I'm not ready to see all the "back to school" stuff in the stores. I admit, I'm kind of excited to see all the cute new styles of clothes coming out, but, come on, seriously? We've only had 2 months of summer and it's back to school? I brings up dread just from my own memories of my school age days. So, it's the last day of July, named after Julius Caesar. Tomorrow is August, named after Augustus Caesar, (I learned this with the kids this week in history). And I guess I should be thinking more back to school like stuff...maybe?
Well, I guess I have, kind of. And here comes a word on the homeschool part: I have been thinking about what we are going to study this year, how to tweak our learning for the childrens' different learning abilities and levels. And so I have come up with what we are doing this year, which has actually been a relief off my mind as I've struggled through my first year of homeschooling.
A friend clued me in on History Odyssey, so I ordered the first of 3 books for the year on the 2nd part of world history. I got it and I love it! It uses Story of the World, but also A Child's History, and the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History (which I already had) and the lesson plans are pretty simple (yes! lesson plans!) and the lay out is much easier for me to understand then the Story of the World Activity book (though I think I will supplement with that because I do like it) in getting myself together. I also ordered R.E.A.L. Science Chemistry and I think that is going to up our level of science, for sure. I'm really excited about these two great finds. Meanwhile, I will incorporate my Sonlight books that go with Core 2 (we are doing Medieval this year) which are their reading level readers as well as read alouds, and geography. So yeah! I feel like things are coming together, and I guess I have been thinking about school....
I will continue using Rod and Staff Grammar because I think it's fabulous, A Reason for Handwriting, Sequential spelling for Becca, and will try A Reason for Spelling with Jon (Seq. spelling didn't work so great for him, but then I learned you are supposed to start when they are 8...whoops! no wonder!) I got Teaching Textbooks Math for Rebecca and she loves it. Yeah! And Jon will stick with A Beka Math until he catches up for Level 3 Teaching Txtbooks. I will also try to incorporate more games and real life uses of math. I've not done that too much, although Rebecca is learning to cook. Bringing Savannah into the picture was a little stressful, but it's mostly learning to read with her. She is great with her math and writing. I just need to read more to her.
So I guess I've been thinking kind of back to school, only being that this is my first year homeschooling, I've been thinking about this ALL year, not just summertime. And I'm excited to have a plan as we do start school, which we really never stopped, just take breaks here and there.
But back to school? Ugh. Headache. I'm so excited that my children (Oh! and me!) still have at least a month and a half of summer left. It won't start to cool down until mid Sept. And we have school days, sometimes weeks, but we have play days, especially in this nice weather. And have had lots of play dates, which I've been so grateful for. And my children are making friends, which I love. I guess I'm pretty flexible when it comes to school and play. But when I'm supposed to log 600 core and 400 non core hours (=1000 :) a year, and I've got 100, split pretty equally between core/non-core, just with July, I think I'm doing all right. It makes me happy for my children to get to be children and not have to sit in chairs all day.
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