My View on Curriculum

We currently use Calvert Curriculum handed out by our cyber-school. I am coming into my own (after 4 years of cyber-schooling) and do not like aspects of Calvert. This may be because they revamped the curriculum last year--and now it's heavily based on writing--too much for a 2nd grader in my opinion--and not enough hands-on/visual learning. I am finding the 4th grade curriculum very distracting. I think it is because I like the idea of integrating all subjects together. For example: K is reading about the Northeast in her Regions book. We live in the Northeast. Since she is a 4th grader, I'd take a month just chatting about the region, another month chatting about the state we live in and the ones bordering us. She'd do a report on each state and create a state book. One of her assignments today had her make a poster on the production of maple syrup. We live in a state that is actively about maple syrup. So, as a science experiment (I don't like the whole poster idea so I'd drop that) we'd read about the production of maple syrup and then make maple syrup. Maybe visit the major festivals in the area. Of course, this all would have been preplanned to align up with the correct month it needed to be learned. Since we are cyberschooling there is a big push to align with when tests need to be submitted. So, if we went on a tangent, my tangents would delay the other stuff she needed to learn to answer the tests. So, we can't.