Friday, September 16, 2005

Where did summer go?

Well......it seems that it has been quite some time since I last posted. We had a wonderful summer with a very great memory making camping trip to top it all of with in August. I had gone into that trip with fear and trepidation in my heart as I am not really a tent camper. But! My boys--the two little ones and the husband boy went out of their way to make sure mom didn't work too hard and managed to have a bit of a vacation also. My boys got along and were helpful and appreciative---a delight to be traveling with in a car. Many happy memories were made.

On the education front---sigh----school has begun for us and we are almost through with week 2. I did not though, start with our core curriculum yet, which is www.tapestryofgrace.com. Instead we are doing a 3 week pirate unit study. I purchased the pirate guide from this site----http://www.unitstudies.com/ It is a family owned business and she has a lot of fun unit study guides. I just felt like easing into our school year. So far we have been reading various pirate books, I am reading Treasure Island (unabridged!) out loud. We have also started math, latin, and science. Our language arts is all wrapped up in the pirate study. We did start our Monday writing class this past week--using Institute for Excellence in Writing--or commonly known as IEW. I am teaching a class of 15 students--including my own two--so that is one more thing on my education plate.

The other thing we have begun is a new poetry memorization program--seen here---http://writing-edu.com/poetry/ In less then two full weeks we have memorized 4.5 poems. I thought my 13 year old would be less than enthusiastic about this, but he has surprised me and cooperated and even enjoyed it. :)

On a side note, I apparently have become the meanest mom in the world due to the fact that I am requiring Sam to write his vocabulary words and his copywork out in cursive!!! Oh the agony of it all. I keep trying to convince him that the more he uses his cursive the easier it will get--especially since we used Handwriting Without Tears--which in my not-so humble opinion is THE most logical cursive program out there.

Well--that is all the terrible exciting news and musings from this mom. OH--forgot to add what we are reading:


I am reading a Miss Read story called News From Thrush Green. If you like Jan Karon,I think you will like Miss Read!

Sam is reading The Opal Deception:

Austen is reading Dragon Rider:

1 comment:

Jay said...

I was searching for homeschool curriculum, and came to your site kim. After reading Where did summer go?, I could really use this on my site, homeschool curriculum, with your permission of course.