In June, I was happily finishing our plans for a summer study of our state, and gearing up to do lesson plans for the coming school year.
In July, I was working full time outside the home and enrolling both boys in the local public school again.
In September, the memories of why we had started homeschooling in the first place came back to haunt us as the reality of life as a public school family slapped us in the face.
In October, I quit my job and attempted to figure out how to manage making money and educating my older child.
In November, older child was back home with me.
In December, younger child, who did not want to be at school if his brother didn't have to go, was back home with us.
It's February now, and my husband's workplace of 27 years has gone through dramatic changes. I'm working part time with him to try to help the firm through some of these changes. I'm also embarking on an awesome education/business venture with some very smart ladies. Oh yeah, and attempting to educate the children, too.
Needless to say, I'm a little overwhelmed at times.
Thank heavens I had already chosen curriculum for the year! I took some time to make lesson plans. They're not as fancy schmancy as my normal lesson plans, but they're working for now.
So, I basically decided to disregard whatever it was that the kids had been doing at public school, since it didn't correspond to what we have been doing for the past three years, and they really hadn't learned anything new. I tried to get my husband to take charge of all things public school, but he just couldn't do it. Part of the problem I had with the school (among many other things) was that I just wasn't down with their philosophy of education. I feel like a half year of our lives was wasted, but I'm not going to look back. Just going to move on.
We started afresh in January with Cycle 1/Ancients in our four year classical model plan. We are studying Ancient History and Life Sciences. We are continuing to use our preferred language arts program- MCT Language Arts. We're continuing with Minimus 2 for Latin and Math U See Epsilon for a study of fractions this year. I'm excited about our new writing program, about which I just wrote a post for the classical homeschooling blog my friends and I are working on. It should be published in March. We have a new science curriculum, too: R. E. A. L. Science Odyssey Biology 2. It is chock full of really cool experiments and microscope labs.
 |
| Making Mayan inspired reliefs out of salt dough |
 |
| Making a slide to look at cork cells under the microscope |
 |
| Getting ready to watch the movie they made for their class at the Microsoft store |
I've told the boys we'll school through summer, at least until our beloved Anja and her mom come all the way from Germany to visit us for the last weeks of summer! I'm so looking forward to that. We need a peaceful, fun summer.
