It has been such fun to wade through the materials we will use and organize our days for the coming school year!  I know...I'm a bit of a freak in that sense.  I love to organize and plan.  I especially find it fun when I see God directing us to such wonderful tools to use in our Homeschool.  I have always been a lover of books and learning so it makes me excited to see the fun things we get to learn together next  year.

Our Fall will include:

Kindergarten for Pickles

Tapestry of Grace Year One (this includes Bible, History, Geography, Writing, and Fine Arts)

Math U See - Alpha

Handwriting Without Tears - 1st Grade Bk

First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind

Apologia Science - Exploring Creation with Zoology I (Flying Creatures)

All About Spelling Level 1

Preschool for Pumpkin

Handwriting Without Tears - PreK Book (the PreK Book has a lot of Readiness Activities in it)

Counting/Patterning

Learning the ABC's and phonograms

Learning activities during "blanket time" (30 min. on a blanket with an appropriate activity)

Listening in to Read-Alouds for History, Bible and Science

Listening to lots of stories too!

I stubbled across a website that has helped me organize my brain for planning the Tapestry part of our school days.  TOG Set Up.  It has been tremendously helpful!  I also found a plan sheet at Donna Young's site which was just what I had dreamed of using.  DH tweaked it a little bit but it is just how I wanted to record my lesson plans in Excel.  I was able to get the entire first 9 weeks of school typed in last night.  I also like that this plan page includes a sheet for goals and objectives every 3 weeks.  It helps to give me a snapshot of where we are and where we are headed.

I forgot to mention that before I get busy with all this specific planning I have spent considerable time in prayer asking for direction in this process.  I have found that with a home full of littles we function best when momma has a good offense plan going.  We've all heard/read that children thrive on some amount of structure and I have certainly seen how a schedule is a blessing my family.  I try to pray/think through all the variables in our days and how those pieces can best fit together.  I've read through MOTH, lurked on the TOG Loose Threads Yahoo Group, read through the scheduling tips from the Loom   and done trial and error tests in our home with different schedules throughout the years.  I ended up combining the wisdom I've gleaned from others with a heap of our personal experience to organize our upcoming school days.  I also start each day knowing that my plan schedule may fall apart and have to be tossed to the wind for the day.  I like to think of myself as a flexibly scheduled person.

I need to get going for today...Pickles wants to use his computer ticket.  More later....