• I’ve already received the entire set for the new math level for the oldest (MUS Pre-Algebra with Honors book, DVD, TE, etc.)
• I’ve already received the student editions of MUS Primer, Alpha, Gamma, and Epsilon (for the others - have everything else as we have always used MUS)
• Last year was the first time to use Easy Grammar and we all liked it so I ordered and received Grades 3, 5, and 7 (needed 4 and 6 last year so now I’ll have almost all the TE and henceforth will only need the student editions)
• Pre-ordered TOG Redesigned Year 3 (can’t wait for that to start arriving)
• Ordered the Unit 1 books for TOG RY3 for Lower Grammar, Upper Grammar, and the Dialectic stage and they should start arriving soon.
• Ordered and received the new Latin text, we switched to Latin for Children last year and will do the same again this year.
• Ordered and received Logic for the oldest
• We’re not sure yet about Science - hoping to continue with Exploring Creation series with the Co-Op (will know more later)
• I’ve begun re-reading The Well-Trained Mind.
• I ordered a few other books for myself to read over the summer.
• I completed entering Easy Grammar 3 Lesson Plan into HST
• I completed entering MUS Pre-Algebra Lesson Plan into HST
• I fine tuned-copied a Lesson Plan of Primer and Alpha into HST for the 1st grader with special needs - this is a struggle for her.
• I’ve begun compiling, editing, and publishing new Education pages

Are you getting ready for next year? Making your lists? What are going to change? Have you found something new and interesting you didn’t know about before? Please share it with us. Blog about it and leave me a link in the comments section.

Related posts

• TOG Y4 Redesigned Book List (0)
• TOG Y3 Redesigned Book List (0)
• TOG Y2 Redesigned Book List (0)
• TOG and HST (4)
• School Supplies (1)

Year End Home School Review

Reflect

Reflect on this past school year. How was my focus this year?
Not good, so not good.

Was I diligent?
Not diligent enough.

How successful was the curriculum?
Successful, but again I should have been more on top of things.

Did I honor God with my school year?
Partially. In my lack of diligence I did not honor God by doing all that I could.

Psalm 139:23
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts.
2 Corinthians 13:5
Examine yourselves

Refrain

Refrain from being too hard on ourselves. If we have not completed all there is to do, relax! Do not let end-of-the-year pressure to cause us to panic and stress.
I have been good at this relaxing about what is left. To release the stress we have cut back to only the necessities (’reading, ‘ritin’, and ‘rythmitic).

Philippians 4:6-7
Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Release

Release the guilt of any failures to the Lord. Seek forgiveness in prayer where needed and don’t dwell on the negative. Dust off our knees and try again.
Done. Daily. It’s what got me past #2.

Psalm 86:5
For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.
1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Rely

Rely on our Heavenly Father. Seek Him always in our home school endeavors and trust Him in His leading.
While there is always room for improvement, we do pretty good with this. I’m proud of my children and they have handled situations.

Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
Isaiah 40:11
He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.

Renew

Renew our home school vision. Get refocused on the purpose we chose to home educate our children.
I’m currently in the throws of this now as I’m re-evaluating curriculum, each child’s needs, etc.

Deuteronomy 6:6-7
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
Also see Deuteronomy 11:18-21

Repair

Repair the damage, if there is any. If you feel it necessary, use the summer months to catch up on, complete, or compliment their education. But go easy.
This is exactly what we are doing; this is our plan.

Ephesians 5:16a
Redeeming the time
Colossians 4:5b
redeeming the time

Rejoice

Rejoice that we are not in the alone. The Lord is our strength.
We do feel so alone. We are isolated in our homeschool group for our beliefs and approach to school. this small town is very hard to feel like anything but aliens.

Nehemiah 8:10b
for the joy of the LORD is your strength.
Isaiah 40:31
But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

He will equip us! He does not call the qualified. He qualifies the called.

Psalm 32:8
I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye.
Philippians 4:13
I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

Resolve

Resolve to make improvements or changes where needed. Pray for His guidance. Be convinced and determined in our hearts and minds and then do what we need to.
A better homeschool budget is my focus right now. Trying to get it all instead of as we go, that is where we failed the most this year.

Ecclesiastes 9:10
Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might

Remember

Remember what has worked and what has not. Let us learn from our successes and from our mistakes and then press on.
I’ve made a list of the things that do not work so I will not fall back on them again. But even better is the list of what does work to keep me on track.

Philippians 3:14
I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
1 Corinthians 15:58
Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

Related posts

• Year End Review (0)
• TOG Y4 Redesigned Book List (0)
• TOG Y3 Redesigned Book List (0)
• The American Village (a living history museum) (0)
• Storage hack number 156498 (0)

Related posts

• No related posts.

Related posts

• No related posts.

I know every state is different and while we are currently living in a state that is fairly relaxed with homeschoolers we don’t think we will always be here. Therefore the “nice to have in our files” statement.

Today I was in charge of some of the snacks for the parents giving the tests to the students. While I took the older children to the church to take the tests PapaJohn stayed home with the younger two so I could go in and set up the snacky-yummies. (No, I did not just say snacky-yummies.) When I got home I walked into one of the best doses of heart warmth I could ever be given: my two littlest boys sitting on Papa’s lap reading a good bookfurniture Videnov. It does a heart good.

Related posts

• No related posts.

I bought some little plastic letter tiles last august for use with the our preschooler to play with during “school time”. I had not planned on really pushing time with them, just letting him have fun and something to occupy his little hands while I was working with another child or two.

He has thoroughly loved these letters. So has Bairno. CowBoy knows his alphabet. He can say the alphabet, knows the sounds each letter makes, and can identify each one by sight. CowBoy turned four in April. While I have not directly worked with him on the letters and their sounds, anytime he showed me one or asked me about it I answered with the letter name or sound. He can write his first name, but struggles a bit with the writing aspects. He did just turn four after all.

Bairno, on the other hand, loves the sound the plastic letters make when he shakes the plastic jug in which they reside. He is just 17 months old after all. But he loves to open books and point to the words and say, “a, a, a”. Then shake his head very emphatically and definitively with satisfaction at his own reading skill. It is rather adorable I must say.

CowBoy will ask how to spell something and then as we sound it out he picks out the letters and lines them up on the table to spell the word. He will ask if the word is “proper and needs a capital letter”. He gets a bit upset with the fact that the letters slide around easily and do not stay straight. So I concocted a brilliant plan to fix that problem.

I bought some magnet tape and a white magnetic board and gathered my scissors for the work at hand.

I sat diligently (with the help of a friend) and we stuck little squares of magnet tape on the backs of the plastic letters so they would stick to the magnetic white board and would not slide around.

Bairno is pleased that they still rattle and make a loud noise in their storage jug.

The third really great thing about these letter tiles is the wonderful use they will prove to be for our Princerella. She is a bright girl, but her biggest hardships right now are her struggle with writing, she can’t hold a pencil well (her hand strength is a battle) and the fact that most people treat her younger than she is and try to hold her back or group her with younger children; this drives us both batty.

Princerella is left-handed. I am right-handed. This coupled with the fact that she needs guided handwriting assistance still at most times makes it hard for me to help at the level of help she deserves. Enter Papa who is also left-handed. He gets to help with most of the fine motor skill assistance she needs. This works out really well, but during the day when he is at work she still needs to work on spelling and phonics and such with me.

See, she can spell well. As she is in public school this year for the PT/OT benefits she is bringing home weekly grades in the 90 - 100 range in spelling. Her math fluctuates greatly depending on the concept, but that’s another post for another day. As long as she is allowed to continue working on spelling and reading in a way that allows her to succeed I am happy. Spelling/Reading and Handwriting are two different things all together.

So you see, these letter tiles and the magnetic board are perfect for her too.

I hope that this has given some of you a great starting point for your preschooler or special ed student. If you have any more ideas to help us along our journey, please share them here. I can use all the Special Ed advice I can get.

Related posts

• Storage hack number 156498 (0)
• Stop! Rock and Roll! (0)
• A feeling of unreadiness (0)
• Upset (0)
• The American Village (a living history museum) (0)

Or whatever number you want to assign it. I am certainly not the first person to come up with an organizational hack or even one like this, I’m sure. Actually, I saw a very similar hack in a magazine about two years ago.

While I have been busily cleaning out our home school books and stash of stuff used and unused and not-so-used I realized I needed some more (read: better) means of organizing some of the non-book items. Mostly craft stuff and math manipulatives.

I could not afford what I really wanted to do, but I needed something that would work and would work well and would work quickly. So I bought some of those nifty little wire cubes. We first bought some when we only had two wee children and needed a way for the children to store their toys. At that time we had both Mog and Goro in one room of our three bedroom house and the third room was transformed into a play room. They had shared a room since Goro was born and he did not like having a room to himself. But stacking toys in the top of the closet to keep the floor open and clean and free of tripping and drawers (what was available to us at the time) just was not cutting it. The point was to find some way to allow the children to get their things easily by themselves. Shelves are the obvious idea, preferably low shelving.

Read at my personal blog for the how-to.

Related posts

• Letter tiles, the Preschooler, and the Special Ed Student (0)
• The American Village (a living history museum) (0)

During Spring Break we visited a living history museum, The American Village. We heard Patrick Henry give his famous Give me Liberty or give me Death speech. We met Eleanor Custus, George Washington’s granddaughter, and learn some neat history about how she and her little brother were raised by George and Martha and why. She taught us a dance that my children volunteered to learn.

We took a tour of a replica of Mount Vernon and the Oval Office. We saw the courthouse and the area in which the guilty were kept - stocks! Oh, I think I need some of those. Mwahahaha. The large field is home of the encampment and reenactment of battles.

We learned how to play a few fun games that have joined the ranks of our family games. Of course they all centered around placing bets (but pretzels and chips work well for that). Actually using poker chips or little silver coins with no real monetary value is just fine. One of our new favorite games is Morgan’s Revenge - a priate’s game.

Morgan’s Revenge uses some replica gold and silver medallions (or silver rings) and a small brass spinning top similar to a Dredel. The top has six sides each marked with one of these sets of letters:

• P1 - put one
• P2 - put two
• AP - all put [one]
• T1 - take one
• T2 - take two
• TA - take all

The game begins with each player having eight silver rings. Each player puts one ring/chip into the center of the table. The first player spins the top and which side lands face up the player or players must follow the lead of the markings. The player who spun the top must do as the top says - put one or put two in the pot in the middle of the table; take one, take two, or take all from the middle of the table. If the top lands with the AP facing up then all players put one ring in the pot. As a player runs out of playing pieces he is out of the game. The object of the game is to end up with all the silver rings/chips.

Related posts

• Storage hack number 156498 (0)
• Letter tiles, the Preschooler, and the Special Ed Student (0)

I don’t have WordPress 2.5 on my server yet so I did an FTP upgrade and had no problems at all. It was quick and easy. So far so good.

I had three plugins that needed upgrading and I have never upgraded my plugins so quickly or easily. No FTP program required. The built in FTP plugin upgrade is incredible! I think that alone may be worth the new version. Well, I’m sure there are other things I will find I like as well, but that was just plain easy - and I have not problems with FTP programs. But the streamlining of it just makes it that much easier to concentrate on the blogging itself. As much as I like all the back end stuff I really liked that it was even faster for me to upgrade.

It will take me a few more uses to get the new layout under my fingers although the streamlined vision of this new WordPress is overall good.

Related posts

• No related posts.

Related posts

• No related posts.