Not ready yet!

The other day I was sitting in the front room of my parents house looking out the big picture window that looks out the front yard and down the hill to the road. As I sat there I noticed the big yellow school bus stop at the bottom of the driveway. I couldn't believe it. School had already started?

The bus brought back a lot of memories.  It was nice to have the bus stop right at the bottom of our hill and driveway. We never missed the bus because we could see it come and while it turned around we could race down to meet it. I remember running down our long driveway to catch the bus on morning when I was running late and tripping and falling, skidding across the pavement leaving me with scratched up palms and even a bit of my face.  All my stuff went flying and I ended up making everyone wait while I collected it. Riding the school bus wasn't always fun but it was just part of going to school.

Kids in our area don't ride a bus to school. I guess because the school districts are so small the kids either get walked to school by their parents or dropped off. It makes for a hectic half hour each morning I am sure! My mom had it easy since we didn't even have to go far for the bus stop.
The kids in our area are starting back to school tomorrow. I honestly as am not ready yet. But then I don't know if I ever really feel ready. I don't sit and plan out each subject completely and write out lesson plans for the year. I tend to just go with the flow and see where it takes us. I plan a few weeks in advance and have a general idea of where the subjects are going but I don't follow any one curriculum exactly and don't follow their lesson plans either. I sometimes wish I could, and I have tried it with some subjects, but it just never seems to work out for us.

Scripture -  We are reading through the Book of Mormon and memorizing all the Articles of Faith at the moment and will see what we decide to do next. We have Scripture Study for LDS families and I need to get it out more often to help us make scripture reading a little more interesting.

Science - We are doing physics this year. I am planning to follow Elemental Science Physics for the Grammar stage along with a bunch of other books from the library including a number of biographies of scientists. These will most likely correspond to our history lessons too.

My kids are really excited because I bought a Knex simple machines kit that they can't wait to dig into. We already have a bunch of Knex but I wanted something that would let us build and use all the different types of machines. I hope this works. I didn't spend as much as that link to Amazon says. I bought mine on Ebay.

History - I am a little at a loss about history. I need to think about this subject some more. The last few years we have just followed Story of the World and read a bunch of books and did some of the projects from the activity book. When I finally got around to looking at the activity book a few days ago, I decided it looks way over my kids head.  I think we will use ideas from it but I just don't see us using it like we have in the past.
I have some work to do here!

Math  - Singapore Math is working for us so we will continue. Our library has the Life of Fred books so Sophie is going to start with the Fractions and see if she likes it. (I think she will love it. She picked it up today and started reading it already.) Ian will start the 2A book and Henry will start the 1A book some time this year. I think with Henry we will work more on reading than math to start with.

Language arts - We are going to give Simply Grammar a try. I may even go back to First Language Lessons and try it with Ian. He has a very different learning style than Sophie so it may work well for him.

Art - I really want to do artist study again. I think I will pull out artists from the time periods we are studying. Since it is the Modern era it should be fun. Again... not planned yet.... but easy enough to throw together as they come up.

Music - Musician study hopefully?! not planned yet. But it never is. I want to start teaching Ian to play the piano. I think he might let me do lessons with him. Sophie never wants me to do it. She has to teach herself. So Sophie is getting a recorder and a teach yourself to play the recorder book for her birthday. Hopefully she can teach herself a little music since she wont let me. Perhaps if she sees her brother playing piano she will finally desire to play it too. We will see. She has such a hard time being taught anything.

Physical Education - We will continue to do yoga together, take walks and hikes, play basketball and jump rope. Hopefully Sophie, Ian and Henry will get back to their Karate class. The boys may take a soccer class at the YMCA.

Nature Study - We loved our outdoor hour challenges but haven't done them in about a year. I will see how it goes this Fall. Otherwise we will just get out as much as we can and break out our Handbook of Nature Study and do it ourselves.

As you can tell I am really not ready yet for the school year to start. I don't have everything planned out and don't really know how I am going to manage a 4th, 1st, and Kindergarder as well as deal with a running around one year old.  It should be interesting. I am almost tempted to just scrap it all and just do Five in a Row again. Life was so simple then.  Ian and Henry would love FIAR. I really should do it. It is just so hard to do different things for each child.

Tomorrow while all of those other kids are heading to their first day of school.... we aren't. Sophie has an orthodontist appointment and that is all we have planned for tomorrow.  I think I need to find the time to really think about what we are going to do.... I am starting to feel like such a slacker!