time to start planning...

It is now July and for me, the home school teacher around here, that means planning and organizing time. I always start this process with high hopes...and then I have to reign those in because honestly, neither a home school mom nor a classroom teacher, has the ability to carry out even the most well intended plans.

This year we are really wanting to make Bible time a priority. I bought Student of the Word, but after really trying and wanting to make it work, I just can't 'get it'. So, we will do Bible a la Pearl. Read through the bible day by day. Each day have my big kids write a journal entry and draw an illustration if they want. The littles will just draw illustrations. Each child will have their own bible notebook/ journal. I think that for now this will be the best approach for our family and enable us to dig in whenever we want and just enjoy God's word everyday.

As far as our academic plans...

Emily will be switching to Teaching Textbooks 5 for math. She will continue with First Language Lessons 3 and move into 4 after finishing. Spelling will be with A Reason for Spelling. She will also work on the writing directives from Sonlight that coordinate with her Core 6. I am still looking into which History spine we'll use. Our Core comes with Story of the World. We own Mystery of History, which I LOVE. I am going to sit down and figure out if we will use one or both of these materials. For Science, we have Apologia's Flying Creatures picked out for the two oldest. Honestly, while I love science, it is not an area we have spent much energy in. We have done it each year, using nature study and hands on fun,but plan to dig into it a bit more this year.

For Jeremiah I will be using Core 1 to tie into Emily's Core 6. We'll use the same spine and just have fun reading and sharing...it'll probably take us 1 1/2 to 2 years, in which case Jeremiah will also start Core 2! For math he will continue on with Singapore. He is in book 2B and will go on with 3A. For handwriting he uses A Reason for Handwriting. For Language Arts he uses First Language Lessons and Sonlight's Language arts. He will do Science with Emily.

Joshua will be tagging along with Jeremiah in Core 1 and 2. For Math he will finish MCP K and start Singapore 1A. For Language Arts he will do First Language Lessons, Sonlight Language Arts 1, and work through An Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. For Science, Sonlight Science K.

Miss Bethany even go her own books this year! I ordered her Sonlight P 3/4. She will really enjoy having her own time with Mama.

The big step for me comes in getting out each kiddos materials one-by-one and planning out school assingments for them. My friend Misti over at
told me about which offers a great selection of planning pages for free! So, to plan my kids out I go to Donna Young's site and print out the number of pages I need for each kiddo.I hole punch them. Then in that students color coded folder I put the pages I will be using. I then plan out each child's work, subject by subject. This past year, I moved the planner pages to my personal notebook along with each child's attendence forms. I then flipped open to these each Sunday afternoon to copy assingment into a kid friendly manner in each one's assinggment notebook.This year I plan to cut out the middle step! I am still learnig!