Supplementing Cycle 1

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There’s a lot of discussion out there about what to add to your curriculum.  Are the children getting enough?  Will they be ready for Challenge (or college!)?  What can I do for morning time? or read alouds? or living books?  what about writing? what about Latin?

I’m really about keeping it simple and leaving time in our schedule for conversations and people, not just book work.  (They will get plenty of that in the teen years, as I will find out this year when my oldest starts Challenge.)

While it seems harder to find “living books” on ancient times (not as plentiful as our American history cycle), I’m excited about using the BIBLE as a main source text.  I’m thankful that we begin our year off with the Ten Commandments and pieces of the Timeline from the Bible.

So, I’m going to use a simple Bible coloring book curriculum for my preschoolers.  I don’t intend to do a lot of seat work for my younger kids, but the Bible curriculum will be a nice way to ease my younger ones into doing school and it fits so nicely with Cycle 1.

Bible Curriculum Post

Additionally, I plan to use Story of the World, although more so with my older kids than the preschoolers.  We read it or listen to it on audio book.  Sometimes we just read straight through.  At other times, we just skip ahead to read the stories that go along with whatever we are learning in history or timeline.

I bought the Activity book used from a friend.  I did not use it a lot, but I like the pictures and maps that go along with the history and geography and timeline.  So we used a few pictures and projects, but did not use it like a text book.

I found this book (My World Atlas, from Discovery Kids) on sale at Aldi the last time we were going through Cycle 1.  We use it as a reference.  It has many cool pictures – earth’s atmosphere, parts of the earth, world’s highest mountains, cool maps.  Many of these these things go well with Cycle 1 Memory work.

A few years back I purchased a set of Apologia Science books.  We don’t use them as textbooks, but they are great for reference.  The plant (botany) book and the astronomy book are especially handy for Cycle 1.  The animal books are great as well.  We casually covered many of these topics last time we went through Cycle 1.

 

Drawing Resources

What Have I used in the past and Not used?

• Scribblers (Cursive Writing) that goes along with the history memory work.
• Notebooking Journals that go with Apologia – I love the idea of it, but it was too much for younger kids.
• Variety of Spelling Curriculums (I own A Reason for Spelling, Spell to Write and Read, and Spelling Power.)  – For whatever reason, we never use these consistently.  When we use them, I feel like the kids are not really mastering the words.  I tend to use copywork as a basis for spelling.  Writing memory work, poems and verses.

 

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