Summer Learning Plans

Every summer, I want to give my children a break from our usual school schedule. However, every summer, I also want them to continue reading and learning.  To accomplish this, these are our plans:

Reading daily - a book of your choice and a book mom reads aloud (right now it's Tom Sawyer, which has a lot of interesting vocabulary!)

Writing is self-directed. I find that my daughters often write stories on their own without any prompting, so we take a break from the assigned handwriting and copy work and allow them to create on their own.

Spelling will be continued with a child who has been struggling.

Typing - We have been using goodtyping.com online for free, but it doesn't interest my younger children. So, I will be having them try out a couple of different online typing courses as well as having my teens continue with their current lessons.

Mathematics - Since one of my children has struggled all year with math, we will be continuing one-on-one together all summer long. This is middle school math, so is good for me too!

Science - Last summer, we really enjoyed exploring the flora and fauna in our area and posting our finds on Project Noah.  Since we enjoyed it so much, we will be doing that again. We've already discovered our first entry! an interesting looking caterpillar that we have yet to identify.

That about sums up our educational plans for the summer. We will also be traveling quite a bit.  Other than that, I am busy collecting resources to use with Classical Conversations Cycle 3 and looking forward to some focused planning time.

Our Homeschooling Revival

September 6, 2013

Well, we have started our homeschooling year and just completed our third day - well 1/2 day. We will begin full days in another week or so. I try to ease the kids (and myself) back into the school routine gently.

I'm super excited about this school year. At this time, we are exactly halfway through our homeschooling career. We have been homeschooling for 11 years and have 11 more to go until our youngest graduates, barring any unforeseen life-changing events.

For the past 3 years, I have been struggling to keep up with homeschooling. I had all four kids to teach and was barely keeping up. I was wondering if I could do this anymore and even wondering if it was time to put one or two of them into a brick-and-mortar school. However, my husband and I both feel very strongly that this is how God wants us to educate our children. So, I knew I needed help and something different in order to continue the honorable task we began. That's when God brought Classical Conversations into our world in a way that I could not ignore. This is just what we needed to carry us through our remaining homeschool years.

I'm very optimistic (just plain jazzed!) to begin this second half of our homeschooling journey with Classical Conversations.