Just a few curriculum changes for the new year

So far, so good with most of our curriculum choices for this school year.  One of the wonderful aspects of homeschooling that I thoroughly enjoy is the flexibility to be, well...flexible in our educational choices.  My oldest two are polar opposites when it comes to learning.  One has an artistic, self-motivated flare about her learning, and I'm confident that she could get a quality education with a library card and the Internet alone.  However, her mother is much too structured to allow so much random freedom.  Her brother, OTH, just thrives with traditional, predictable textbooks, which are very compatible with his OCD, yet he needs to be stretched in learning to think outside the box a bit.  The younger two seem to be a nice mix so far, so we'll have to wait and see how their learning styles develop over the years.  So much diversity around here, and finding what works best for our family as a whole is always an interesting challenge, but one that I wouldn't change for anything!  Also, I'm not ignorant to the fact that there are simply times that we all just need to learn to buckle down and do work that we don't particularly feel like doing and press on.

Anyways, Sister Strings was having a difficult time with her BJU World History online.  The online feature made it into a VERY difficult course load for history, and quite frankly, it was sucking the joy of learning right out of her.  I thought the lectures would be a little more interesting, as the lower levels of BJU teaching seem to always utilize lots of drama, visuals, demos, outside video footage, etc. in order to bring the subject to life.  Not so with this WH course.  It's mainly just all lecture, and much of it was kind of going over her head, especially when he dives deeply into political emphasis.  I found myself bored watching some of them myself, and I love history!  SO...we decided to drop BJU online for this one course.  We still have the books that we may reference on occasion, but for the most part, we are going to shift to a more natural, joyful (for her) way to learn the rest of world history for this year, while also focusing our attention more on geography as well.  She will use A Beka's 7th grade World History text and Maps book as a spine for the factual info (beginning with ch. 7), and then get the more narrative aspect of history from other various resources, such as MOH (Mystery of History) vol. 2 CDs, Diana Waring's CDs, G.A. Henty novels on CD, other Historical fiction, etc.  Since she loves to sing, she'll also use Audio Memory Press' Geography Songs CD.  The 7th grade A Beka WH text is surprisingly meaty.  Certainly much more world history than I ever received, and most of all, she will continue to learn it within the context of biblical history and principles without it being information overload, which is the feeling she was getting from the BJU course.  I'll have her continue with MOH vol. 3 for next year, along with her U.S. history studies (via ACE), in order to keep it in the context of world history.  I just love how those MOH books read.  I find them so interesting!

For the others, the only change that was made was in spelling.  Both Brother Brass and Miss Melody will be doing Spelling Power for the remainder of the year, which we already own and have used before.  I need for our Spelling time to be short, simple, and to the point.  I may also do some more with them in the studied dictation department, but just once in a while.  They both get vocab study from their reading/lit courses for now.

Also, I'm saving the CLE Bible course for Baby Bach for next year, when his reading skills are more up to speed.  It's a great course, and I think he'll do better with it if I wait a little longer.  For now, we'll stick with reading his Beginner's Bible and doing the Rod and Staff ABC series Bible plus coloring book.

Other than that, everything is going really well for this year.