Take Two.... We Switched Curriculum!

Wow!  Was this past weekend ever a long weekend for me.  I started the weekend thinking I might make some changes to our curriculum.  I was planning some drastic changes that involved a lot of work for me.  Well, I did make some drastic changes and they were a lot of work for me... but still less work than I would have been doing.  I decided to switch to Expedition Earth and say my farewells to My Father's World.  Let me say this... I STILL LOVE My Father's World, but while my kids are all still young I need something that is even more simply laid out.  Most all of the same books are used for this curriculum.  The ones that are not used are the ones I don't like.  It is just what I wanted.  And I can still add what I want to this curriculum (not because it needs it).  There are a few things that I had ordered that were part of MFW ECC (plus the deluxe package) that I want to still use.  We will still use the Hero Tales book and the Christian Heroes series of books (six of those).  All those books are about Christian heroes and now that I have seen them I just want to read them.  I will also still use the Origami book when we do our Asia study.  We will be using the Animal Search book because we all really like that book.  It is like an I Spy book.  Another great book we are keeping is The Complete Book of Animals. 

What we will not be keeping from MFW ECC is the Student Sheets, Teacher's Supplement packet, The Classroom Atlas (because I have some others), World Geography (TCR... worksheet booklet), Properties of Ecosystems, and the MFW ECC Teacher's Lesson Plan book. 

I am also making some additional changes to our "core" subjects.  I have followed a lot of MFW's suggestion and done some of my own things.  I have used Primary Language Lessons and loved it, but I think it is too much for my 2nd grader when I look at it now.  My oldest daughter was a bit older when we used it for her.  Also, Intermediate Language Lessons and Writing Strands were part of my plan this year for my oldest.  Scratch that!!!  ILL makes and aggressive jump forward that I nor my daughter are ready for.  It is mostly just too time consuming for me to have to do with her.  And Writing Strands... well, I think it will just teach her to hate writing.  Neither of us liked it by week number two.  So, I am just going to pull together some other stuff here that I think will work better for us.  Anyway, so now we have a whole new plan!

If you are interested in looking at the differences in Expedition Earth and ECC you can click on the link above and there is a download for a sample of one of the weeks.  That download show the Table of Contents and also all the curriculum books needed.