A New School Year

Do you hear the choirs of angels? Maybe it's simply the baa-ing of sheep. Either way, we survived our first year of schooling! There were times I didn't think we would, and during those times prayers kept me going. I didn't get much blogging done, but between homeschooling, writing and the Atrium I didn't have a lot of extra time.

I'll be honest, school was start and stop especially in the spring between book deadlines, illnesses, a baseball hitting my 9 year olds face during Little League practices and a skiing accident I took in May! Special thanks to my guardian angel and my helmet otherwise I might not be here!

In spite of my injured hand and a cast, I managed to attend part of a Level 3 Catechesis of the Good Shepherd training course in St. Patrick's Parish in Tacoma, WA. I plan to spend most of September making Level 3 works for the Atrium that will start in October. I'll be running a Level 1 and a combined Level 2/3 session!

We managed to get standardized testing completed at the end of July. The two older lambs showed improvement in their scores compared to those from the Catholic school. I was so excited to see my son's reading score go from below average to above average in one year of homeschooling! It was a huge boost of confidence to me! The baby lamb did so well a few friends have told me to get her tested for a gifted program. I'm not sure about that since she's thriving at home.

We are changing things up a little this year. I really love the Latin Centered Curriculum by Drew Campbell, but implementing it with three different aged lambs was a bit much for me. Organization is not a strong point of mine. (I hope iCal will help with that!) I found the Classical Liberal Arts Academy this past spring which was the answer to my prayers. We'll be using them for our core courses and then using Elizabeth Foss' Real Learning and Serendipity to get ideas for liturgical celebrations and other subjects.

In addition to my Atrium sessions, I'm teaching a weekly one hour literature course for 5-7 year olds at our co-op called Kid Lit Book Club. I'm also in charge of the crafts for our Little Flowers group this year. Another busy year with one novel to revise by the end of the month and another to write by December 1st!

I hope to post more about my plans and what we're doing, but in order to blog I must meet my writing page goals first. Often that doesn't happen until late at night. Still I'll try to do better.

Blessings for the new school year from The Sheepfold!