Recommended Curriculum

English

There are a growing number of english programs out there and it really depends on the needs of your students.

We also have our own free integrated Creative Writing and SOSE Units available for primary and for secondary families often like our Senior writing programs.  Check with Jason.

List of good Reading books

Here is a wonderful list of classic and good readers and novels http://www.homeschoolchristian.com/Library/ReadingLists.html

Early Readers
Early readers are very empowering to new readers as they are designed to give the reader success. Again there are many different products out there but I strongly recommend the PM Readers as the are very well leveled.
These are fantastic products and your older students will enjoy sharing these readers with younger siblings. What is so great about these readers is that they are using simple patterned texts and limited vocabulary and yet they have high narrative and reading for meaning content as opposed to the 'Fat cat mat bat' type readers.

The students I work with have access to a large bank of these readers and our students receive 3-4 sets of these leveled sets at a time. this is very impowering. If you are not with us you can get these Readers directly from the supplier Cengage Press. They are however expensive at $60 to $124 a set of 10 to 12. .

The Read Me Bible is great for shared reading and is the best Bible product I have found for young students. These however are out of print now.

Students as young as 2 and 3 learn to read using these early readers, Alphabet Charts and the techniques explained in Jason’s reading notes.

Preschool students will need to start on Magenta then Red.

Maths
We encourage the use of a wide range of products to suit the learning needs of different students.

GO MATHS -superseded by Stepping Stones...

More and more, I am finding families who use GO MATHS as a suppliment, start to move over totally to the Go Maths as they grow in confidence, and often because they become frustrated with the monotony of the division and fraction years the Maths U See or narrow strands of the ACE Maths, Saxon... Go Maths or the new Stepping stones can be ordered directly from ORIGO http://www.origo.com.au/index.php?page_id=shop

Maths Quest by Jacaranda for Queensland
Here is a link to the Jacaranda Site for information on the secondary Year 8 to 12 texts . We recommend this option for students who have a high level of confidence and ability in Maths. Please discuss this option with Jason.

Maths U See

This has been very popular material within the home schooling community in Australia. It is very solid in the younger years 1 to 2 but lack a coverage of the different strands and needs supplementing. It also advocates a lot of wrote learning of times tables -for a program that is supposed to be strong for its building of relational understandings or Maths U See. Many students also find the Division and Fractions years a grind and probably needs to be covered more quickly and covered within a wider variety of contexts. Sometimes the Division level year is to difficult for students maturation level -especially since the long division method Steve teaches is really short devision with a tally table (same method as taught in QLD) true long division is different and much easier, it allows students to give out what they know they have to give out until there is nothing left...

Place Value
Place value is the system that underpins all decimal system mathematics. I usually use a place value table and MAB blocks (ones, tens and hundreds blocks, if you have the Math U See blocks they are great) to demonstrate to young students the concept of numerals representing a vastly different value depending upon which column they are in.
If you do not have the Maths U See Blocks and do not want to pay $90 then I recommend the normal MAB or Place Value Blocks that are made out of wood. They can be purchased from.

Base Ten Blocks:

are essential concrete maths materials that aide in the development of place value and number concepts. They help childrenmastering the base ten numbering system -10's 100's and 1000's

Order Online from this School Supplies Shop

or try http://stores.ebay.com.au/countlessfun $39 plus $9 Postage

Here is a great site that demonstrates how to use these blocks:

http://www.math-drills.com/baseten.shtml

Science
The Science product that I recommend is A Beka Science. It is Christian, colourful and engaging.
Here is a link for your reference to their web site.

When you get to this page look at the following Science Text titles:

• God’s World Student Text

• Exploring God’s World

• Understanding God’s World

• Investigating God’s World

• Observing God’s World

• Order and Reality

• Matter and Motion in God’s Universe

• Science of the Physical Creation

• Biology: God’s Living Creation

• Chemistry: Precision and Design

• Physics: The Foundational Science

The Supplier for ABEKA in Asutralia is LEM (Light Education Ministries).  LEM have compiled a cheap text keys book and this is helpful, but these days it is just as cheap to purchase ABeka materials directly from the States. 

A Beka Products and alternative supply -US


Stellarium
Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. Just set your coordinates and go. Link to download site...


Bible Subjects
For students up to Grade 7 we like to encourage interactive family based Bible Study, where the family is working together examining, discussing and praying about issues that are relevant to them. the Free Queensland Mail Box Club is also available and enjoyed by many. http://www.qmbc.org.au/

For older students we like to recommend Alpha and Omega for the secondary Bible Subjects instead of the ACE Old and New Testament Survey. The Alpha and Omega site is: http://www.aop.com/Cultures/en-US/HomeSchooling/ The site can be a challenge to navigate so you can try this link that goes directly to the Bible Material. This Material is supplied by Kingsley Educational Pty Ltd.

Their site http://www.kepl.com.au/links.html

Order Form for Kingsley Educational

We have also negotiated a discount for our families and the Lifepac is $7.70 instead of $9.90 and the Teachers book is $19.80 .

Word Processing Course
It is good for students to gain word processing skills and in Grade 9 or 10 we give credit for students who complete a Word Processing course, for part of this course they will need to demonstrate the ability to type 35 words per minute. Learning to type at this speed does not happen overnight and we recommend students practice with a typing tutor from a young age.
One free typing tutor that is available on the internet is: http://typingsoft.com/stamina.htm

I hope these links are helpful to you. Really it is good to have a teacher with experience who can give you advice specific to your students levels and needs.

Phone Jason on 32995357.

Choice of curriculum is one of main issues we as home educators have, while wanting support in the form of resources, workshops, camps and expertise… –we do not want to be dictated to in regards curriculum choices. I do have preference choices –for some areas and as many as three for others, but these should not take precedence over working collaboratively to find the best choices for your students.

I am reluctant to put out printed lists of preferences, as too many people in the past have wanted to hold this list up and say e.g. “Jason doesn’t like LEM or support LEM” when I do not mind families using LEM at all –it's a little over the top and may be very good for spelling. However, I am NOT selling the material, so I can say honesty that it is the “learn to spell” program out of Spalding from the US and Spalding would agree with me that it was never written as a learn to read or write program. I just would not make this program a requirement.

The same goes for Maths U See –in saying it is not perfect, I am not say families can not use it… It works well and serves many families needs. It's just that the average student would benefit by learning about a greater range of strands each year and to use core concepts within a greater range of contexts… This is not critical in primary but is in secondary if students are later wanting to do Australian Curriculum Maths e.g. the Maths Quest program which has been winning all the awards for many years now.

So I still have some secondary students using Maths U See with some supplement where appropriate, but if you compare the Maths Quest and Math U See Secondary programs –it is simply an unfair competition. The Maths Quest is loaded with context rich examples and clear step by step instruction.  The Maths Quest however, often requires students to take a year and a quarter to cover the content effectively -especially if they have start in at the Grade 9 or above level.

So there is no magic wand for learning and no one curriculum is perfect. This is why we need to be careful taking advise from others:

-who may have only experience with a small range of curriculum,

-Have student with different learning needs to your own,

-or those who are selling a product and of course they believe their product is the only way. I am always concerned when curriculums promote themselves as "God's way" or the "only way"...  I thought Jesus was the Way.