Most schools are winding down for the year and getting ready for a break. After some discussion with my husband we decided to embark on year round schooling. This week we finished up our first week of the 2013-14 school year. Life has been hectic and chaotic for the past several weeks and we needed the normalcy of our school days back. The situation here at home has been so full of anxiety that I am sore from the tension. My back, neck and shoulder muscles hurt…As hard as this whole experience has been with my brother I am so grateful for the security I have in my husband. Security may seem a strange word choice but in my husband I have someone who loves me and he strengthens me to endure and grow from hard realities. He makes me a better person because he loves me…I am not sure that I can explain any better…
Anyway, we are back to school and settling down into our normal family routine. Littlest is almost potty trained and does quite well when we are home. Once he is well-trained then we will be looking for a good dog. I am considering a German Shepherd…a nice protective dog. We had a promotion party a couple of weeks ago. I let the kids have double their normal game time…which they loved! We also watched a movie and had popcorn and root beer floats. They had a really fun day and I posted their report cards on the refrigerator.
Biggest-4th Grade: Delta from MathUSee, Language Arts 4 and Reading 4 from Christian Light Education, Writing With Ease Level 4 from Peace Hill Press, Prima Latina and Famous Men of Roam from Memoria Press. For literature he will study through Rolf and the Viking Bow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Chronicles of Narnia, Black Ships Before Troy and The Hobbit.
Sparkles and JR 2nd Grade: Beta from MathUSee, Language Arts 2 and Reading 2 from Christian Light Education and Writing With Ease Level 2 from Peace Hill Press. Sparkles is also continuing with Spanish For You.
Group Studies: We will continue with The Story of the World Volume 2 from Peace Hill Press as well as Botany and Astronomy from Apologia. We are starting American history with Early American History from Beautiful Feet. For Christian Studies I chose Telling God’s Story from Olive Branch Books. I am very happy that I found Telling God’s Story since it is focused on Jesus for the early elementary years. When Christmas comes around we will continue with our study of Christmas Around the World.
Littlest: He is beginning pre-reading skills and will gradually go through the Phonics Museum from Veritas Press. He loves his “school box”.
Well…I think that is everything…
Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers: The Weekly Wrap Up. I thought it might be fun to join this wrap-up this year. I really enjoyed going through everyone’s posts last year and getting fun ideas for my little scholars.
in pursuit of wild things 
July 20, 2013 at 9:12 am
Looks like some great choices for the new school year! All the best for a wonderful year!
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July 21, 2013 at 11:45 am
Looks like it will be a great school year! We’re doing a Narnia study this year as well (must be a 4th grader thing!)
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November 23, 2013 at 11:03 am
We continued in the summer, but it was different for us, since we do serious gardening and canning and I was too old to break out of lock-step ;-). Usually we went for hand-made books that were like diaries of each day’s activities. It was simple. They made statements in their books such as, “Today we weeded carrots. 😦 ” and then there would be a drawing of a carrot, or of themselves weeding, or whatever they fancied. I felt we needed this, and tried harder to include fun activities to make a few smileys such as, “Today we made ice cream! 🙂 ”
We needed this activity so we would not come to the end of summer wondering where our glorious summer WENT! I still have those books, although my children range in ages from 42 to 22!
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November 25, 2013 at 10:03 am
Those sound like good ideas. I am hoping to plant a bigger garden this coming year and have the kids help decide what to grow…maybe they will be willing to eat more vegetables. We are reading through Squanto right now and they want to plant the way the Native American’s did. Now that we have been schooling since mid-May we do feel the need for a break and will be done with this year’s work around Good Friday…We still want to school year round but I need to change things up a bit for this coming summer. I like your journal idea….thank you for sharing.
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November 25, 2013 at 12:49 pm
ideas for getting them to do the weeding when their zeal begins to slack off, here:
http://katharinetrauger.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/canning-gardening-children/
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November 26, 2013 at 2:56 pm
Thanks and I’ll try to keep the little one from eating dirt!!!
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November 27, 2013 at 12:28 am
😆
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