Curriculum.

My math suppliers have a major backlog & so far as I can tell I will be lucky to get any more math curriculum this year. However the science people were totally on the ball & our books arrived within days of them getting our cheque.

I am weak in the sciences so changing from the recommended curriculum our umbrella school suggests to a different one had me a tad nervous. Curriculum is expensive & we really can't afford to make mistakes. It wasn't as if we disliked the other curriculum either. We didn't. It's just Apologia does marine biology later on & that would be Ditz's prefered option.

For a house as into arts & craft as mine is science is a Waterloo. Hands on experiments tend to have us throwing the sort of tantrums better suited to a 2 year old. Experiments never ever work the way I know they're meant to. So it was with some trepidation we awaited the arrival of this curriculum. I mean even the cover intimidates me. Visual learner. Things like that can spook me. It just looked so...scientific.

The books arrived on Friday so we haven't begun using them yet but already I like this curriculum. It is highly readable. I understand it. They begin at the beginning with what science is & what it is not. They explain 'the scientific method'. (breathes sigh of relief. we will be o.k.)

Meanwhile, despite a somewhat shakey start (Ditz refused to like any of the books on her required reading list) we have adjusted well to the Sonlight. Ditz's last reader she actually really liked which surprised me no end as she hadn't been keen on any of the other, to me, more interesting books. I do think her literary palatte needed some retraining.

Two down, one to go. The only curriculum we started with that we are keeping is the math. History will eventually move to Sonlight too, though I have plenty of flexibility with our present curriculum & it is working in the sense that I run Ditz through all the standard stuff & then we focus on what is actually interesting & for us that is invariably culture ~ music & art for preference but Japan has been particularly fascinating & we have done in depth studies of Girl's Day, koi, Children's Day, kimono, bonsai & I still have the arts to cover. Ditz made a great minature koi kite which has gone mysteriously missing ~ all of which is hugely time~consuming but I so wish my education had been like this. I seriously hated school simply because it was mostly mind~bogglingly boringing & I'm not all that social so could well have done without the dubious company of my peers.