I spent hours and hours and hours and....yeah, a lot of time...trying to decide what to go with. I figured that I'd share my brain dump on my choices and my why's and others that I didn't go with but almost did. I also plan to give some reviews on many of these. Please comment if there is an interest in a deeper dive on any of these!
Blueberry is almost 4 years old. We are doing Pre-K for him but he won't start kindergartener next year.
Tomato is in 1st grade.
I'm really focused on math and language arts. We do that daily. We try to do something from history, science, art or geography most days but I'm not stressed if we don't.
1st Grade Picks
Math:
Given my degree is in math, I was a little picky. I wanted something rigorous but that really focused on number sense. I also don't have a ton of time to deal with manipulatives, which was a bit at odds 1with my number sense goal. I ended up going with Singapore Math Dimensions as our spine plus activities from Wild Math and topic books from Math Mammoth. Tomato also plays Prodigy and we'll use Kahn Academy online as well.
I'll give Right Start an honorable mention. I liked them a lot. But ultimately we went with Singapore.
Language Arts:
Since Tomato is reading at a 3rd grade level for enjoyment (and 4th grade for instructional) I did not want to go with a whole language arts program. Over the summer we did All About Reading level 3. I will sing the praises of this program to whomever will listen. But all we have left is level 4 so I wanted to wait until later to do it and instead focus on just reading.
Spelling:
All About Spelling Level 1. We went through the first few levels pretty quickly so I hope to do level 1 and 2 this school year. But we'll see how far we go. Mastery is better than speeding though!
Grammar:
Many people will say to wait to do Grammar until later elementary. But since I need to leave the option open to go back to public school next year so I wanted to make sure this was covered. We went with Galaxy Grammar. Tomato loves it and says that it's his favorite subject. I think it's a little weird.
I liked the sound of Beowulf Grammar. It's for 2nd grade and older. I almost just went with it, but I didn't want to push him too much. Galaxy Grammar is just a little more gentle.
Literature:
Blossom and Root 2nd Grade. It's not really graded and I wanted to do a unit on tall tales and this open with that so it seemed perfect. I'm not committed to doing the whole year, though we'll do at least some other parts.
Handwriting:
The Good and the beautiful. I also have handwriting without tears that we'll do once we finish the good and the beautiful. Tomato struggles with handwriting so we practice this everyday
Other ELA:
Teachers pay Teachers Units on books
Preschool subjects:
Blueberry is doing eLearning with the developmental preschool. I have very little hope that he'll get much out of it but we will try it. He's also still connected with his private preschool who is going to do something but I'm not quite sure what that will look like. And he does speech, occupational, and physical therapy each week so I try to keep his time short.
Math:
Singapore Math has a Pre-K curriculum. I went ahead and grabbed it. We have 2 years until kindergarten but we can take it slow. We'll wait to start this after Christmas.
Language Arts:
See and Learn is as a special program developed for preschoolers with Down. It starts with sounds production and eventually leads to sight words. It feeds into a phonics based program for school aged kids with Down syndrome.
Shared Subjects:
History:
Pandia Press has a History Oddessy program about ancient history. I'm not sure how shared this will end up being as it's really more for Tomato, but I hope that Blueberry will enjoy listening to the stories.
Bookshark sells a really neat craft kit called Hands on History that's a bunch of crafts individually wrapped and ready to go. I'll try to tie them into either stuff from the literature unit, the History Oddessy or just make up a little unit to go with them.
Science:
McRuffy Press sells science kits to go with their science units. I went with kindergarten to hopefully get something for both boys. They are very high level and not deep. I've read some evidence that it's better for kids to go deep vs wide, but I think this is fine/fun for the moment.
We did the meteorology course from The Good and the Beautiful over the summer which we are still wrapping up.
I also got the Blossom and Root plant oriented (2nd grade) science that we'll start here soon.
Art:
Artistic Pursuits preschool. Rainbow Resources sells a kit to go with the program so that seemed best. I went with preschool because I figure that Tomato can still get something out of it but it would be simple enough for Blueberry to do too.
Bible:
Tiny Truths is a great little children's Bible that has downloadable coloring pages that go with it.