August Already?!

I can't believe how fast the Summer seems to be flying by. I have to actually get my act together and get ready for another school year. I was informed by our charter school ES that the first day of school is on the 20th. That is only about 2 weeks away. In many ways it will be nice to be back on a normal schedule again. Summer has been rather hap hazard and I admit to being rather lazy. I have been spending a lot of my time with my kindle and as a result my kids have run a bit wild. It will be quite a difficulty getting my kids back to doing school work.

But since I have had my two week warning I guess I need to start planning for the coming year.
This is my run down as far as curriculum.

History - Story of the World has been a great spine for us. We don't follow it completely and certainly don't go into great depth on each chapter but we have enjoyed listening to the CDs and reading a lot of things to go along with it. I will have to add in some activities and workbook pages or something. But I look forward to doing the middle ages again. We will hopefully get to read some of the books we missed the last time through while revisiting some of the ones we really enjoyed the first time through.

Sophie is also signed up to take a Family History class through LEA (Leadership Education Academy).  She took an art class through LEA last year and we thought she should give another class a try. She is also taking Beautiful Girlhood through them as well. She is excited for both of these classes.

Science - I decided to try Elemental Science's Earth Science for the Logic Stage for our science studies this year. The boys will tag along with Sophie and read and do some more simple things for each of the topics. Hopefully our charter school will be alright with this program. They really didn't like our Apologia science that we used last year. They didn't accept any of the kids workbook pages and such for their portfolios.

Math - Each of the kids has the next level of Singapore Math waiting for them. Sophie has a few more chapters of Life of Fried decimals and percents and Ian and Henry are doing some Math Mammoth before heading into those Singpore books. Ian is also signed up to take an online math class through LEA (Leadership Education Academy). This is his first online class so it should be interesting to see how it goes for him.

Language Arts - IEW is still here on our shelf but with so much already on the docket for history, science and her online classes I think we may hold back on formal writing and only do some of the grammer through their Fix-it program.  Ian will work through their All things fun and facinating and Henry will finish their PAL program.

Latin - We are only about 7 lessons into Visual Latin and Sophie and Ian are doing great with it. We have just had a few weeks off so will need to go back and review.



Music/ Art -  The kids will continue with their piano lessons and Sophie will do choir again. We will see if I get any actual musician study in but I would like to fit it in if I can. I do have Harmony Fine Arts Medieval art and music program so we will see if I can fit it in.

P.E - I signed Ian and Henry up for Gymnastics. Henry has been asking me and asking me to get him into a Gym class so I decided to use some of our school funds and let them tumble.  Sophie will have to be content with our usual bike rides, walks and such for P.E.

Gee looking at this list makes me really tired.  And this doesn't even include Activity girls and Cub Scouts or our weekly co-op (at which I am in charge of book club once a month). How am I going to fit all this in? While still dealing with a very demanding 3 year old.

As much as I would love to sit down and plan out our year week for week I know from past experience it doesn't ever work out and I spend the entire time feeling like we are behind or leaving out too much. I already feel like that without having the daily/weekly reminder. I would rather just write down what we actually accomplish each day rather than try to get too detailed in my planning.

We will see how it goes!