Happy New (School) Year!

School can officially start for us now! All the books I ordered arrived today. Exciting!!

I have one second grader this year and my twins are officially in kindergarten! I also have a two year old and an almost four year old. We enjoy learning a "letter of the week" together plus they sit with us when they can and learn plenty.

We use mostly the The Well-Trained Mind. So if you are curious about our "system" I highly recommend you check out TWTM from your library. It's an excellent book. Broken down by subject here is what we will be using:

• Math--Saxon 2
• Language/Grammar--First Language Lessons
• Reading--various books related to the history/science we are studying
  
• History--Story of the World Volume 2: along with the activity book
• Spelling-- Spelling Workout B (and later C) and SpellingCity.com
  
• Science--various books like the Usborne First Encyclopedia of Space (and Our World)
  
• Writing: Zaner-Bloser Cursive

In addition to the more academic subjects we are also going to do a year long character study. We'll focus on one Christian character trait and corresponding Bible verse each week. For music we learn one hymn a month plus learn about composers/classical music by using a great site (& podcasts) called Classics for Kids. We also have P.E. with our local homeschool group.

If you are interested in seeing our whole year planned out click here. We have a daily schedule as well. Disclaimer: This schedule is just the ideal we are aiming for. Will we follow it exactly? NO! But it is nice to have something to work toward. If you are interested in learning more about scheduling I highly recommend the Maxwell's Managers of Their Homes (and Managers of Their Chores. I'll save the explanation of our chore system for another post.)

We won't actually be starting until the 1st of September. Even though we can start whenever we want we usually end up starting when the public schools here start (which is almost always after Labor Day). Since Labor Day is late this year school is going to start before Labor Day.

Here's to a great year of learning for everyone!!