We can’t talk about high school until you know where we’ve been. It is an understatement to say that we haven’t been consistent with curriculum. As her learning styles changed (or I realized what they were!), and I learned what works and what doesn’t, we’ve adjusted over the years. The one constant has been AmblesideOnline (www.amblesideonline.org).
In kindergarten we followed the AmblesideOnline (AO) plan for Year 0.5, supplementing with American history and science resources that were interesting. We used whole-word learning for reading instruction — taking familiar nursery rhymes, printing them out, and cutting up each word, learning to rearrange them like a puzzle back into the original sentence.
We worked through MEP math (https://www.cimt.org.uk/projects/mepres/primary/index.htm), supplementing with fun math games and readers. We had an amazing book-nook created by a metal cabinet (great for word magnets!) and an old futon cushion. Complete with homemade homeschool t-shirts, it was an amazing year — gentle, yet “school”.
Elementary school was similar to kindergarten (minus the awesome book-nook since we moved to a new house), following the schedules and books laid out by the wonderful moderators of AmblesideOnline. We never followed it to the letter — some books we substituted with other books we had on hand, and we always added science of some kind (NOEO Science and Elemental Science/Sassafras Science for various years). We used MEP math in 1st grade, but quickly found it wasn’t the method Sunshinegirl needed. We adjusted, choosing Singapore Math, and we moved along.
Middle school became more rigorous, and it was becoming more clear what my creative, right-brained daughter needed for schooling. We continued with AO, following most of the suggestions (though by eighth grade we found ourselves modifying quite a bit). For math we switched to Math Mammoth for 5th-7th grades, finding it to be more rigorous, yet more conceptual — providing many ways of looking at the same math problems. For 8th grade we used Foerster Algebra 1, switching to CK-12 Algebra for the last term (more about that later). Science was a combination of Ellen McHenry books (Biology), Elemental Science (Chemistry) and CK-12 (Earth Science and Chemistry).
Bottom line, AmblesideOnline was the spine that created the base history, literature, citizenship, and science, but then we used an eclectic list of other resources to round out the math, science, and some additional history and literature.
Would I have done it differently looking back?
Nope – each choice was made at the time for a reason, but that didn’t mean it had to stay the choice if we outgrew a solution. We were structured yet flexible. We evolved!
Going forward, I know that we have to be flexible and evolve as well; the difference is that Mom isn’t making all the choices for high school, but it is a group effort by Mom and Sunshinegirl.
Top of Her Class of One 