OK, it is time to get serious about planning school.  (Are you shocked?  Did you think I had forgotten that this is my homeschool blog?)  Of course, the first objective for me is to find the floor in my schoolroom, but after nagging myself all summer, I am finally working on that one. (And not going to bed tonight until it is done!) 

At the end of the year last school year, I was feeling a little overwhelmed and discouraged. It was probably mostly just exhaustion, but I asked some friends for suggestions on books to read for encouragement.  Wouldn't you know it, most of them I already had on my shelf! (Imagine that!  The trick was finding the right shelf!)  So this summer I have been rereading Mary Hood's book The Joyful Homeschooler.  It has reminded me of the need to put aside old wineskins (means, methods and requirements) of public education and to seek new wineskins, God's lesson plans for my children. 

My plan before the planning is to sit down with my two oldest boys and ask them what they see themselves doing in ten or fifteen years, then together making a list of all the things they have to know to do those things.  I can see lots of benefits to approaching them this way.  I am hoping that this will impress upon them the need for disciplined education, and will eliminate some of the complaints that I am already getting.  (Is this one of those, in an ideal world . . . ideas?)  I am also hoping it will help me to weed out course ideas that they really don't need to focus on right now.  They might see some of the planning involved in setting and working toward goals.  And perhaps they will gain a little of the vision of where we are going and of what possiblities God has for their futures.

I thought yesterday about how different corporate education (public and private) is from homeschooling.  In a class, you just do what the teacher tells you to do.  Now while I understand that I know a little more about what my boys need to learn to make it in life than they do, I also want them to have some freedom to explore the things they are interested and to not have too many subjects to learn at once.  So I think I'm going to try this, and I'll let you know how it works.