Life has been busy...for everyone I am sure!
- Still working on curriculum for next year. I usually have everything planned and ordered long before July. Well, better late than never.
- I've decided to "design" my own spelling curriculum, at least for this school year for 2-3 of my kids. Am I crazy?!?! I think those kids would learn quite well with Sequential Spelling, but I think learning the rules is important too. I have flashcards from All About Spelling and W.I.S.E. Guide. I'll need to take some time to figure out how to work those into our daily lessons. I never took much stock in sequential spelling, until I took a look at it! It is quite similar to the method I did on my own (very time consuming) after attending a workshop years ago for teaching struggling readers/spellers. It worked great! But, as the presenter said...it's not something you want to take the time to do unless your child really needs the extra help.
- I've also decided to do my own thing for Religion this year for all but my high school age son (well, maybe I can pull him in n some things, we'll see). I want us to attend daily Mass more frequently than once a week! I may lighten our Religion lesson days to make room for this. Hopefully we can make it a habit and next year attend Mass and get back to more religion lessons. I plan to follow the Baltimore Catechism for much of it. I want the kids to learn the fruits and gifts of the Holy Spirit, pillars of the church, 12 apostles and something about them - their symbols?, I don;'t just want them to learn those things - I want them to OWN them. I want to introduce them to spiritual reading, more with the saints, liturgical seasons, parts of the Mass, etc. Guess I'd better get working! They have a Mass set and our altar servers can share some info. about what they do. I'll have a First Communicant again this year so I want to plan some of this around her schedule. If she's learning about the Mass in the winter then we will too!
- I've also got a new plan in place for helping my kids with their math. I really think it will work. I pray it will. I love math and I want them too as well. I have a couple kids in paricular with a natural inclination to math but for various reasons they are loosing the interest due to mundane learning. I think I can liven it up a bit and stay with our current curriculum of Teaching Textbooks for most. It frees me up to spend some time on the exciting and/or confusing topics without everyone needing my help on that ever day. For the record - you must know that my all time favorite math curriculum is Righstart Math. I refuse to part with my entire series - but it's time consuming and kids need my time in learning to read more than they need the best math curriculum. I still use a lot of the methods I learned with it though - that's something I hope to be able to utilize more of this year.
- We moved a year ago and our old house had a white board wall that I really miss. We are fortunate to have a lot of natural lighting (windows!) in the room we do most of our homeschooling. But, I want somewhere to write our English From the Roots Up words - somewhere they can add derivatives! Somewhere to stand up and give fun lessons and leave it there to soak in over a few days. So, we are working on a bit of a reorganization in that room!
- I'm also trying to prayerfully decide where to spend time on extracurriculars. With homeschooling grades 9,8,5,3,2 plus a 4.5 yr old, baby, and a first yr college student coming and going I need to guard my time really really well. But, I see a few needs that are best met with outside involvement.
