Wouldn't you know it. My last post was on Nov. 3rd and the next one is a month later. I thought I had the time, but as with everything else, if you wait for the best "time" you'll never get there.

So, here I am with less time on my hands and blogging. I love blogging. I maintain several of them for my business (and I'm starting one for youth minsistry) and it helps to clear my head.

Anyway, this school year is going fantastic. I have almost weaned us off of textbooks altogether. Right now the only text book we use is a math text for Matthew that I bought at the discount book store here in town. Other than that it's exclusively library and internet resources.

I always knew that there is a ton of stuff on the internet to enable the person with a lot of time to put together a great curriculum. However I now feel that's a great misconception. The time issue isn't really a factor for us.

Especially when there are great sites like AmblesideOnline.org and An Old Fashioned Education. I love these two sites. My kids have literally jumped grade levels, become more self-directed, think through problems much better, and like doing their work.

Then there are mailing lists that abound to show the best places, that I never would have found on my own, to get worksheets, free books, unit studies, online videos, and other things that make learning at home much more productive and fun.

I even feel more energized when preparing the kids weeks out. I actually enjoy getting things together for their lessons, planning them out and having a goal at the end of the study. It really is a lot better than just giving them a workbook or text and telling them to do excercises 1-20, correct them and then put it in a folder somewhere.

What we do know is actually talk about the study, read about it, go more in-depth with internet resources and learn more intensely. 

I like this approach much better.

One thing that I think made the biggest impact was a piece of software I downloaded for record keeping. I'm horrible at keeping records and organizing the kids attendance, grades, papers and the like. In one of the email lists I'm on someone sent a link to HomeschoolTracker.com. What an immediate blessing this thing is.

It has two versions. A Basic free version and a paid version. I haven't upgraded to the paid version yet, but am very happy with the free one. I can put in all the lesson plans, attendance, grades, hours put in for each class, books read, and other things and then if I want, it spits out printouts of everything! It even calculates grades and averages them out in a nice neat report card.

If you're struggling with organization maybe HomeschoolTracker will help you. It did for my family.

Until next time....