Choosing Curriculum for Next Year

It's that time of the year again. The school year is winding down and it is time to start thinking about what we want to do next year. I need to have curriculum for K, 1, 3, and 9th grade next year and curriculum can be very expensive for one child, let alone many children. Last year, I started noticing how much more expensive books can become when your children get into the older grades. I spent some time in prayer over not only what to use for that year, but about my concern over having multiple children that I needed to teach. Although homeschooling can be almost free if you do a lot of research and prep on your own, I have spent some time using that method and tend to reach burn out stage by February, and although we like to do Unit Studies and similar things, I like to have a main curriculum for our every day course of study. God answered my prayer and He dropped a lot of curriculum in my lap. I had never used the Abeka curriculum before and honestly never even thought about using it, but how could I not when I was given hundreds of dollars worth of books in a wide variety of ages not just once but from 3 different sources? We gave it a try and I found that I liked it quite a bit and it is a fairly inexpensive curriculum to buy used. I do not use and Cursive Writing for the little ones and do not do seatwork. We just have used Health, Science, History, Language, and the Readers. We read it together and do discussion questions aloud. I say all this to explain that choosing a curriculum for next year has already been done for me and I just need to fill in some spots. I began going through what I have to see what I need to buy and what I have more than one of to pass on to others. I also have been checking ebay auctions to see what I can find very inexpensively. I still have some decisions to make on Art, Music, and a Foreign Language, so I have been reading reviews and searching for these products and praying about these areas. I will be attending a Homeschool Convention in about 3 weeks and will check out the vendor hall and Used book Sale to make some final decisions. If anyone has used a great curriculum in any of these areas please leave me a comment.