I've been asked lately for pictures to go with my blog. I will try to start posting some again soon. I have simply had so little time to post at all that taking even more time to upload pictures probably would have meant no posting at all! But I will work on this one.

   We are slowing getting back to our routine now. Summer has been a busy/crazy time. We had nearly seven weeks of Miss Giggles home this summer and it made for some hectic times.

   The fire in our other house right before school broke for the summer didn't help keep things sane around here either! LOL!

   Now Miss Giggles is back to school, my childminding kids are back to their usual routines (as 'usual' as they get anyway since every week is different), church activities, Cubs, Beavers and College schedules are all back in place. It is busy, but at least I know where I'm supposed to be when rather than the summer where I felt like I was running around every day like a headless chicken and trying to fit in some fun stuff for the kids along the way.

   We have never totally stopped our homeschooling over the summer as we tend to go all year around, however it proved more difficult to do very much with Miss Giggles home from school. She didn't want to join in and just caused disruption and since she was here all the time it meant alot of things getting pushed till 'later'.

   We will start up with our whole week again starting this Monday. We will still be using Story of the world for our main curriculum as we are enjoying it so much. We will be still doing our timeline notebooks along side of it and I'm sure running off down a few rabbit trails along the way.

   Maths will of course be MUS and Mcgee is coming close to finishing Gamma while Monkey is working his way through Beta. We are redoing First Language Lessons of the Well Trained Mind for grammar as we did it when Monkey was very young (like two!) and we planned to do it again last year but it never quite happened.

   McGee is now reading quite independently and doesen't need too much more help with phonics and reading, so my efforts will be concentrated on getting Monkey up to scratch with reading this year. I think he is ready to really fly through the Hooked on Phonics books now since he actually started reading some the early reader books in the library this summer!

   They are both working on learning cursive in handwriting in the Christian liberty press books and McGee is still working through spelling in his Building spelling skills books.

   We started our new science book in the spring and we are going to really get our teeth into it now. Considering God's Creation is a great book and we like the worksheets and nature study and research side of it alot. We have also started over the summer using our nature journals at the local parks and will continue to do some more nature study with our Nature detectives membership and our Enid Blyton's Nature Lover's book.

   The boys are also enjoying their spanish lessons with one of the ladies in our church. Every other week they go off to her house and so 1 1/2 hours of spanish while I run the toddler group at church. She does this for a living and has offered us a special rate for our boys lessons as a blessing to us! We appreciate it alot as spanish seemed to be one of the subjects that we 'never got around to' each year! The boys are enjoying it alot.

   They are also doing weekly swimming lessons - so I guess you count that as PE. They did a crash course in the summer and now do lessons each week to improve their skills. They are in a class with children a bit younger than them, but they are learning quickly!

   Mr Wiggles will be learning a few preschool lessons this year too and mainly working his way through Slow and steady, get me ready with the aim to get him up to working at his own age level instead of two years below.  

   So, like I said we are back in the swing now and looking forward to a good year in our little school. That gives you a little idea of what we are up to in our homeschool! Hope your year is off to a great start.