we will be trying Discovering Music for now and probably Rocksmith when he feels ready to try that.  Right now I am planning on using the free resources from All in One Homeschool and Confessions of a Homeschooler for his computer, PE, and character study curriculums.

We are really looking forward to "officially" homeschooling him since he's closer to the age now that most people start schooling and seeing how he does.