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My plans for the year:

1.  What type of homeschooler are you?  I am pretty eclectic.  My friend Jessica calls me "classically eclectic", and I tend to agree:  I LOVE literature, especially classic children's literature.  I agree with the theory behind classical education, and my heart beats fast for Charlotte Mason and Leadership Education.  I do plan for my homeschool, but last year we scrapped the plan pretty early.  This year I would like to stick to it a bit more.

2.  Are you using a specific curriculum, a conglomeration, or none?  A conglomeration, most definitely.  We will be using Sonlight Core 1 again for the first half of the year, because I bought it last year and we didn't get through the whole core.  We are using Math-U-See for the first time this year, which I am pretty excited about!  Also, I am adding in FLL for the Well-Trained Mind and the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading along with ETC for phonics, Handwriting without tears, and Story of the World.  We also use History Pockets and Story of the World alongside SL history and Bible.  I am also drooling over artistic pursuits and some other art stuff, but our budget is TOTALLY maxed out- even though I bought the SL stuff last year, we didn't have much in the budget to start out with, and MUS plus the SOTW and WTM stuff added up fast.  So I am waiting for Christmas for my wish list!  OK, can you see I am a curriculum junkie? LOL!  Actually, the heart of my homeschool is reading.  We read the Sonlight books and gobs and gobs of library books.  We are always reading! 

3.  What is my plan?  I made it up as we went last year, but I was not happy with what we did... I know in my heart I didn't give Violet my best last year- maybe justifiably with new baby and all, but still, I don't want to do that again.  I am taking more care to plan things this year.  I am going to block off a time every day to set aside only for school and being totally available during that time as best I can.  I will have goals of what I would like to get done, but I am flexible enough that if we decide to take rabbit trails, we can do that.  Mostly, the schedule is for ME to carve out my time to give my best to my children.

4.What are you most excited about?  I am really excited to share learning discoveries with my children.  Being there the first time they hear Charlotte's Web, do a "hard" math problem mentally with no finger counting, see a Monet, write a story they are proud of, or discover that a cup of water can look different based on what container you pour it into, but that it is still the same amount, the "I did it!" moments...those are the things I live for in homeschooling.  I am most exctied about being on a learning adventure together.

5.  Are you going to teach each child in their own grade level or multi-age teach?  I don't really know.  Right now, I will teach each child at their own level simply because they are VERY different developmentally at the moment.  1, 3 1/2, and 7 1/2 all do VERY different things!  but in the future I probably will stick to one historical period and then vary the assignments based on grade level, and do separate levels for math and LA.

6.  Where do you homeschool?  All over the house!  I have decided I would like to have a room set aside in our finished basement, but it has not happened yet.... I will get back to you on that!

That's it!  You should definitely enter, it was fun to answer and I would love to read what everyone is doing!  (So I can steal your ideas and add them to my long resource wish list!