my blessed life

It's summertime!  And for our family that means a break from schooling for the kids and lots of planning for the next year for me. Of course, for me, that is something of a domino effect.  Planning means sorting curriculum and books that I already have.  Then I have to purge books we no longer need or want to keep.  And finally comes the organizing of what's being kept ( which is always too much ).   So that's what I've been working on for the past few days.  Cleaning off shelves, making piles of books to sell, piles of books and resources to give away, and since I've put this off for so long ...a piles of my kiddos' used-up books that I need to take samples from for their portfolios then dispose of the rest.   So a lot of piles.   I am trying to be a bit more ruthless this year with the purging.  I have such a tendency to collect lots of great resources, only to put them on a shelf and forget about them all toge...

It's that time of the year again!!  I love getting all organized and prepared for the start of our homeschool year.  It hardly seems possible that this is our 7th year of homeschool and I now have a 4th grader and a 6th grader.  This year it seems we have more subjects and books than ever!  We'll be starting back in just two weeks. Here's my 6th grader's personal lineup: What's worked in the past that she's continuing with: Math : Teaching Textbooks Handwriting : Getty Dubay Classic Literature units using various sources What's new this year:  Supplemental Math : Life of Fred Grammar : Rod & Staff Bible : Journeys of Faithfulness  (to start the year) Guitar & Piano lessons Here's the 4th grader's personal lineup: What's worked in the past that he's continuing with:  Math: Teaching Textbooks Handwriting: Getty Dubay Spelling: Sequential Spelling & SpellingCity.com Bi...

It's that time of the year again~time to talk homeschool curriculum choices!  And I love this time of the year.  All of the planning, reading, preparing, praying, thinking, list-making ....it's exciting each year to think of all the possibilities that the new school year holds for our family.  It's so much fun to talk with other homeschool moms (and read their blogs!) about what their curriculum choices are.  There are so many choices out there and getting first-hand recommendations is such a good thing. After much prayer and thought (and sometimes much frustration with something that wasn't working) I think I have made all of our final choices for our homeschool this year. It's hard to believe that I will have a 5th grader ( The Princess ) and a 3rd grader ( Mr. B ) this year! Bible and character training We will be using several resources in this area: Character Sketches , The Bible Story books , and We Choose Virtues parenting cards .  These...