We're on our fourth week already of our 2008-2009 school year.  I've been meaning to update my blog for a while now, but haven't had the time. 

Anyways, here's what we're using this year for curriculum(s).

Sonlight Core 3 = History & Geography, Reading, Listening Comprehension

Sonlight Language Arts 3

Singapore Math Primary 2B (finishing up what we didn't last year then on to 3A and 3B)

Sequential Spelling (recommended for use with Core 3) 

Artistic Pursuits Book 1

Story of the Orchestra (music appreciation)

Homeschool Physical Fitness  (purchased last year, finally using)

Apologia Elementary Science Zoology 1 (LOVE IT!)

Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin America)--also purchased through Sonlight...we love this program so far!

D'Nealian Handwriting Grade 3

 

Things seem to be going very well so far.   I think it helps that I made a point to schedule ALL our subjects ahead this year instead of trying to just mark them down as we do it.  This way, I've got a plan and I just have to mark it when it's done.  I find that I forget to do certain subjects if it's not pre-scheduled for me.  That's just how I work, I guess.  So far, this seems to be working much better.  I'm glad to have put the extra work into it earlier so that it's less work now. 

We decided to purchase Rosetta Stone so ds could start learning a foreign language.  I've heard so much that it's good to get kids started young because they learn it faster and remember it better.  So we invested in Rosetta Stone v. 3 Homeschool edition for Spanish (Latin America).  We got the three level deal they've got going.  Blew our school budget and then some, but I think it's worth it.  Ds just LOVES it!  I like it too.  I took two years of high school Spanish but remember very little from it.  This really seems to do a good job of teaching the language.  Even DH plans to make time to learn with us if he can. 

We've been back to doing our school work for a couple weeks now.  Due to getting behind over the holidays we've been doing a bit of "catch up" work.  Thankfully, it hasn't been taking a lot of extra work...just the time to do a bit of extra reading each day.  I'm not doing "catch up" work for math, science or handwritng.  Those we'll just keep doing at the normal pace.  So, I just took a look at my school planning calendar and I noticed that next week is the end of our 2nd quarter (and 1st semester).  I'm going to have to see where we're at and evaluate how ds is doing.  Even though I'm not required to send in report cards to anyone, I decided to start giving them to ds this year so he knows how he's doing in school and it also is a good starting point for dh and I to discuss how homeschooling is going.   

Yup. I decided we would do 2 days of school work today.  Day 1 will be on Monday--at least for the moment!  Next Friday I'll be out of town, so no school that day and either we'll be off a day again or we'll have to do 2 days in 1 again to catch back up.  With the way Sonlight curriculum is set up, it doesn't really matter, but I like to have "Day 1" be on a Monday if possible.  It just makes more sense to me.   

I'm already beginning to feel the mundane-ness creep in.  The weather's not helping me much with my attitude either--very cloudy, gloomy, rainy kinda day today.  Next weekend is the Hearts at Home conference that I'm going to.  I hope it'll be a nice get-away for us--DH is coming with as far as the cities where he'll relax at his bro's place while my s.i.l. and I will continue on to Rochester to the conference.  The boys will get to spend a few days at Grandma's so we'll get a little break from the kiddos too.

Today we used our new science curriculum--Christian Kids Explore Earth and Space.  It's recommended to do 2 days a week (Tuesday/Thursday).  So far, I really like it and ds seemed to as well.  He was disappointed that he has to wait until Thursday to do the Hands-On Work, though.  We'll see how it goes.  Unit 1, Lesson 1 was about the Creation.  For part of the lesson, we read the scripture in Genesis and ds wrote down what God created on each of the days of Creation in his science notebook.     

Ds also had his first recorder lesson this afternoon.  (He's been playing piano for 3 years, so he knows a lot of the music theory already. )  We're using the Usborne First Book of the Recorder.  I still have the recorder I used when I was in 3rd grade and it's still in really great shape so ds gets to use it now.  I'm glad he seems interested in learning how to play it.  Next week we plan to start piano lessons again too.  He's asked me to put it off till then 'cuz he hasn't been practicing much until the past few days.

For a home-school mom who has a minor in art, you'd think I'd find (or make) lots of time to do arts and crafts with my dear son.  Alas!  That's right...you've guessed it, I don't.   (I don't even make time to do much myself except for the little bit of crocheting and knitting I do.)  Well anyways, we'd been learning about the Romans and Greeks and along with it we learned about mosaics.  It took some effort preparing materials (I made "tiles" out of sculpey clay), getting ds to draw a picture that he could make a mosaic from, but we finally got it done!  (Who knew one art project took 3 weeks to do?)  Guess I'll have to keep that in mind as I try and come up with another project!  YIKES!  

Here's a picture of the completed project:

Not bad, huh?