This is both the easiest and most difficult task for next year.  Ger announced that he is wants to plan his curriculum and lessons for next year.  While I am very proud of the maturity he is showing, the mom in me is a bit anxious! You know, all that calculating credits thing. But he is a good kid who takes his education seriously.
He is definitely going to study the Middle Ages. I bought GreenLeaf Press's Famous Men of the Middle Ages and Famous Men of the Renaissance to use as spines, but he will fill them out with library resources. I think Literature will be Robin Hood, The Black Arrow and the like, but he hasn't enlightened me about that yet.   I think he is going to continue woodcarving (Grandpa's teaching him), and Ancient Greek.  My husband is planning to begin teaching the boys computer programing and web design.  I AM sure he is doing Apologia's Chemistry, Math-U-See's Algebra 2 and Queen Homeschool's Language Lessons for the High School Student.  Oh, and of course there are his bees.

Next week he is off at scout camp, but when he gets back we are going to have to sit down and finalize some things.  It's the mom in me.

Next year Mic is starting 8th grade. He is my tinkerer, he loves to take things apart and invent things. This summer he is working on building his own go-kart from parts he has collected. He doesn't have any plans, he is just figuring it out as he goes. He is my true kinesthetic learner! It has been difficult at times, we have especially struggled with reading. He loves reading nonfiction, his first grade teacher told us that while most kids in the class would pick up Arthur books or other beginning chapter books, Mic went for nonfiction. But that made it was difficult for a few years because there is not a lot of nonfiction choices for mid to late elementary students and he didn't care for the fiction choices. Fortunately, he did enjoy the Magic Tree House books, enough fact mixed with the story I guess. Then we discovered that he also liked classics, so as much as I don't care for abridged versions of books, we bought him abridged versions of many classic books and that finally sparked a love of reading.

Mic asked to do Beautiful Feet's Early American and World History program next year. He enjoyed their Ancient History program this year (middle school level), and like his younger brother wanted to do some American history next year. This program will also give him 1 history and 1/2 literature credit towards high school.

To finish his literature credit, I have many books on our shelves that he can choose from. He will also be using Queen Homeschool's Language Lesson for the Secondary Child for basic English skills, and rounding out his Language Arts with copywork, and Spelling Power. Last year I picked up Writer's Jungle to use for writing, but I never made the time to read it all the way through because the English curriculum we used this year included writing. So I didn't use it this year. However I am not going with the same curriculum this year, it just wasn't a good fit for my super-active son.  So I will be reading Writer's Jungle this summer and using it for Mic's writing next year.

Mic has decided that he wants to focus on science next year. He has chosen The Rainbow from Beginnings Publishing. It looks like an excellent program and it is VERY hands-on, exactly what he needs! He also requested to learn about robots. That took some searching, but I finally found (on clearance) a curriculum produced by OwiKit that uses several of their robot kits in a discovery sort of way to learn about robotics. I was leery about just setting him loose with the kits, which would have been a lot of fun, because I wanted to direct his attention to the principles of robotics (his chosen career field at the moment.) We will also be using a couple of literature guides from Queen Homeschool to do literature directed nature study in addition to our regular nature studies.

Let's see what else... Mic is going to start Math-U-See's Pre-Algebra for math and DH is going to teach the older boys computer programming and web development. I have NO idea what or how, maybe I'll sit in on the classes and learn something too.

Ed is going to be in 3^rd grade, well age wise he is anyhow. He is about half a year ahead in his math books and his readers at this point, so I'm guessing that by the end of next year he will have finished fourth grade math and readers. Really surprising considering he was nearly 7 before he showed any interest in reading at all. I am going to move him into more of a Charlotte Mason type of method, but still keeping my eclectic bent. We are going to stick with Math-U-See, Pathway readers, and Climbing to Good English. These are working very well and have short, to the point lessons.

For history I am going to do something a little different. This year we used Story of the World Volume 1, which I love and used with the older boys. But Ed wanted to do some American History, he LOVES the book Farmer Boy and wanted to learn more about our country's early history. So instead of continuing with Story of the World Vol. 2 (Middle Ages), we will be using a combination approach. I am primarily planning to use biographies and literature. We have read one of the D'Auliare biographies and enjoyed it very much and I have several biographies from a series that I was given by a librarian when my elementary school closed in 1980. I had assumed that they were out of print, but I was delighted to find that I was wrong. I loved biographies as a child and I am looking forward to sharing some good ones with my son. I am also using some wonderful books that while they are fiction give an accurate picture of life during the time period. Books like the Little House series, Ben and Me (a household favorite) and Mr. Revere and I. And since Ed is an 8 year old little boy, we simply MUST have a hands-on component to his studies. For this my favorite series is the American Kids in History series, they provide great hands-on projects, games and recipes for various time periods in our history. We will be using Colonial Days, Revolutionary War Days and Pioneer Days, I also bought Wild West Days in case we get that far, but I don't think we will.

Ed asked for a change in science. Having a science background, I just sort of “wing it” for science in the early years, but he wants a science book like his brothers. So we are going to do some fairly intensive nature studies using a variety of resources including The Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock, several books and study guide published by Queens Homeschool, and the Christian Liberty Press nature readers. We also have memberships to the local zoo and aquarium (which has a really cool tide pool exhibit.) To supplement our nature study, we are using Real Science 4 Kids Pre-Level 1 Chemistry. I really like the looks of this program, it seems solid, yet uncomplicated, and I think it will give Ed the “book experience” he is looking for. It also has a nice hands-on component. And fits my biggest requirement for science activity books, it tells WHY the cool reaction occurs.

To round out his language arts studies, we are going to be trying several products from Queen Homeschool, specifically Language Lessons for the Very Young, Learning to Spell through Copywork, and Pictures in Cursive. I have heard wonderful things about the products produced by Queen Homeschool, but have never used any myself. I do like the looks of them though, well on the outside they seem a little light but they look rich in content. And of course we will continue our use of great literature for read-alouds, but we tend to choose those titles based on our moods and what the library has available.

I have been working on my homemaking notebook and my daily routines. I tweak them from time to time, adding some things to the lists and removing others. Right now I am trying to switch around a couple of days due to a change in the day of the boys art lessons. But I don't know if I'm going to like the new schedule as much as I like the old one. I can see advantages and disadvantages both ways.

I have my chores divided up into days, kind of like Grandma used to. Right now it looks like this: Monday; Upstairs and Laundry, Tuesday; Kitchen, Wednesday; Cleaning and wash clothes, Thursday; Office, Friday; Errand and clothes washing, and Saturday; Garden.

I also have a seasonal list (one extra chore per day) that I work on which keeps me from forgetting things like changing the water filter or the furnace filter, changing the back up batteries in the smoke detectors and washing mattress pads and pillows (helps with allergies.) I know these tasks seem overwhelming, especially if you haven't been keeping a schedule. If I take some time off, which I occasionally do in the summer, it feels overwhelming to me when I try to get back into my normal routine. I just take a deep breath, set the timer for an hour (or for 15 minutes 4 times, though I much prefer an hour all at once) and do as much as I can. In just a few weeks, I'm right back to where I was and the tasks are easy once more. This week I thought I'd take you through a typical week, describing my plan and telling you what I actually accomplished. I'll probably stay more on track than I otherwise would too, but Shhhh! Don't tell me that! So stay tuned for Upstairs and Laundry tomorrow.