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!

The 14 Days of Homeschool

Out of my cave

It's been months since I've posted. I got hit with hand problems with Carpal Tunnel like symptoms which severely limited my on-line time. I also had a book due in November. Writing when it hurts to type is no fun. But I finally got it finished after getting an extra couple of weeks. The revisions have now been done and accepted and I don't have another book due until June. So yay!

Homeschooling has been going great! We love it and plan to continue on next year. My lessons learned so far:

1) Organization - I need to be much more organized. I met another homeschooling mom when we went to see The Wizard of Oz last week who turned me onto this website which has a free web-based lesson planner. I'm going to use this for winter quarter and have already started filling it in.

2) Overscheduling - I was too worried about the kids need for socialization and overscheduled us in September and October to the point none of us were happy. Less having to go out each and every week is definitely better. I'm not talking field trips, but things like a co-op with enrichment classes. Lesson learned!

3) Change is good! - The kids didn't like Prima Latina. I hesitated but finally bought Lively Latin. What a change! They love latin now. I am still using Prima Latina to teach the prayers though. I also added IEW's Poetry Memorization and it's been a wonderful addition to our day.

4) Science woes - With my deadline, the one thing that got dropped was science. We did two weeks of RSK4 Chemistry and that was it. We're going to get caught up over Christmas with a science intensive couple of weeks.

5) Math woes - The older two hate Saxon. They are up to lesson 70ish and right now the plan it to get through the entire text. I bought Life of Fred Fractions for my oldest to supplement. She's enjoying that. I know I won't be putting her into Saxon 87 now and need to research Pre-Algebra programs.

What curriculum we are using...

I've decided on a mish-mash of things after all my research. Here is what I have decided on for each of the lambs and will slowly be adding in subjects as we head toward September:

Oldest (10 yo - 5th grade):
Saxon Math 76
Prima Latina (then move into Latina Christiana I or Lively Latin 1)
All About Spelling (then move into Simply Spelling and/or Megawords 1)
Writing Tales 2 w/Growing with Grammar (not a lot of grammar in Prima Latina)
Mindbenders for Logic
Art with a purpose 5 (I'd like to do more, but am afraid of overwhelming myself!)

Second (8 yo - 3rd grade):
Saxon Math 54
Prima Latina (then move into Latina Christiana I or Lively Latin 1)
All About Spelling (then move into Simply Spelling)
Handwriting
Writing Tales 1
Art with a purpose 3

Youngest (5 yo - Kindergarner):
Saxon Math 1
Sound Beginnings (phonics and writing)
Five in a Row
Poetry (Mother of Divine Grace K syllabus list and method of memorization)
Art Appreciation (Mother of Divine Grace K syllabus method using Child-sized Masterpiece cards)
Art For Little Lambs

For all three (K'er along for the ride for some of it):
Biblioplan Ancient History (reading, geography, art appreciation, arts and crafts)
WTM Science with Real Science 4 Kids Biology unit
Religion
Crossfit Kids classes for PE
Music (Piano Lessons)
French (The two oldest have had three years of French and want to continue. I ordered the sample from The Easy French and am waiting for that to arrive. Still have no idea what I should do hear since I do not speak a word of French.)

It seems like a lot. I figure I can always cut or add as needed! That's one reason I started in July. I wanted to make sure we had more than enough time to get things done by the end of the school year!

Our first official day!

Today was our first day of homeschooling. No tears from any one of us so I'd call that a success. I made a few mistakes. Forgot to print out the morning offering prayer so we'd each have a copy. The kids remembered to bring their rosaries with them for our opening. I didn't. I spaced out that I needed all three Saxon book so was missing the facts sheet and the solutions manual.

My son whined a bit, but the girls did great. My K'er isn't used to sharing me so that was a new thing for her and something she'll have to get used to doing as well as keeping herself occupied when I'm helping one of the other two.

As for me, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. The past two months have been spent on book deadline and then in June I got hit with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. It took 15 books so I guess I should be relieved it didn't happen earlier in my writing career, but it was much more painful than I'd ever imagined and as soon as I can manage some free time and/or a babysitter I need to see a doctor. I'm relying on an ergo keyboard, exercises and hand braces right now, but it's impacted not only my writing, but trying to get ready for our homeschooling.

In spite of my uncooperative hands, we did start and it felt great. I'm just crossing my fingers that things go a little smoother tomorrow!

Barely back

We spent spring break skiing and rock climbing. I kept thinking this could be our last official school spring break. It was a little strange, but that didn't keep us from having a great time. All three kids are skiing wonderfully and I was so pleased with their climbing. We did the same climb at Smith Rock we'd done last August and it was amazing to see how all three had improved both with their skills and in the younger two, their fear levels.

Unfortunately I got sick when we got home so I've been fighting whatever it is. I finally went to the doctors today. Sinus infection. At least I can take antibiotics and start feeling human again. But it's really thrown a wrench in all my plans.

On the homeschool front, I'm making more decisions about curriculum. Here's a couple of new things I've decided on:

1) History

Although I love Tapestry of Grace, in order to simplify things next year, I bought Biblioplan instead. It comes with a three day a week schedule which uses Story of the World 1 and has corresponding bible reading. That is exactly what I'd wanted.

2) Spelling

I actually about two things. All About Spelling and Simply Spelling. I want to use AAS to get the kids spelling where it should be. They would be considered unnatural spellers. And then we'll use Simply Spelling once they have a better grip of things.

Now my big task is to get it all organized! I think I need a FlyLady for homeschoolers to help me out.

Getting excited!

It's been awhile since I posted, but I've been busy making plans for next year. We made the decision to homeschool. It wasn't one thing in particular, but a whole lot of little things that led us to the "We're doing it!" moment. The lambs had a big part of it. All three were so excited by the thought of homeschooling. That seemed like half the battle right there!

So since my last post, I've been trying to figure out what I want to do next year and scouring the forum boards for information and used materials on the things I have decided on. What are those?

1) I want to continue with Saxon Math since the kids use that at school and like it. I want to study history chronologically in four years cycles per the Well-Trained Mind book I read years ago.

2) I also want our science to follow the same four year cycle so next year we'll be studying life sciences: animals, human body and plants.

3) I want to school year around to keep the kids' retention level.

4) I want Latin to be an important part of our curriculum. I'm waiting for the new revised edition of the Latin Centered Curriculum by Andrew Campbell to come out, but until then I'm gleaming what I can from boards, loops and websites!

I found Prima Latina w/DVDs for sale on the Well-Trained Mind for sale board. It was a great price so I bought it. I ordered an extra workbook from Beth's Bookstore. A week ago we started Latin! We listen to the CD in the minivan while we drive around. We watched the second lesson this weekend. So far so good!

I started with Rose's syllabus since I figured Kindergarten would be easier to figure out than 3rd or 5th grade. I'm almost done with what I want to cover over the year. I actually had a lot of the items already! But I do have a few more things I need to buy. Fingers crossed for a tax refund!