School is sorted and officially underway

Ha ha. My title makes me chuckle. Is a homeschooler’s line up ever really and truly sorted? Ours never is. It’s fluid, changing, and shifting. If something isn’t working, we axe it. If someone needs to move up or take a break, we make adjustments. But. Here we are. Ready for Fall Semester 2012.

Carla asked what our bins shown behind the kiddos were. I blogged a little about them here when we were cleaning up the schoolroom – which was a bit confusing, because if were using the schoolroom, the bins wouldn’t really be necessary. Each child could have their own little cubby on the lovely Expedit bookshelves.

I typically start the school year in the lovely schoolroom, then move us to the kitchen during the darkest, thickest parts of winter. E. likes the idea of doing school upstairs from the get go, and since he’s the boss this year, the bins seemed like a good idea.

After they remove the lids, they tip them on their sides and place them on the kitchen counter behind the table. It gives them their own ‘locker’ and so far (ha ha, again, ask me about them in January) they really like them.

I posted about sorting out school, but we’ve changed the line up a bit. This is going to be a math and grammar focused year.

*Advanced Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind is a new book by the which I was super excited about. They shared the first 15 weeks of lessons, which you can download here. The project has been shelved, however, so after we go through this, he might move on to Saxon Grammar & Language Arts. I don’t know. We’ll see how the MCT and Growing with Grammar is going.

**I love Spelling Power, but the older boys continue to get very upset over missed words, even though they are improving every day. I decided to add All About Spelling for Miss K, and the boys are enjoying it as well. I want to see if it helps them continue Spelling Power without tears, or maybe shelve Spelling Power altogether if All About Spelling works better for them.

Each child’s bin has their own individual books and notebooks for the subjects above. We’re loving MCT LA and the MCT literature program Alice, Peter, and Mole. That has become a ‘family subject’ everyone studies together.

Two baskets corral the teacher manuals, answer keys, and the books we use in our family studies:

I typed up a loose schedule and how-to for my husband, though after his first day yesterday, he made his own schedule in excel. I know he’ll continue to tweak things as he finds his own groove, but I’m impressed. I think he’s a born homeschooler.

I’m listening to him reading history down the hall while I work. It is bittersweet, but I’m so grateful for the work I have coming in, the monies from my humble downloads, and the ability that God has given me to make ends meet. We were even able to replace my struggling computer with a new-to-me model after we sold some things around the house. Isn’t it funny how blessed you can feel when life gets hard? It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but there it is.

Tomorrow is our first day of homeschool co-op. I am madly finishing up loose ends today, and will likely be MIA tomorrow unless I can get a post scheduled in advance. Have a wonderful mid-week if I don’t ‘talk’ to you.

xo