The kids and I are looking forward to school starting for many reasons. Summer break is needed and enjoyable, but there comes a time when we NEED to get back to business. Our first "official" day will be Tuesday, July 24. Miss B's birthday is July 23 - so we can't start then!
It's good to have a sense of purpose, and by the end of our summer hiatus I'm not feeling very "purposeful"!
The school year is "roughly" planned... I have some large goals for us as a family and for each child, and I've made sure to plan more wisely than I have in the past. In short, I'm ready to get started!
The Top Ten Reasons I'm excited to start back to school.... in pictures!
I love school supplies. This year I've organized supplies upstairs in our schoolroom, but we spend a lot of time downstairs in the family room and kitchen, so I've put a Lazy Susan of supplies on our bookshelf in the family room. Mason Jars make wonderful holders for pens, markers, pencils, etc... It's easy for one of my kids to grab a jar and head to a quiet spot with their notebook.
History is my favorite subject, and it's a subject I feel that we do well and consistently. We will be starting Story of the World Volume 3 and notebooking our way through. I shared how we notebook our way through the Story of the World in a vlog last spring.
I've mentioned notebooking a lot, haven't I? If you haven't read Jimmie's ebook, Notebooking Success, you should. I have also been creating our own notebooking pages; most recently I made pages to be used with Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone. I'd like to start math notebooking this year... I'll keep you posted on how that goes.
I always look forward to deepening my relationship with my children through new educational discoveries. It seems that we grow closer each year as we learn together. This is my favorite thing about homeschooling.
We've all been focusing on our health through exercise and a better diet. Our membership to the YMCA has been one of the best investments since we started homeschooling. Miss B is old enough to use the adult workout room, and all of us like to swim laps. GMan will be playing baseball at an instructional facility this fall, and I KNOW he's excite about that, and so are my husband and I.
Personally, I want to get into a routine of swimming a couple mornings week before the school day starts.
Using Heritage History living books excites me a lot! I'll be sharing more about these books with you in the coming months, but for now let me say I'm excited to have the hunting for books DONE FOR ME and have them on the Kindle and iPad for easy access. It will also be nice to have them organized by time period. BONUS! This all coincides with The Story of The World, too.
Each year since we started homeschooling we've tried to go somewhere NEW and EDUCATIONAL with the kids that isn't within driving distance. It's not easy on the budget, but I'm willing to scrimp in other areas so we can make these trips. So far we've hit New York (The Erie Canal and Niagara Falls), California (San Francisco) and now it will be Denver.
I am our church's delegate for Ambassadors in Christ (the annual convention of Lutheran Churches in Mission for Christ), which is held in Denver. We are going to take the opportunity to go as a family and then explore the Denver area.
We do travel to Florida each year to visit my parents and an occasional road trip in the Southeast, too. I love that we can take full advantage of a flexible schedule and expose our children to the best our country has to offer.
I'm looking forward to teaching a LEGO class for second and third graders in our co-op this fall. I'm not exactly sure what it will look like yet, but I do have a LEGO Pinterest board going and a lot of ideas brewing in my head. I know I want to use this LEGO lapbook, for sure!
This one is purely for ME... I'm SUPER EXCITED about going to the BEECH Retreat in Southwest Florida. I know several friends who will be there, too - and I can't wait to meet so many blogging friends in real life. My dear friend, Melissa (who I met last year in NYC) will be there and I'm also looking forward to meeting Jen, who will be my roomie! There are a lot of bloggers that I have admired from afar who I will have the chance to get to know. That's exciting!
Music is always an integral part of our homeschool, but this year we will have more music activities than usual. Both children are taking piano lessons, and Miss B will be a member of the Spivey Hall Young Artists' Choir. I'm so very excited for her and this opportunity. We will also be listening to our Maestro Classics' CDs, using Music For Little Learners, and learning about composers. I will always be a music educator at heart, that's for sure.
I'm ready to get started! We have a week of music camp to finish and an anniversary getaway for my husband and I, then we're off and running.
What are you looking forward to this school year?
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