The New Schoolyear

I know my friends have waited with baited breath to see how many MONTHS I can go without blogging. We are well into our new schoolyear (week 5) and have decided to follow HSD, www.oliveplants.blogspot.com lead, and let you know about our new and old (favorite) curriculm.

We are all studing the Ancients. By all I mean me (History of the Ancient World, by Bauer), to ME, 6th grade using Tapestry of Grace Year 1, to the littles using Story of the World by Bauer. ME has 45 min a day to read, and 45 min a day to do all of her work from TOG. I have begun implementing lapbooks in order to record all of the history information we have been accruing. For my glueing/coloring/cutting child, this is a blessing, for the others it is a good part of therapy.

For sixth grade Language Arts, we are reviewing year one of Lively Latin, year 6 of Hey Andrew Teach me some Greek!, Daily Grammar Practice, Daily Reading Practice and our favorite, Institute for Excellence in Writing. I did buy the Level B IEW Continuation Course on DVD, since ME thrives on writing. My favorite additions for the year have to be the Daily Grammar Practice and Daily Reading Practice.

We have a Math tutor a few houses down, who tutors ME and I cook a meal for her family. It is a great trade. We are still continuing in flute and piano.

For the littles, we are using Spell to Write and Read and seeing excellent progress. I am also using Cursive First and this is GREAT for all the reverals and flips of the letters. We are using several other books for our circle time, including Song School Latin, Play and Find out Science Experiments, Mini-Luk for thinking skills, Little Keepers of our Home and Artistic Pursuits.

Our newest change for the year is having 45 min blocks with 15 min breaks. This is for everyone including MOM! I love it. ME is practicing her piano during some, we are doing some of our therapy exercises, I am able to do laundry, make yogurt or granola and even go to the bathroom (definately a privelege for the homeschooling mom). Thanks Tisha for the idea.

The pictures at the top are the Egyptian princess, EJ. Also, our working model of the Nile River, to show how the flooding helps with the farming.