I'm feeling positively optimistic about homeschooling this year. Of course I run in cycles, but I feel good about this decision. I went out and bought a wall calendar, and I am very hopeful that I will find it helpful. I plan to use it as a sort of curriculum and day planner. I want to be able to write SOMETHING down every day. I found it very reassuring to recount what we actually did LAST week. I was surprised and impressed to realize that we do a lot more than I recognize. Most of what we do is just part of our lives. It's not at all school-at-home, and so sometimes I feel like we just don't DO anything.

Anyway, I combed through the regional parks newletter to find activities that I'd like to do and wrote them down. I also wrote down ideas for thematic units I'd like to do in the empty spaces at the ends and beginnings of the next few months. That will remind me to do a few searches for books on the library's catalog.

I have to go pick up a packet of information from COIL tomorrow. I'm curious as to what it will have to say.

I go in to pick up our packet of info on the 24th, 25th, or 26th. School offically begins on September 1st. I'm started to feel a little more excited and nervous. I've even begun making more plans for the school year.

Right now we are very causually doing Phonics Pathways. Jade is bored of it, so I'm hoping we can settle on something a little more fun for us both. She's doing well with her reading, and can read me the first Bob Books and Phonics Practice Readers with relative ease. I don't think she's quite ready for starting Spelling, so I think we'll waitin until late October or November and re-evalute then. She definately not ready for Grammar. No rush here. As for literature, I think we'll be following some of the suggestions in The Well-Trained Mind. To start, we'll spend a bit of time focused on Greek and Roman Myths, and in honor of the Olympics, a bit of the Olympic games and sportsmanship. We're also memorizing the poems from What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know and Oakmeadow K.

As I mentioned before, we'll most likely be tackling Miquon Math, and hopefully finishing the Orange Book. I'll also be asking about audio tapes with math songs on them and math games.

Science is going to continue to be fairlylaid back. Probably a few "experiements" here and there, and periodic classes through COIL and Math Science Nucleus. I'd like to do units on marine life and the human body in particular, and the animal kingdom in general. I'm also going to be making a more concerted effort to go out on nature walks and hikes at area parks.

I have several takes on this. The WTM suggests doing the ancients this year. I have the wookbook written by Susan Bauer, and think we may do a bit of that. But since the theme at COIL is "Our Nation," I think I'd like to wait and see what kind of unit studies they may have available to us. It's important to me that Jade has a healthy dose of cultural literacy, of course.

Pretty basic stuff, here. I've heard that COIL will be doing a MonArt class, which sounds like a lot of fun. And we like to do activities like drawing and painting around here. Plus trips to the park, bike riding, swimming, etc, are parts of everyday life. I may enroll Jade in a dance or gymnastics class, but I feel pretty confident that phys ed is pretty well covered.

I am waiting for news from COIL about the start of school. I expect to be contacted sometime in the next two to three weeks. We'll find out who our advisory teacher is, when we get to meet her, and when Jade will get evaluated to see where she's at grade-wise. I registered her as a kindergartener, but I feel pretty confident that she's at first grade level with most things. I'm anxious about how this is going to work, and afraid that there will be lots of conflict- either between me and the teacher, me and Jade, or both. We've stuck to such a relaxed pace that I hate the idea of being pushed into working with textbooks and doing dittos. I wont be pulled into power struggles. I don't have the energy or will for it.

This is very exciting to me. We've done very little in the way of phonics this summer. Jade was very adament that she didn't want to do Phonics Pathways anywmore, and I've been perfectly content to relax, read together, draw and paint, go to the park, etc. Well, it seems that she just needed time! She can read many of the first series of BOB books with only an occasional reminder to "look at the letters." We also bought some Phonics Practice Readers, which are slightly more challenging, but she can also read. It's hard for her to keep focus, and I think it tires her out to read for long periods of time. But she's really READING. She doesn't have to slowly and laboriously blend all the letters together, though that's what she does if a word is unfamiliar. I think, though, that as she gains confidence, she'll start making rapid progress.

The other night, I picked up Hop on Pop to read to her as a bed time story. I casually commented that "You could read that page." To my surprise, she took the book from me and DID read it, as well as quite a lot of the other pages. She'd read a while, then give me the book to read when she got tired, or if the page was too hard for her, or whatever. I'd read a bit, and then she'd interupt me, "No, no. It's MY turn!" I was just tickled to have her acting like that. :-)

So I decided it's time to start thinking about our plans for this school year. I have tons of resources to get ideas from, but short on inclination to make a plan and then actually follow through with it. Regardless, I'm going to see what I can do that will fit with our temperaments and circumstances.

To start with, I'll be doing Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready with Nova and the new babe. It has a simple activity for each week from birth to age five. Many are very basic, for example, playfully moving your newborns legs up and down, or head gently from side to side. A lot of them Jade will enjoy, and be able to help me set up and do with Nova. We did one activity that the book suggested for a two year old this morning. I poured some paint onto wax paper and let the girls go at it. When they were done, I pressed a peice of paper on top to make a copy. The prints turned out REALLY cute. They are just about dry now.

Not too sure how it will go with Jade. I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do with language arts. We'll continue to read the Fairy Tales from Oakmeadow K and do a page every week or two. Plus she's enjoying learning little poems and rhymes, which I will probably pull from a variety of sources (Oakmeadow, What Your Kindegartener needs to Know, Etc). Her penmanship seems to just be improving without any external help. We may do Handwriting without Tears or wait and see what our advisory teacher offers us/ suggests.

In addition, we'll continue to read a variety of longer books aloud together. I'm thinking of getting Stuart Little and Elmer and the Dragonon tape. Jade really liked listening to Charlotte's Web on CD, and I read My Father's Dragon to her early this year (which she loved). I have a list of age-appropriate books from The Read-Aloud Handbook that I'd like to check out from the library as we work our way through them.

For history, I really have very little idea of what I want to do. I feel pretty comfortable just winging it. Maybe do some unit studies on the Olympics, ancient Greece, etc, and a little off social history to go along with American holidays. Whatever catches our fancy. I have one of the history books and companion workbook that Susan Bauer (author of The Well-Trained Mind) wrote. We may use that, though *I* think the stories are kind of boring.

For math, we have yet to really *work* on learning concepts. I do own Miquon Math, which Jade enjoys in moderation. It has totally different feel than most math texts, which I really like. I think it fits Jade's personality. However, we may change our mind, I don't feel terribly attached to Miquon.

Science is more of a mystery to me than anything else. Rumor has it that COIL will be offering a science and an art class this year, and I am HOPING that is true. If it is, we'll probably try to just follow up on the topics that use. I do have resources with ideas for teaching science, but I think I am too lazy to spend more time prepping an activity than my kids will spend do said activity. It's just not worth it to me. Another option for science is to enroll Jade in Math Science Nucleus classes again.