Well, for a variety of reasons I won't get into, it's been almost a year since I updated this blog, but I'm hoping to start out fresh.  I got my homestead blog updated, the NYS blog updated, and now I'm moving on to this one.

We've had a rough year so far in that we've had sick relatives that needed a lot of care, so now I find myself sitting back and looking at what we've done so far, and what we still need to do.  I'm trying to do my best to streamline things a bit to make planning easier, and also look ahead to next year.

So far, this is what I'm looking at: a sort of Charlotte Mason-like classical-ish approach to finish out the year, and probably for next year too.  DS is in 7th grade this year, and can work more independantly, but I'm skeptical about how  much he's retaining without a good bit of discussion, so this is what we've got going on for now

Bible- Proverbs and Mark, also Baltimore Catechism

Character- Book of Virtues

Shakespeare- Tales From Shakespeare

History- Story of Mankind along with Historical Fiction and non-fiction books out of the Library.  We have a few more weeks of the Middle Ages and then we will be launching into the Renassaince

Science- Exploring Creation with General Science. This is going to run into summer, but that's OK, we'll do a bit of cross curricular stuff with it and have it done for fall

Math- Slowly working our way through Pre-algebra topics using various sources

Grammar- Grammar review sheets and pointing out grammatical mistakes whenever they occur, also doing proofreading activities

Vocabulary-Wordly Wise

Language- I'm trying to get back into Latin, and we do Spanish at co-op

Economics- Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?  DH is tackling this one with him

Art- Meet the Masters

Music- Different composers and genres

We also keep several read alouds going, and he has lots of extracurriculars, primarily 4H.

I would like to encourage more writing, and while we do some notebooking, I'd like for living books and notebooking to be the primary learning vehicles.

So, I do have something of a plan, here, and am moving forward with it.  I'll try to stay current here, but won't make any promises.  My aunt is sick with lung cancer, and I'm at my sister's house a lot caring for her, and guess what, they don't have internet.  That's a problem for me and ds because we do a lot of online work. I think I'm going to have to plan better!!!