I was looking through some of our finished projects for 2006-2007 yesterday, and was surprised by how much we'd done - I thought we had nothing to show for this year, but actually we had lapbook projects on Mesopotamia, Hanukkah and Passover, and big "class projects" (large evan-moor pocket-style lapbooks we'd done together as a group) on insects and seasons. We also have lots of lapbooks and projects that we started but didn't finish because the enthusiasm and interest was transferred to other topics, so I'll be putting those in my 'bottom drawer' to fish out and complete when the mood takes us.

I pulled together a load of books and resources to do a project on rivers last autumn, and just at the last moment the children decided they wanted to do a project on South America instead. So our 'rivers' geography was dropped in favour of a make-it-up-as-you-go-along continent project. Everybody really enjoyed it and got a lot out of it, so I'm glad that I let that happen rather than insisting we went ahead with the original plan, but again, the rivers project can go in my 'bottom drawer' for a rainy day.

One thing I would like to encourage this year is getting back to our 'Charlotte Mason' roots (I started to home educate after reading Susan Schaeffer Macaulay's book 'For the Children's Sake' which advocated principles laid out by 19th century educator Charlotte Mason, which in a nutshell involves presenting the best offerings of our culture to the child so that he or she can develop not just the intellect, but the whole person. I do promise to tell you more about Charlotte Mason, but very briefly, I'm hoping to include more Nature-study, classical music and art appreciation this year. I'm planning to add regular up-dates here, so remember to check back!