Hello! I have been absent for a while. God has blessed me with an inbound customer-service full-time job from home that pays well and that I enjoy, but I have had to radically adjust my schedule and do not nearly have as much "computer time" as I used to.  I am getting up earlier than I ever have since graduating high school, working a 2-hour morning shift before PJ wakes up, then spending most of the day with him, then working a 3 to 4 hour shift in the afternoons, then dinner, some family time/ TV/ reading together, then lights out!  I also work a 10-hour shift once per week. In this way, I am working a full-time job from home. PJ spends the 3 to 4 hours either hanging out with my grandmother next door, or drawing or reading quietly nearby, or playing video games on his computer.  I am trying to save up to buy some more educational games so this time isn't wasted so much :)

I have finally... mostly... decided what we're using for school this year.  My goal in our homeschool this year is to have a much more relaxed, enjoyable, engaging and hands-on homeschool than we have in the past.  No more "school-at-home" for us! I know he is at least on "grade level" with everything, so I am confident we're able to go on a different, more experimental track this year.  I want to introduce a wide variety of topics that will spark his interest and get him excited about what we're doing, not make him feel like school is somethig he has to tolerate until it's over and the REAL fun (video games, creative illustration and storytelling, computer programming, experimenting with musical instruments, etc) can start. He does well at whatever I throw at him, but I really want him to LOVE what we're learning about.

I have been reading the incredibly eye-opening and excellently written book Discover Your Child's Learning Style and based on the self-assessments PJ did with that book, I have really come to accept that my son is a Thinking-and-Creative/Performing personality with a great deal of spatial and picture-visual intelligence, whose main modalities of expression are humor and storytelling. I have discovered that he is a morning person and runs out of steam in the evenings.  These are TOTALLY NOT AT ALL any of my strengths, nor is it how I learn, and I am a night person so we'll see how we'll reconcile that... but this is the way the Lord saw fit to put him together that way, so it has to be respected :) 

This year we are doing: many more projects, a great deal more of the lessons we have orally, more drawing, more storytelling, more performing and skits, more public speaking and recitation (my little extrovert of a son actually enjoys this!)  more manipulatives (generously donated by the folks on the HSEduFreeMarket Yahoo! list) , more work on creative writing, shorter lessons, and NO WORKBOOKS WHATSOEVER.  We will be using a couple of workbooks as a resource, but our focus will be living books.  Here is our curriculum as it stands right now:

• Story of the World Volume 3 and Volume 4 - With the corresponding activity guides. We started SOTW3 in the middle of the school year last year and we didn't get through the whole thing, so we're starting in the middle of Vol 3 this year and continuing on with Vol 4 after we're done.  As I have plotted it, taking our time and really exploring into each topic, we'll be a little more than halfway done with SOTW4 by the end of the school year next year. That's fine. We'll just keep reading it over the summer as fun summer reading :)  The munchkin looooves geography (there goes that spatial intelligence thing again!) so I'm going to try to emphasize that, as well as let him make his own pages for his history notebook instead of coloring the pages. I really don't want to leave Vol 4 until next year because I want to do a totally different program for 5th grade, and PJ is big on "follow through" and will want to finish both volumes if possible, so we're going to try for that.
  
  
• Winter Promise: Animals and their World - This integrates art, science and geography. PJ is extremly excited about this one. He is especially excited about the Adventure Readers (read-alouds for the family) because he really enjoys stories about animals.  In fact, he likes learning about and playing with animals in general, so I think this program, with its combination of art instruction, geography and zoology, will be a brilliant fit for him. The spatial intelligence with the picture modality stuff comes in the fact that it comes with animal crossword puzzles and word searches, which he really enjoys, as well as having many colorful pictures in all the books. In keeping with Charlotte Mason's ideas, it includes many, many handicrafts related to animals, such as building animal habitats and other similar crafts. Additionally, their "Draw Write Now" series based on animals seems really excellent as well.  PJ has been poring over the catalogue for a while and asking excitedly when it'll get here. :)  He can't wait to start on this one.  His great-grandparents in Massachusetts are purchasing a set of seven animal habitat jigsaw puzzles for him to go along with this. It's going to be AWESOME!
  
  
• A Reason for Handwriting: Cursive C - The easy methodology, short lessons, simple copywork based on Bible verses and emphasis on ministry with the "finished products" are very Charlotte Mason in approach. PJ needs tons and tons of help in handwriting, and we didn't get far in our cursive studies last year. The mechanics of handwriting still elude PJ, who is severely dysgraphic, and I think this is a disservice to him since his head is so full of ideas for great stories and games, so I'm going to try the slow-and-steady gentle approach to writing, combined with a typing program, and that'll hopefully make it all click for him.
  
  
• Rod and Staff - Building With Diligence: English 4 - To be honest, this is the one I'm iffiest about.  I have the feeling I may ditch it early on.  My son is a very good speller and has very good grammar for a 9-year-old and doesn't need all the extra help in that, but he really enjoys grammar (he says that it and geography are his favorite subjects) and may actually have fun with sentence diagramming.  Also, they emphasis a very gentle introduction into independent creative writing, and have many hands-on activities suggested. The lessons are sometimes overwhelming if done as instructed, but they can be adapted to be done orally or shortened in every case.  But I have the feeling with Animals and their World and A Reason For Handwriting and everything else, he may already be getting plenty of writing, so if it seems like our schedule isn't accommodating this, we'll ditch it. It's not entirely necessary.
  
  
• MEP Math Year 3 - I love this curriculum.  It is available for free as PDF files (scroll down to where it says SCHOOL CURRICULUM MATERIALS); I had both the student workbook and the lesson plans printed out and spiral-bound at OfficeMax for less than $40 and it looks absolutely excellent. I have gotten tons of math manipulatives from friends on the HSEduFreeMarket Yahoo! group, ranging from Base 10 blocks to play money to fraction bars to cuisinaire rods. The generosity there has been amazing.  I think PJ will really enjoy this. He's very good at math, but he doesn't love it.  This is a much more fun way to learn math, and it is very low on repetition (something that keenly frustrated him about other math curriculae), emphasizes mental math (something PJ needs work on) and even has games and the allowance for giving most answers verbally, or showing flash cards with numbers on them instead of having to answer. My Aspie should get a kick out of that.  I can't wait to see how this turns out.
  
  
• Teach Them Spanish! Grade 4 and Grade 5 - again, the emphasis is on short lessons with many activities, manipulatives and games. PJ enjoys working with flash cards. We used this program a couple of years ago and we really liked it.  Since the entire tables of content are available online for both books, I have determined that I will be able to get through Grade 4 and half of Grade 5 this year, with the other half of Grade 5 and the entirety of Grade 6 for the following year. This series unfortunately only goes up to Grade 6, but after that, we will probably NOT be learning Spanish. It's our native language and I just want him to have a basic grasp of its grammatical and spelling rules. In his 6th grade, we'll probably do a third language, such as French or Japanese. He's very keen to learn Japanese, due to his japanime obsession.  I have promised him that if he diligently studies Japanese, we will spend at least 2 weeks in Japan over the summer the subsequent year.  Ooooh. :)
  
  
• AlphaOmega's Switched-On Schoolhouse Bible Studies 400. He LOVED it this last year; it'll be something for him to do while I work.  I took out all the tests and quizzes; as I described in an earlier post, I don't feel that Bible Studies should be just another compartmentalized academic subject, but an integrated part of one's school day, and we did the lessons of SOS Bible 300 like family devotionals.
  
  
• Guitar lessons at Elizabeth School of Music, for which I am bartering web design and graphic design services.  :) So check back in a month or so - the site'll be a lot cooler then!
  
  
• As for his yearly required reading list, I haven't put it together yet. He only got through a third of the books I put together last year, but that was mostly because I wasn't very consistent about insisting that he read every day. With my new schedule, I think it's going to be very useful for him to have something productive and quiet to do while I work.  I am thinking of going with either Winter Promise's 4th Grade American Story 2 reading list, or Sonlight's World History 1+2 reader list.  I haven't decided yet; I'm leaning toward the latter since we're doing World History, not American History, but the AmHis books look like more fun. :)  I was thinking of doing the Animals and their World adventure read-alouds as our main read-aloud spine, but that's scheduled right into the school day, so maybe I'll have him read the WinterPromise independently and do the Sonlight suggestions as the night time read-alouds.

I am also using various resources for art/ music/ poetry appreciation as time permits. Music appreciation is the easiest, of course - we just constantly listen to and discuss classical music, then read a biography on the composer once every few weeks. I have also purchased the wonderful book, Story of the Orchestra.  For poetry/ drama, my wonderful homeschool park date group is considering letting me teach a simple all-ages homeschool class on Shakespeare which would culminate in a rudimentary performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. I am still plotting the best way to do that. I have considered starting to write a book about "Shakespeare for Homeschoolers;" I just haven't had the time.

So that's what I've been up to.  All in all, things are going well here. Once the expenses of the start of the school year have subsided, I am going to aim to buy a digital camera to start scrapbooking and recording our adventures this year, so expect many many more pictures to come! I hope everyone reading this is having a blessed and happy summer. :)