Half Way Through Week 1

Well so good so far. We seem so sail through Math and Language Arts pretty quickly without much pain. Science with Exploring Creation through Botany has been a great pleasure. The lessons are planned out for me, the notebooking journal is in place, the activities and experiments are hands-on and fun. We did the shoe taxonomy activity yesterday to learn how Botanist classify plants.

History with TOG to say the least is a little more daunting. Between SOTW and the suggested Read Alouds from TOG it is a lot of reading. I really do feel like I need to read both because SOTW tells a story which is easy to remember but the other resource gives the biography information needed to understand the key people of the time and serves as a resource for doing timeline work. I'm starting to think that purchasing the stories on CD may be a way to cover the read aloud work in SOTW. That way the kids don't have to hear my voice for an hour. On top of the suggested reading for history I selected 3 separate literature books for the girls to read during their reading time. Oldest daughter finished this in one day! The younger dialectic and UG daughter are reluctantly reading their choices. It's Wednesday and we have yet to do the Geography and Arts section of the TOG curriculum. I really thought History would be 3 days a week subject but with TOG it seems to be an everyday subject. I know they say to make it your own, you don't have to do it all, etc. etc. and I thought I had done that but I may have to pair it down even more. Whew!

Yesterday was UG daughter's first day of piano lessons - this was pure joy to watch. I am really looking forward to her progress. I also need to find something for her to practice on.

Easing into the New School Year

Yesterday I explained the History notebooking system to my younger girls who've never been homeschooled and we started in the first 2 chapters of SOTW. Boy do I love the way SOTW teaches history in a storytelling fashion. Because my rising 8th grader is preparing for high school after this year I am second guessing myself as to whether she should be doing the "standard" American history or join us in our study of the Middle Ages with TOG. Between her first semester study of history in public school and her second semester with me we started with Jamestown and barely began the Civil War when summer began. However, public school did some WWII & WWI studies first semester. Part of me feels like we should keep going until we hit modern times but I really don't want to divide myself between the Middle Ages and the Post-Modern era. What to do??

Won't she get enough American History in high school for me to not really worry about it?

Planning for next year

Seems like I keep going back to the drawing board when it comes to planning for next year. Initially, I used TWTM as an outline as to what and how to teach certain subjects at different levels. But as I look to have more than one homeschooler it seems wise to use one curriculum resource where possible. JW will do Classical Conversations once a week using Saxon math, Latin grammar, World Geography, Creative Writing, and Newberry Literature. I'm going to add Wordly Wise to help strengthen her vocabulary. I'm expecting her to be responsible for her work and accountable to her tutor for her assignments with my oversight. She will do history as a unit study with her sisters and physical science under my direction.

My most recent find has been Tapestry of Grace. It will allow me to do Language Arts Reading, History, and Bible/Church History with all three kids using real books and resources catered to their grade levels. I downloaded sample lessons from thier website and I believe it will help make things interesting and a little easier as far as lesson planning goes. I will use Saxon for each kid for their grade level, younger two will do Apologia and Spelling Workout for Spelling. I don't have anything formal for grammar - not sure what I will add if anything for that. Seems like an awful lot to do. Not to mention the fact that I want to incorporate Art & Music as well. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out but I am looking forward to all of this being a family affair.