Curriculum for 2012-2013

Well its time to start planning for the 2012-2013 school year. We are technically almost finished with our 2011-2012 school year according to the state law of 180 days. But our learning is not going to stop the plan is to continue to homeschool throughout the summer. We won't be doing homeschool stuff everyday since I will need some time to finish a few projects, scrapbook, clean up internet bookmarks, computer files and get worksheets/lapbooks/unit studies printed. I have slowly been planning out some unit study ideas and finding some FREE curriculum online.

So far here is some of the stuff we have planned and some of the resources we will be utilizing.

Unit Study Ideas:

• Butterfly's
• Puppet History
• Mythology
• Dinosaurs
• Astronomy
• Trains

Technology We Are Using:
Android Tablet - Here are some great FREE apps (prices change from time to time so they may no longer all be FREE):

• Angry Birds
• 123's ABC's Tracing
• Nature Field Guides -  Mushrooms, Lichens, Birds, Wildflowers -  these are great for nature hikes no need to carry around books any more. 
• 50 States 
• American Sign Language
• Presidents
• First Words Colors
• Kids Mode Zoodles
• Kids Doodle
• Kindle
• Lets Do Math
• NASA Weather Viewer
• Science Fun to Go

Kindle Reader on Android Tablet/Phone and PC - Check out these great websites where you can get lots of links to FREE Kindle books (again prices change from time to time so they may no longer all be FREE), some of these website offer great pdf books which you can use on your Kindle device:

• Free Homeschool Deals
• Walking By The Way
• Ben and Me
• Free Kindle Books
• Kindlepedia - this is a very cool program where you can turn Wikipedia articles into books for your Kindle
• Flex Book

Wii -Yes we have several educational games for our Wii (obviously these are not FREE, but you can check Ebay and Amazon who run great deals often on Wii games):

• Reader Rabbit
• Cookie Monster 
• Elmo
• Jumpstart
• I Spy

Computer - I LOVE our computers and our internet access. The FREE resources are endless. I consider Google to be one of my best friends when it comes to finding homeschool materials. Make sure you read my FreeBEE Friday posts each week. And utilize your bookmarks, Pinterest and this nifty program called Xmarks. Xmarks is a FREE bookmark cloud program. Install Xmarks on each computer you use, and it will seamlessly integrate with your web browser and keeps your bookmarks safely backed up and in sync. Also make sure you like all your favorite homeschool companies, blogs, etc on Facebook. Many of them share great resources which are FREE most of the time. If you don't already like my Facebook Page make sure you do it right now. I share lots of great FreeBEEs on there everyday. I am also trying to reach 350 likes, when I do I will be giving one lucky reader 2 books, view the first post on my timeline for more details.  

Roku - I love our Roku Box. It is great for streaming educational shows (we no longer have cable). Here are some channels we enjoy:

• Khan Academy
• Kidlet
• Ameba
• Iggy. TV
• The Bazillions
• Kid Paint
• TED TV
• NASA - There are actually a few NASA channels
• PBS
• Ocean Network
• iTunes Podcasts

Curriculum Resources: Here are several of the programs we will definitely be utilizing next year (not all are FREE):

• Reading Eggs - Both of my kids love this program. You can read our full review here. 
• Science curriculum for FREE - We discovered Arvind Gupta on a TED TV episode we were watching on our Roku. All of the stuff books, videos etc are FREE. There are some really great science experiments. Here is his website and his YouTube channel. I also really love The Happy Scientist stuff, the majority of his stuff is FREE as well. 
• Currclick - One of my favorite resources. There is loads of FREE stuff on Currclick. Both of my kids really enjoy the Live Classes. A few of our favorite Live Classes are: Founders Academy (very reasonably priced), American Girl Club (FREE) and  Language Club (FREE). 
• We Choose Virtues - This is a wonderful virtue/character program. You can read our full review here.
• Unit Studies By Amanda Bennett - These are great unit studies. They are not FREE but they are very reasonably priced. Generally you can get them on sale for around $3-$5. If you want to snag a few for FREE be sure to hang around the Unit Studies Facebook Page on Tuesday and you may get lucky. 
• YouTube, Ustream, Discovery Education - these are all great resources for watching FREE videos. Discovery Education is FREE to GA homeschoolers (not sure about other states), details can be found here. 

We will also still be utilizing our amazing library every week which is FREE (unless you rack up late fees).

Thanks for stopping by. This is just the beginning of our 2012-2013 planning more details will be coming later this summer.