Around Home...School...

Summer is quickly coming to an end- and I cannot wait to start our first "official" year of home schooling!

The past few years we have loosely "unschooled', which means we very much followed the girls interest and lead and did what we could when we could.

Friendly wrote her entire name for the very first time ever- all by herself!!

I didn't feel like either of the girls was ready to begin a real curriculum this time last year - and I felt the pressure to "stick to it" would be too much with an infant in the house. But as last spring wore on I was seeing clearly that it was time to pick out a curriculum and find some thing that would 1) give structure to our days and 2) push the girls into new aspects and areas of learning. While I *like* routine, I like to have structure and I definitely like every thing to be organized. I have a hard time putting ALL THE THINGS together to make school happen. I have tried to make free-online curriculum work- and while they have fun stuff to offer- it is hard for me to round up all the things necessary to stick with it long-term. So I decided a boxed curriculum that is ALL right there "open and go" kind of deal would be very helpful.

After researching all the options (even looking into public charter schools) we decided home schooling really was the best fit for us at this time and I narrowed it down to two different curriculums, Our Fathers World or Heart of Dakota. I opted for Heart of Dakota. The format is truly "open and  go" and I liked (and I hope it will work well for the girls) how light of a work load it is for the younger ages. Each day is broken up in to 6-10 boxes (subjects) with each box only taking 5-10 minutes.

Roo wrote a letter to a friend- all by herself!

Friendly will be doing the preschool curriculum and Roo will be embarking on the 1st grade package. After looking at kindergarten I realize she was well past that because of all the stuff we've played at the past 2 school years. While I don't want to push her into some thing she isn't ready for- I worried that she would be VERY BORED if we tried to do the Kindergarten stuff. And VERY BORED = not wanting to do it. I am hopeful she will enjoy this school year and the challenges it brings. I am also hoping that the "scholastic stimulation" will help some of the bad habits (fighting) the girls have fallen into due to not enough structure, and simply: not enough stuff to do!

Sand Table fun- still quite entertaining!