Thoughts about various curriculums, from a student's perspective

Hey this is the eldest child again.  One of the great things about homeschooling is choosing your own curriculum.  You can select the curriculum that works best for you.

Through the years my family has used several different curriculums for English, History, and Spelling.

For English when I first started I would read a chapter of a McGuffy reader and write a paragraph prompted by the questions. We had the Original McGuffey's Eclectic Reading Series. It was old and kind of worn.

Then we did IEW for English. This we actually did as a group at co-op. We would read through a paragraph, highlight the key words, put together a key words outline, and write two drafts. We then would read our paragraphs out loud.

Then I took English at Liahona Academy, a distance learning program. With Liahona I did many different assignments. I watched video clips and listened to music for metaphors and similes. I wrote papers on the heroic cycle, and compared and contrasted essays.

For Spelling I first started with a spelling work book that had word search, crossword, and other activities designed to help memorize the spelling words.

Then we moved to Spelling Power. Spelling Power gave a quick spelling quiz every day and then I practiced only the words I missed.

The first History book I had was this thick old book called History of the World. It read like a fairy tale and was pretty cool.

But for most of school we used the Story of the World series by Susan Wise Bauer. For a couple months we had a long butcher paper timeline on our wall in the hall. I really recommend the text book. It’s engaging and easy to learn from.