Today was a field trip day for us. Since we are doing a co-op with Prairie Primer and learning all about Laura Ingalls Wilder, we decided to go to Ye Olde Schoolhouse. It's a one-room schoolhouse from the early 1900s here in Wisconsin. All the kids (and some of us adults) were assigned names of real people that attended the school. We dressed like they would have dressed and even tried to bring a lunch that was appropriate to the time period (no pre-packaged foods, etc). It was a great experience for everybody.

A week ago, I didn't think our first week of school this year would go very well. I debated even starting this week. Maybe I should just wait a week? The house wasn't as clean as I wanted it, I had co-op things to plan and schedule, children's choir songs to choose. I had planned on a whole week for school, only to have one son go on a youth group outing and my daughter be invited to a surprise birthday party for a friend. How would we start school without falling behind right away?

However, after praying about when to start, I really feel God wanted us to start on Monday. So, feeling a little overwhelmed, I got the kids up and going and away we went.

The first day went amazingly well, one of our best first days ever. The rest of the week followed about the same. The two kids that had events that would take them away from school for a day worked ahead or got caught up the next day.

I was inundated with sweet corn this week. Enough to can 90 jars for us and have over 500 ears to give away. I got the corn processed and school still got done. A couple of times, the kids started on their own without my telling them. That doesn't happen too often.

Moral of the story: Trust God. He knows what's best. Even when it's something like when to start school and you're feeling a bit too overwhlemed.

God is good all the time. All the time God is good.

We had our first day of school of the new school year.  It was probably one of our best first days ever. All three kids were ready to start school early. I don't think that's ever happened.

Greg, the 13 year old, has a habit of being difficult and refusing to do his school work. Today, he told me he made a new year's resolution (It was OK to make a new year's resolution since it was the first day of the school year). He was going to do his school work everyday. I'm thinking this is good. Maybe he's growing up and we won't have as many struggles this year. Then he added with a smile, "when I feel like it."

My youngest did her first lesson with Teaching Textbooks on the computer. She loves it and got every problem correct. She says it's much better than last year's math.

And my oldest, he survived his first day of high school. He completed everything and is ready to tackle day 2.

Our new school year starts in 2 days. The kids claim they're not ready, but they are also starting to act bored. In other words, things like TV and computers are trying to take over their day. It happens every year. Here's a sneak peek at what I'm planning for this year.

We do a 4 day school week, with Tuesdays being a "no-school" day. However, we do actually have school on Tuesdays, just not normal school. On Tuesdays, we have PE class at the YMCA and this year we are starting a co-op. We'll have art, Spanish and the Prairie Primer on Tuesdays as well.

The other days of the week will be regular school days. I use a variety of curricula for the kids. What works with one may not work with another and what works in one subject may not work in another. Here's what's planned:

Eric, grade 9:

Math--Teaching Textbooks, Algebra 1
English--Learn to Write the Novel Way
History--Streams of Civilization
Science--Apologia's Physical Science

Greg, grade 8:

Math--DK workbook and Daily Math drills
English--Wordly Wise, Winston grammar
History--Story of the World, book 4
Science--Apologia's General Science

Janelle, grade 4:

Math--Teaching Textbooks, grade 4
Language Arts--Handwriting Without Tears cursive, Wordly Wise, Spellwell,
                           Daily Grams and Easy Grammar
Science and History will be done through the Prairie Primer

I don't usually plan out our Bible lessons too far in advance. I try to correspond our lessons at home to either what they're doing in Sunday School or to some lesson that needs to be learned, like self-control, kindness, etc.

In addition to this, the 2 youngest have music lessons on Monday. Janelle will probably have gymnastics on Monday evening and children's choir on Wednesday evening (I'm directing this year for the first time). Greg will also have barbershop rehearsals on Thursdays and he just got a role in our local homeschool fall play, so we'll have rehearsals for that, as well.

Our daily schedule? What I plan and what actually happen are usually 2 different things, but here's the plan:

I get up at 6:00 to have some quiet time and then go out to milk cows.
The kids get themselves up and out to take care of their animals and feed calves around 7:30-8:00.

I get in by 8:30, shower and make breakfast. Once that's done, we start school around 9:30 and go until we're done each day, usually by 2:00. I don't plan out which subject is done when, I let the kids decide what order to do their work in. They each have a weekly plan that lists all their assignments. If they choose to do one subject a day, they may. The goal is to get the weekly work done by the end of the day on Friday.

We're finishing up the school year here in our house. All the kids know what they need to finish and they know that they will finish even if it means going all summer. My oldest just has science to do. He made the choice to do the majority of his science (Apologia's General Science) during the summer. Middle son has to do math, which he absolutely dislikes. It's a constant struggle to do math. He's very good at it, when he wants to be, but just doesn't like it. My youngest is finshing up her handwriting book and some math. The math for her is review, so she doesn't foget what she's learned. Math isn't easy for her, so constant review is a must.

I'm looking ahead to next year. My oldest is starting high school. When did he grow up? Doing high school at home can seem a bit intimidating to me at times, but I am confident that we will survive. I have almost everything I need for next year already, so that's a bonus for the budget. I'll be spending some time this year getting ready to (hopefully) teach a Spanish class for our homeschool group. I haven't taught Spanish in many years. It'll be fun to teach that again.

Super-nice weather has hit our area this week. We love it. It's warm and sunny with just a touch of breeze. The kids are going outside without coats and sometimes are wearing shorts. So what could be the problem? Spring fever.

This is the time of year, every year, when getting school done becomes a problem. The kids want to be outside, I want to be outside, or, possibly doing spring cleaning. I've tried taking the books outside, but soon we are distracted. There are a lot of distractions--tractors, cows, birds, cats, dog, chickens, mud (and lots of it), stuff that's accumulated on the lawn over winter, baseball, you name it, we get distracted by it.

Don't get me wrong. I love the spring weather. I have seeds started for my garden and can't wait to be able to get into the garden to plant them. However, I know we also need to get a few other things done as well.

So, how do we get anything done? More frequent breaks to go run outside, more "outside" studies--birds and bugs is a current topic in my daughter's science, so we can be outside looking for new arrivals in these areas. We're building raised-bed gardens this year. The boys will be helping with measuring, assembling, preparing these. As soon as we're able, all the kids will be in charge of their own garden area--we're building one per person (minimum). They've been looking at seed catalogs and figuring out what they want to plant, how much room they'll need, etc. And, of course, hitting the books hard on rainy days. We just haven't had any this week.

We're doing Apologia's Zoology 1:Flying Creatures of the 5th Day with my youngest this year. She just finished an experiment where she had to set up 2 identical bird feeders, but fill each with a different type of bird seed. The purpose was to determine which type of food the birds in our yard liked the best. Both feeders are emptying at about the same rate, so we must have birds that like both kinds that we used. We put the feeders outside our dining room windows, so we've been having a lot of fun watching the birds come and eat. Here's some pictures of the birds. We really like it when the cardinal comes, but he doesn't come often and when he does, it's really hard to get a picture of him. Even the slightest movement in our house and he's gone.

The juncos like to dig holes in the snow

Our junco is joined by a pair of mourning doves

The elusive cardinal

I  had our week all planned out, like I always do. However, our plans have now changed. Yesterday, we spent the day at the University in Oshkosh at a Homeschool Science Day learning about weather. My daughter seemed a bit tired before we left in the morning, but I didn't think too much of it. She had been up late the night before since after we got home from Awana, we had to make lunches and get ready for yesterday, and then we had to leave home at 7:30, which is very early for us. She seemed fine at lunch time, but by the end of the program, she was complaining of being very tired and her legs hurt. We had music lessons scheduled right after the science day and by the time we got to the music studio, Janelle was in tears. She was too tired for music lessons. Did she have to go? Since my son was sick last week and missed class, giving Janelle a full hour of lessons to herself, we decided to let Gregory have a full hour of lessons to himself. When we finally got home, Janelle slept for an hour and woke up with a fever of almost 103. That cancels our plans for today.

The boys normally go to gym class at the YMCA while I'm at Bible study on Tuesday mornings. Starting today, I am supposed to be co-leading  our Bible study. We're doing The Truth Project by Focus on the Family. My friend is leading by herself today. So, instead of gym class and running errands and getting groceries (which was also on the schedule for today, since we're normally in town anyway), we will be staying home and watching the inauguration. We may even have some time to get some other school work done, like science and history, that somehow didn't get finished last week.

I thought I had my school year fairly well planned out. We were going to start on the American Revolution after Christmas. However, my boys have been very interested in World War 2 lately. So, I had to decide if I stick with my original plan, or alter it to what the boys want to learn about. I decided to cover the World Wars.  We can't do WWII without first doing WWI, so this week we're starting with World War 1.

I've also done some "tweaking" in Language Arts/English. The curriculum we're using just isn't working for 2 of my kids in spelling. So, I'm adding Spelling Power to the morning line up. We've used it before, so it's not new.

We've had 2 weeks off for Christmas, so it's not going to be easy to get back into the school routine. The kids have been getting to bed late and waking up late. That means that tomorrow will be a difficult morning to get out of bed. If I let them sleep too long, we don't get much done before music lessons in the afternoon, and once we get home from lessons, the day is pretty much over.

It wil be nice to get back to a normal, calmer schedule. We only have our "normal" activities this week: Music lessons on Monday, gym class and Mom's Bible study on Tuesday, gymnastics on Thursday.

I thought I'd fill you all in on what we're studying this year.

"E", age 14, grade 8
Teaching Textbooks Algebra 1
Character Quality Language Arts, Red volume, level B
Abeka Health, grade 8
Apologia General Science
Artistic Pursuits, Jr High Book 1

"G", age 12, grade 7
Teaching Textbooks Math 6
Character Quality Language Arts, Red volume, Level B
Abeka Health, grade 7
Apologia General Science
Artistic Pursuits, Jr High Book 1

"J", age 9, grade 3
Saxon Math 3
Character Quality Language Arts, Red volume, Level Pre-A
Abeka Health, grade 3
Apologia's Flying Creatures of the 5th Day
Artistic Pursuits, Gr K-3, Book 1

Everybody
Bible Study Guide for All Ages, just starting Volume 2
For Social Studies, we use a mix of things. We're starting a Christmas Unit study right after Thanksgiving and then doing a unit study called Colonial Life by Home School in the Woods.
Also for Christmas, we'll be reading Jotham's Journey and doing a DVD Advent calendar on Christmas songs